About Us

About Our Discipline 

The core of the Discipline is the handsome Botany building with its unique international herbarium. We also occupy laboratory and office space in nearby buildings, as well as the College Botanic Garden at Dartry and the Trinity East campus at Grand Canal Dock. We have important field sites for long-term ecological measurement and modelling at the Wicklow Mountains, National Parks, Killarney and Eddy covariance flux studies at the Clara and Cavemount bog complexes.

Our research is highly interdisciplinary with a global reach covering both basic and applied aspects of plant science. Examples of ongoing projects include research on environmentally sustainable diets; the role of pollinating insects in ensuring a harvest in some major crop plants; the flux of gases in agricultural soils and their potential influences on climate change; the discovery of plant species new to science in the forests of South-east Asia and Central America; measuring societal attitudes to novel urban ecosystems, peatland restoration, the evolution of fungi and plant-fungal interactions, the evolution of plants and their atmospheric environment and the impacts of fire on Irish vegetation, over a timescale ranging from decades to millennia. Our researchers are active in  Nature+ Trinity Centre for Biodiversity & Sustainable Nature-Based Solutions, Trinity Centre for the Environment and the School of Natural Sciences.

Our research informs policy at the national and international levels and our teaching. We run two undergraduate programmes through the Discipline leading to degrees in Botany and Environmental Sciences, and we co-run an integrated degree plus masters programme in Environmental Science and Engineering. We contribute to the M.Sc. programmes in Biodiversity & Conservation and in Environmental Sciences, and to other undergraduate degree programmes in the School of Natural Sciences.

We hope our website provides you with a good introduction. If, however, you require further information, feel free to contact us directly. You are also welcome to visit should you be in Dublin; we are proud of our city-centre campus and of our Discipline. 

Prof Jennifer McElwain
Chair of Botany