Scottish Plants: Conservation projects at the RBGE
Heather MacHaffie
March 11th 2020
Heather worked as a conservation officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh for over ten years. This was a fascinating talk about her time spent monitoring, growing, researching and carrying out reintroductions of rare native plants. The plants were chosen using the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora 1962 – 2002.
Heather’s enthusiasm for her job was obvious, she enjoyed the adventure of looking for and collecting seeds, and working with people such as the BSBI to find these rare plants and seeds. Although she stressed the monitoring is the most important part of the job, as why reintroduce a plant if you don’t know why it died out in the first place?
Reintroduction projects included small cow wheat, alpine blue sowthistle, woolly willow, Arran Sorbus and Alpine woodsia. Alpine blue sowthistle had only been recorded in 4 sites, such as inaccessible ledges which were grazed by deer. Professional climbers were hired to collect root material as some mountainous areas of the Cairngorms were too dangerous to reach for botanic garden staff. This plant also didn’t appear to set seed. Through the work of Heather and her colleagues this species is now planted in sites where the public can see it.
Kay