This morning I woke up with a headache… so not a great start and one that would not put you in a good mood, then I went out and all was frosty, including the car windscreen: back to winter?

Luckily, gardening usually alleviates all my ailments and annoyances, so I headed into work rather full of hope. Learning to drive a Gator first thing was a good beginning of the work day: it’s not a tractor yet, but at least now I am not always waiting for someone to carry me around, and I can help out when needed.

Then, we weeded Smyrnium: as I mentioned yesterday, that is going to be a regular feature of our days until it’s gone. 

Thanks to the availability of a colleague, during our morning break, I had the opportunity to see a legendary plant at Kew, Ramosmania rodriguesii: only one plant was left in the wild, when a few cuttings were taken to Kew… and, after years of trying to propagate new plants from them our colleague Carlos succeeded and send some back to Rodrigues Island. You can read the whole fascinating story on Carlos’ blog.

The rest of the morning we moved to the Japanese gateway (which incidentally looked gorgeous in the sun and with the red azaleas all in flower at the front, as you can see in the picture) to mow the lawn again.

My nature is rather impatient and frustration started to mount when my stripes were not straight, due to the rather uneven surface of the area combined with my still limited skills. It was noticeable – and in fact I was asked could I make them straighter? Of course, I would try: mowing had sorted my headache, so I pressed on and I think I managed a decent enough finish in the end, even though the stripes were definitely not perfectly straight.

That’s a picture of how it came out.

Incidentally, while going to and fro I noticed that daisies did not get damaged by the mower much. It is pretty impressive how they manage to sense what is the mowing level, and to grow and flower just below it. Do they rely on the height of the lawn around them, maybe its shade?

How plants adapt to environmental factors is something we have been discussing this week, and I am interested to know more. Will have to research this a bit, but I am still adjusting to my new life and its patterns, and time and energy are not allocated in the most efficient way yet.

That was the end of my day, as I had the afternoon off to go and visit a nursery with a friend. A great experience, will talk about that separately.

“Herbaria are collections of dried preserved specimens that document the identity of plants and fungi. They represent reference collections with many and varied functions including identification, research and education”.

(Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Herbarium Collections)

Fascinating. Today we were taken on a tour of the herbarium by botanist David Goyder, who showed us some specimens and told us about his trips in Africa to get them.

The old storage room is itself redolent of Victorian explorers and scientists: discovering, preserving, studying… and it is a joy to look at. It was designed to make use of as much daylight as possible, as lighting + dried plant material preserved on paper sheets = big fire hazard.

When you take into consideration that the cupboards (here and in other more modern parts of the building, as this was filled to capacity shortly after being created) contain 7.5 million specimens, some 350,000 of which are type specimens, that is the “official” description of how a plants looks like for reference and identification, then you really feel how extraordinary this place is.

David talked to us about two recent expeditions he did in Africa, his geographical area of expertise, during one of which, in Mozambique, they discovered a full A4 page of species new to science.

Discoveries like that one are often presented to governments with conservation purposes in mind.

Then we were shown some specimens he has dried but not fully identified yet, as they are from his most recent trip to Angola. As expeditions are rather expensive, one has to concentrate on getting a representative selection of the local flora, collecting specimens and avoiding they get damaged (i.e. mould). All the rest can be done once you are back at the Herbarium, where you can consult previous collections to help you identify your specimens (redundant collections are welcome because they document the variety within and/or distribution of species) or any species new to science.

One of David’s most recent specimens

David also showed  us an identified specimen from the expedition to Mozambique, and one of the reference specimens they consulted, from the collections, when identifying plants; it’s by 19th century Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone (more about his correspondence with Kew).

Contemporary specimen

19th century specimen

I would go on talking about this fascinating subject, but everything is explained on Kew’s website… I will tell you, however, that Kew has started digitizing the collections and some are already available to all through the Herbarium catalogue, as I find that rather amazing.

If you are into the expedition side of plant finding, I found Kew’s Overseas Territories team blog that might be of interest.

For those interested in plant genetics, we might visit the Jodrell Laboratory at some stage, but for the moment, what I have learnt is that you might be able to find viable DNA material in specimens that have been dried quickly and are less that 20 years old. 

And on that bombshell…

Today I went back to the Japanese Landscape: it was a gorgeous sunny day and the grass is starting to grow fast, so we had to mow the lawn. There is a specific department that takes care of the sward at Kew with ride-ons, but for the smaller areas we use lawnmowers.

My parents’ garden was sizeable when I was growing up, and the lawn was mowed regularly, I probably even had a go at times. But it was just a matter-of-fact operation, to cut the grass short so that we could use the garden… here in the UK, however, lawn mowing is more of an art, and stripes are the height of perfection.

So, today I was taught how to mow a lawn the proper way, and, for the task, I had a real star trainer, who gained his experience on golf courses. With great patience on his part, and some frustration on mine, the morning was well spent, and I even had fun once I started getting the gist of it.

Here is how it turned out:

First attempt…

… and afterwards

What do you think? Well done, eh? A star performance! ;p

In the afternoon, I helped a colleague clear some leaves from a wooded area of the garden that I had never visited, and that turned out to be very pleasant with a selection of fragrant Magnolia species and a tree I had never seen, Azara microphylla, which gives off a chocolatey scent. 

Today was also the day of the first plant IDing test for me: I was very nervous as I haven’t had much time to study – even if I have seen and memorised plenty of plants over the last three weeks… 

For the test, you are supposed to learn 10 plants a month, but every month you are shown 30 samples, because you have to recognise also the set plants for the previous two months… being my first month I was only supposed to learn 10 but I have recognised a few more – besides, even if I did not get them all right, I enjoyed finding myself in front of plant material and having to guess which plant it belonged to: it teaches you to look at plants more carefully, spotting those tiny details that make a difference…