Trinity College Botanic Garden on Culture Night: Plants and Planet Tour
Trinity College Botanic Garden on Culture Night: Plants and Planet Tour
Trinity College Botanic Garden took part in Culture Night on Friday 18 September, welcoming visitors for Plants and Planet Tour, a guided exploration of the Garden’s plants, research and their connections to our changing environment. During the tour, botanists shared stories of the fascinating lives of plants from around the world, exploring how they have evolved and adapted to extreme environments and what they can teach us about our changing planet. The lab team Michelle Murray, Jennifer McElwain, Miriam Slodownik and Leticia Figueiredo Candido participated welcoming the visitors and presenting part of the tours.
Visitors explored the Garden’s living collections, discovering plants that have outlived the dinosaurs, fascinating relationships between plants and their pollinators, and the role of plants in understanding environmental change. The tours also introduced visitors to ongoing environment research at Trinity, including the opportunity to meet the ‘Witness Trees’ and try some of the monitoring equipment used by researchers.
The garden and the whole botanists team thanks the attendees for sharing this moment and passion for plants.
Trinity Herbarium Reopens Following Major Renovation
Trinity Herbarium Reopens Following Major Renovation
Trinity College Dublin’s Herbarium, home to up to half a million preserved plant specimens representing three centuries of Irish botanical research, officially reopened on 31 August following a major two-year renovation.
The reopening celebrated the Herbarium’s history and future, with visitors exploring the newly renovated facilities, learning about historic specimens and taking part in a live digitisation session. Chair of Botany and PI of the Plant–Climate Interaction Lab, Prof. Jennifer McElwain, opened the session by highlighting the importance of the Herbarium to the Botany Department, botanical research and conservation. Postdocs Leticia Figueiredo Candido and Miriam Slodownik also participated, presenting the Witness Trees Project and highlighting how annual plant collections from the Witness Trees can connect long-term tree monitoring with historical botanical records.
The Herbarium was subsequently visited by Minister of State for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity, Christopher O’Sullivan TD, who toured the newly renovated facility and learned about the research taking place there, including the Witness Trees Project. The reopening marks a new chapter for Trinity’s Herbarium as a centre for botanical research, conservation and digitisation
