Constipation and baldness are not the exclusive preserve of Spurtle readers in 2025.
Such travails – experienced singly or in tandem – have afflicted local residents since at least the mid-19th century, as evidenced by a recent archaeological find in the area.
During infrastructural works for the second stage of the Royal Botanic Garden’s biome project, an iridescent blue medicine bottle – of the kind used to contain tonics for the above conditions – was unearthed on Inverleith Place. Significantly, perhaps, its bung had disappeared.
Other finds here were the perfectly preserved lid of a china butter dish and the remains of two shoes.
In and around the Palm Houses, from which 800 plants were removed in 2021, workers uncovered a 49 cm long horticulturalist’s turf knife, various bits of broken pot, a near perfect Whitbread & Co. beer bottle and a large rusty bolt from the original fittings of 1834.
‘Most poignant of all,’ say Botanics staff, ‘are the remains of two large nails’. These appear to have fallen from the wooden barrel in which the Garden’s Sabal palm was kept through the 1800s until its eventual planting in 1893.
Readers with very long memories may recall that this plant, which lived to be over 200 years old, began life in the RBGE’s previous location – a site which included today’s Hopetoun Crescent Garden.
