There are only four naturally occurring wild populations of the Alpine Blue Sow Thistle left in the UK, making it one of the UK’s rarest and most endangered native plants. Historically widespread across woodlands and meadows, the Scottish population has become isolated to inaccessible mountain ledges in the Cairngorms National Park, where it can’t be reached by grazers such as red deer, sheep and slugs. The UK’s prevalence of grazing species and lack of apex predators has led to centuries of overgrazing, placing species like the Alpine Blue Sow Thistle at the brink of extinction.
Conservationists at the RBGE have been cultivating genetically diverse plants in the garden’s nurseries, and have been able to successfully reintroduce thousands of plants into safeguarded areas of the Cairngorms to help establish self-sustaining populations for the future.
Find out more about the RBGE’s critical conservation efforts to safeguard the species below.
Fresh hope for rare and endangered plant | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
