In days gone by

Mrs M dropped me off at Glasgow Botanic Garden this morning so I could help with setting up things for our British Pteridological Society meeting today. We had a couple of dozen folk at the meeting, some of whom had travelled quite a way, one of them, our Membership Secretary, from London.

We had a wonderful tour of the Kibble Palace - my Blip today - with Stevie Jacusz, who looks after the Garden's ferns. The tree on the right of the Kibble is an amazing specimen of Kalopanax pictus, one of my favourite. We then went on to the fern house in the Main Range and the dark and damp Filmy Fern House, which is not open to the public. Hundreds of wonderful ferns in all of them!

After a sandwich lunch round the back in the staff area we were treated to a slide show about the Fossil Grove, in Glasgow's Victoria Park. This amazing group of fossil tree stumps was discovered in 1887  - see extra - when a path was being cut through an abandoned quarry as part of the new park. The find was so astounding that a building was put over the fossil trees, eleven fossil tree stumps from the Carboniferous Period, to preserve them in situ. They are about 330 million years old.

We also had a look at the huge number of ferns plants by our group over the last couple of years. They were mostly doing well, though the council does little to help and it was sad to see bunches of kids rushing up and down the rocky walls and trampling the beds. Nobody seems to care! Anyway, we're trying to improve the garden in spite of them!

A great day, much enjoyed by all!