please empty your brain below

I thought you went to Warwick? Postgrad?

Ah, the Turf - many fond memories.

I lived quite close (Chester St., off Iffley Road) to where you lived, although not at the same time.

The rectangular beds in the Botanic Garden (and it is both beautiful and educational) are known "in the trade" as "Order Beds". Each bed is given over to plants of a single family, so, for example, in the Rosaceae bed you might find roses, strawberries and apples (you wouldn't actually find these three at Oxford, but you get the picture). The problem is that modern botany is being thrown into confusion by modern genetics, and some argue that these familial relationships (established by Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century) based on the structure of flowers don't actually show the true relationships between plants. I think I'm right in saying that it has been shown that nettles share more common genes with apples than they do with roses. But I don't see the Order Beds at Oxford (or at Kew for that matter) being torn up any time soon.

I've had the extraordinary good fortunate to have a one-to-one tour of the botanic garden with Professor Hugh Dickinson, the Sherardian Professor of Botany. That's one of the famous "chairs", the botanical equivalent (at Oxford) of the chair that Stephen Hawking holds (at Cambridge) for mathematics. Marvellous chap - very affable and self-effacing.

Nice Post. Thanks for sharing.

Your college may be closed to visitors, but it isn't closed to you: on graduation you became an Old Member, and you have as much right to enter as the undergraduates.

More, in some ways: if you paid your guinea and accepted the MA (Oxon) then you have the right to dine at High Table at least once per year, depending on the College.

Be more assertive!

I never paid the cash and accepted the MA (Oxon). It seemed a reprehensible spit in the face at all the postgraduates elsewhere who had to work bloody hard to earn their MAs.

Thank you for the very useful blog posts, I've just moved form London to Oxford to do a masters degree (I was an undergrad at the other place). The botanic garden is pretty, but I bet it gets a bit bleak in the winter. The best things I've noticed so far in Oxford are the gargoyles - they are just AMAZING.

Agree about the MA point. But then I did a 4 year course so got an MChem anyway....










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