PROFESSOR Sir Ghillean Prance, the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is one of the world’s leading tropical botanists and rainforest explorers. He is also the founder of Dorset’s Help Our Planet project and HOP talks. On Thursday 26th March he will be talking at Sladers Yard gallery, West Bay, about Brazil nuts and the Amazon rainforest.

The talk at 7pm is titled Nuts about the Rainforest: Can the Brazil Nut save the Amazon Rainforest? Professor Prance will outline the remarkable story of the Brazil nut and how this extraordinary tree plays a vital role in protecting the Amazon.

Having led dozens of scientific expeditions in the Amazon, discovered more than 350 plant species and published more than 600 scientific papers, Professor Prance brings decades of first-hand experience, insight and storytelling to this important subject.

Educated at Keble College, Oxford, he worked at the New York Botanical Garden before he served as director at Kew from 1988-1999. He was elected to the Royal Society and knighted in 1995.

His talk will reveal how sustainable harvesting of Brazil nuts supports local communities, preserves biodiversity and helps safeguard one of the planet’s most important ecosystems. This is a rare opportunity to hear from one of the great figures in global botany and conservation.

Supper will be available in the Sladers Yard cafe before the talk. Proceeds of the HOP event will go to Rainforest Concern

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The talk takes place during a retrospective of work by Wiltshire printmaker Sally McLaren. A Passion for Printmaking is a selling exhibition of original intaglio prints dating from 1959 to the present. The exhibition continues until Saturday 2nd May.

Pictured are Sir Ghillean Prance with Brazil nuts, and Sally McLaren’s Worked Land 1988, a line and deep etching with aquatint, made as a commission for the Printmaker’s Council.