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Loans Policy
Loans Policy
The Herbarium at RBGE will only consider loans from recognised institutes and not from individuals. All loan requests should come from the Curator or Director of the researcher’s institute. A pdf copy of this letter can be sent by email…
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History of Collectors in the Herbarium
Collectors
There are over 14,000 collectors represented in the herbarium at RBGE. Some of these collectors have made a significant impact on the collections, either by the number of specimens or by the number of new species they collected. These collectors…
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Cultivated Herbarium
Cultivated Herbarium
The cultivated herbarium helps facilitate ‘a gold standard’ reference collection within RBGE. Not only do these cultivated specimens act as an identification reference to the living collection i.e. where plant material has been requested for…
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Ferns and Allies
Ferns
The Ferns & Fern Allies include Ferns, horsetails, clubmosses, spikemosses and quillworts. They are an ancient group, with fossil evidence of members from 400 million years ago. Around 90% of current diversity in this group is accounted for by…
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Gymnosperms
Gymnosperms
The gymnosperms, which include cycads, ginkgos, and conifers (pines, spruces, firs, cypresses, and larches) are an ancient lineage of plants, dating back at least 300 million years - today they can be found on all continents except Antarctica. The…
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Silica Dried Collection
Silica Dried Collection
A recent addition to the collections at RBGE is the material which has been dried in silica to preserve the DNA for later extraction and sequencing. This technique is commonly used for plant material thanks to its effectiveness in preserving the…
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Specimen Preparation and Care
Specimen Preparation & Care
We add thousands of new plant specimens to the Herbarium collection every year. In addition to specimens collected on RBGE expeditions, we receive gifts and exchanges from other herbaria, and specimens from the RBGE research plant collections. Our…
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Integrated Pest Management
Integrated Pest Management
Herbarium Beetle (Trogoderma angustum) and Biscuit Beetle (Stegobium paniceum) have the potential to cause serious damage to our herbarium collections if left unchecked. In the past, pest management in the Herbarium often involved regular use of…
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Preparation of Specimens
Preparation of Specimens
Each new plant specimen we add to the Herbarium collection is carefully prepared so that it will remain in good condition for use by future researchers. Different herbaria use different methods for mounting plant specimens. The sections below…
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Protocol Development
Protocol Development
From the very basic problems of how to break up different kinds of tissue in order to extract DNA, to working with the "pre-fragmented" DNA that is found in historic specimens, working in a Botanical Garden laboratory is full of…
Botanics Recommends
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