Botany

Readers of the Transactions issue LXXXIV 2010 will recall the story of Rosa Gigantea ‘Sir George Watt’, which ended on a note of hope that the rose might be grown successfully in Scotland. There was great despair at the lack of success of the various packages which had been sent from India at considerable cost by the ever-hopeful Girija Viraraghavan and her husband, Viru. In Scotland, Richard Baines at Logan Botanic Garden in the West of Dumfries and Galloway remained just as optimistic and willing to keep trying to achieve success. After two failed attempts Morag Williams perhaps planted the seed of an idea in Girija’s mind, which lay dormant because there did not seem to any possibility of its happening. She said that the main reason for the lack of success seemed to be the time taken by these tender cuttings to reach their destination in Scotland and receive attention. If only someone travelling from India to the UK could bring them by air it would improve the chances of success. Better still, if a rooted plant, instead of cuttings, could arrive by this means there would be greater hope of a successful outcome. Even so, such a move would provide another hurdle to overcome: a plant would require certification to travel. There follows in Girija’s own words the second instalment of the journeying of the Rosa Gigantea ‘Sir George Watt’ from India to Scotland, which first appeared in January 2011 in The Indian Rose Annual XXVII 2011. Girija has kindly given consent for publication in the Transactions.

The Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser of 14th October 2009 published an article by retired Langholm General Practitioner, Tom Kennedy, which began: ‘A NEW rose with Langholm connections has been cultivated in India and it is hoped that it may one day be planted in the Rosevale Street garden in the future.’ (More of this garden in Langholm later.) He might have added that across Dumfries and Galloway and in Grampian there are other sites which would welcome the opportunity to plant this tender and beautiful rose because of associations with Sir George Watt and involvement in attempts at its propagation in Scotland. The following article appeared in The Indian Rose Annual, XXVI, 2010, the magazine of the Indian Rose Federation, founded in 1979. It appears by kind permission of Girija and Viru Viraraghavan, recognised as celebrated ‘Rosarians of the World’.

Summary of a lecture delivered to the Society on 19th November 2004.
Originally a bare tract of crofts and a few trees, dominated by a Tower House, the environment at Culzean changed with the building of the mansion house by Robert Adam and the developme

Mr Unwin took advantage of an organised group visit to the Antipodes to go plant-hunting in the South Island of New Zealand and Tasmania in 1996, since when he has made return visits to the latter. It was mid-summer with temperatures of 30 degrees C when

This report has arisen from the production of a management plan for Cally designed landscape for the Gatehouse Development Initiative in 2007. That plan is a practical tool to inform management and maintenance of the landscape and interpretation and enjoy

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On behalf of the Whithorn Trust, and with support from Historic Scotland, a palaeoenvironmental study was carried out on a wet fen/mire located 400 m south of Rispain Camp, an Iron Age site in Galloway. The investigation revealed a good lateglacial and ea

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Specialist reports on the charcoal and radiocarbon dates from the excavations of a Bronze Age roundhouse and associated palisade enclosure at Aird Quarry, Castle Kennedy, Dumfries and Galloway

Report on the environmental remains recovered during the Excavations of a Bronze Age Settlement Site at Ross Bay, Kirkcudbright

In January 2002, during the archaeological monitoring of topsoil stripping for the construction corridor of a 1.2km gas pipeline at Ross Bay, near Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, previously unknown archaeological remains were recorded at three locat

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Rooks have nested in Dumfriesshire since time immemorial and their numbers have been surveyed since at least 1908. During the decade (1993-2003) they decreased dramatically by 30% and by a further 5% between 2003 and 2004. The climate and topography are c

Summary of a lecture delivered to the Society on 6th February 2004 by Stan Tanner, Planning and Environment Forester, Forest Enterprise. Forestry Enterprise manage the Forestry Commission estate to create attractive productive woodland and manage them fo

Summary of a lecture given to the Society on 17th October 2003. An overview of past botanical recording within the county was given with details of recent work

The first phase of the South-West Scotland Crannog Survey, the primary fieldwork for which was carried out in 1989, examined the assumption that submerged crannogs in the south-west were relatively stable while their counterparts on drained land were rapi

This paper presents the results of the first intensive survey of juniper in Dumfries and Galloway. A review of the historical literature showed that colonies had become extinct in the 19th century as well as in more recent times. A field survey carried ou