Life in miniature
Trolleys topped with scalpels, shelf upon shelf stacked with round plastic dishes, artificial lights and sterile surfaces – this is a far cry from your average propagating greenhouse. Yet look closely and you’ll see pots and petri dishes containing what look like miniature jungles. These are, in fact, cultures containing plant material at various stages of micropropagation – rhododendron flowers, slices of daffodil buds, tiny pieces of fern, all miraculously being coaxed into life by Ros Smith, laboratory manager at Duchy College Rosewarne in Cornwall.
Ros made headlines a few years ago with her groundbreaking rescue mission (for which she was awarded the RHS AJ Waley medal). When British rhododendrons came under threat of being lost forever due to
