Projects

Current Research at the Gardens
The boxwood of Thailand and the cinnamon of Borneo

The boxwood of Thailand and the cinnamon of Borneo

Wuu Kuang Soh The Boxwood family, Buxaceae, consists of six genera and about 100 species worldwide from the Northern to Southern Hemisphere. The group presence is small in Thailand with only two genera and five native species (Soh and Parnell 2018). However, in the...

read more
Systematics of Syzygium Gaertn. in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

Systematics of Syzygium Gaertn. in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

Syzygium Gaertn. is the largest genus in Myrtaceae with about 1,200 species of mostly medium to large trees occurring in the tropics and subtropics from India to the Pacific Islands, and found in a diverse range of habitats from sea shore to montane forest. Perhaps...

read more

Plants and the Pandemic – online talk with Dr Noeleen Smyth

This live talk took place on 10 February 2021, on Crowdcast. With thanks to Dr Noeleen Smyth. The alarming loss of forests and other wild habitats globally has caused worldwide concern but for many of us this may not have registered as an impact that has anything to...

read more
Trait-based ecology

Trait-based ecology

Trait‐based ecology uses phenotypic characteristics of plants to study responses to environmental change and to investigate ecological hypotheses. These phenotypes that are associated with plant functioning are called functional traits. One example of a widely known...

read more
A National Seed Bank in the National Botanic Gardens

A National Seed Bank in the National Botanic Gardens

Plants are fascinating. Even though they surround us and feed us, they often go unseen and unnoticed each day. They even hold the record for the largest and oldest organisms on earth - the largest being a clone of aspen trees and the oldest being a bristle cone pine...

read more
Plant News from the 18th World Wildlife Conference

Plant News from the 18th World Wildlife Conference

by Dr Noeleen Smyth, National Botanic Gardens of Ireland Elephants, Giraffes, Sharks, Frankincense, Rosewoods and Malawi Cedars…  What do all these have in common? These were some of the plant and animal species discussed at the world wildlife conference also known...

read more
John F Kennedy Arboretum – Mapping the Forest Research Plots

John F Kennedy Arboretum – Mapping the Forest Research Plots

As part of the JFK arboretum approximately 260 research plots were setup to help demonstrate forestry practices and guide future forestry initiatives. Work is ongoing to map and catalogue these research plots and facilitate access to the data. A GIS is being developed...

read more
DNA Barcoding

DNA Barcoding

DNA barcoding has been used to test species status of living plant specimens and herbarium specimens. In a recent project in collaboration with Queen’s University, Belfast, we used DNA barcoding to help determine evidence of food fraud. Samples of ground herbs were...

read more
Phylogeography of Saxifraga nivalis

Phylogeography of Saxifraga nivalis

Project Background The Irish flora has approximately 16 plants that are considered arctic or alpine. We are currently studying a group of arctic-alpine Saxifrages with the aim to decipher their geographical origins. One of these species, Saxifraga nivalis, is...

read more
Phylogeography of Arbutus unedo

Phylogeography of Arbutus unedo

  Colin Kelleher (National Botanic Gardens) Project Background The Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) has a predominantly Mediterranean distribution. The Irish populations are disjunct from the major populations in the Mediterranean, Portugal and Spain. To date we...

read more
ForGen – Forest Genetic Resources Research Programme

ForGen – Forest Genetic Resources Research Programme

  Project Background ForGen is a collaborative research programme involving University College Dublin, Coillte, Teagasc and the National Botanic Gardens. As part of the ForGen programme, we are currently undertaking a number of studies on the phylogeography and...

read more
Hottentot fig control on Howth Head (Carpobrotus edulis)

Hottentot fig control on Howth Head (Carpobrotus edulis)

Project Background Hottentot Fig (Carpobrotus edulis) is a popular garden plant from South Africa. It is also an aggressive invader of coastal habitats, which forms vast mats to the exclusion of all other plants. On the Gower peninsula of Wales and along the Cornish...

read more
Conservation of Abutilon Pitcairnense

Conservation of Abutilon Pitcairnense

  Pitcairn island Pitcairn Island is the infamous hideout of the Bounty mutineers; it is an extremely isolated island at the southeast of the main group of Polynesian Islands, and roughly situated half way between New Zealand and South America and just south of...

read more
Biogeography of Irish Arctic-Alpine Caryophyllaceae

Biogeography of Irish Arctic-Alpine Caryophyllaceae

  Project Background The Irish arctic-alpine flora consists of a rare and fragmented group of plants, some of which have disjunct populations distributed around Europe. According to conventional theory of plant immigration to Ireland, species colonized the island...

read more
Investigating Variation in Temperature-Related Genes in Aspen

Investigating Variation in Temperature-Related Genes in Aspen

  Project Background The National Botanic Gardens of Ireland is collaborating with the Phenology Research Group, Department of Botany, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Sweden on a phenology...

read more
Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Genus Nepenthes

Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Genus Nepenthes

  Project Description In this study molecular data sets from the chloroplast (trnL – trnF) and nuclear genome (5S-NTS) were analysed to investigate phylogenetic relationships within the family. A third data set...

read more
The Vascular Flora of Lambay

The Vascular Flora of Lambay

  Lambay is an island of just over 240 hectares lying some four kilometres off the east coast of county Dublin, Ireland. Two previous publications have dealt with the vascular flora of Lambay: Hart’s survey of 1881 and 1882 (Hart, 1883); and Praeger’s 1905 and...

read more
Floras of the Irish Isles

Floras of the Irish Isles

  Project Description A literature survey of Irish island floras (Achill, Aran, Aranmore, Clare, Inishbofin, Inishturk, Mullet and Rathlin) revealed a correlation between the log of the island’s area to the log of...

read more
A Revision of the Ant-Plant Genus Hydnophytum (Rubiaceae)

A Revision of the Ant-Plant Genus Hydnophytum (Rubiaceae)

Dr Matthew Jebb Hydnophytum kajewskii (above), a species of ant-plant from Bougainville island, has the most elaborate tuber structure known, and must rank as one of the most elaborate and bizarre vegetative structures in the entire plant kingdom. The boat-shaped...

read more
Eradication of Gunnera tinctoria on Clare Island, Co Mayo

Eradication of Gunnera tinctoria on Clare Island, Co Mayo

Project Background Alien invasive plant species are currently of global concern, they are considered to be the second largest threat globally, after habitat destruction, to biodiversity. Gunnera tinctoria is native to Chile and Argentina and is currently an invasive...

read more
DNA Barcodes – Maples

DNA Barcodes – Maples

Project Background DNA barcoding is a technique whereby short stretches of DNA are used to determine species identity. It has potential applications in a wide array of disciplines such as ecology, food safety and forensic science. To produce the DNA barcode suitable...

read more