Botany treasures

The Botany collections of the Natural History Museum have been developed over the past 3 centuries, and include plants collected by Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin. In addition to specimens available for loan, parts of the collection of particular interest can be seen online: the Sloane herbarium; the John Clayton herbarium of plants collected in Virginia in the early 18th Century; and the Paul Hermann herbarium of plants collected in the late 17th Century in Ceylon.

Selected items from Sir Hans Sloane's herbarium.

The Sloane herbarium comprises 265 bound volumes of pressed plants, dating from the 17th and 18th Centuries. A selection of material from the British Isles is available for loan, including the following collections:

• Reverend Adam Buddle (1660-1715) - Excellent early collections of flowering plants, seaweeds, lichens and other plants form the UK.
• Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1714) - Pioneer of garden plant introductions, gardens at Badminton and Chelsea. Collections include many early varieties etc of garden plants.
• John Blackstone (1672-1753) - Good collections of British plants.

John Ray's (1627-1705) Hortus Siccus.
Plants collected by the great naturalist in the British Isles. This collection comprises 500 single sheets.

Charles Darwin - plants from the voyage of the Beagle:
Specimens collected on the Beagle voyage (1831-36). Mainly lichens from Tierra del Fuego. Darwin's signature is clearly visible.

Australian plants collected by Banks and Solander:
Plant specimens collected in Australia by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Cook's First Voyage in the Endeavour (1768-71).

Assorted "curios and oddities"
The Museum has a number of botanical curios from the past, including:

"Forgeries" by Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen (plants made up from several specimens).
The "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" from Sir Hans Sloane's Vegetable Substances collection. The "Vegetable Lamb" featured in mediæval bestiaries as a sheep that grew on trees - it is in fact a fern rhizome that looks vaguely like a lamb, having the remains of stalks for legs and fluffy golden wool on the surface.

Seaweeds

Bound volumes of seaweeds from the early 19th Century made by famous female seaweed collectors such as Mrs Wyatt and Mrs Griffiths.

Contact

For further discussion, please contact:
John Jackson
Science Policy Co-ordinator
Science Directorate
The Natural History Museum
London
SW7 5BD