Friday, January 6, 2012

'Worst ever' storm damage at Edinburgh botanic garden


The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh has been counting the cost of this week's severe weather.
Hundreds of panels have been smashed in glass houses.
The garden is repairing them as quickly as possible, but it will take much longer to replace more than 40 trees blown over in the storms.
They include some specimens which were hundreds of years old, and others which were important in the history of the collection.
They include a Chinese Tree of Heaven which was collected at the beginning of the 20th Century by the pioneering plant hunter Joseph Rock.
Dr Ian Edwards from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RBGE) told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: "it's very sad to see some of my personal favourites, everybody's favourite trees, that have been damaged."
He said the damage was the worst he could remember in almost 30 years of working at the garden.
And if trees are important to humans, they are even more vital to wildlife.
Dr Edwards demonstrated that with a huge native oak which had stood more than 15m (45ft) tall, but had been felled by the winds.
"It's a lovely big specimen tree. Or it was. It's now lying sadly on its side," he said.
"But even though this is a big tree the roots don't go down very deep. They actually only go down about two metres (6ft) into the ground.

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