The George Clifford Herbarium
This website contains images of, and information about, the herbarium (a collection of dried plant specimens) that belonged to George Clifford (1685-1760), a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant. The collection is highly significant, partly for its comprehensive representation of plants then newly cultivated in Europe, but particularly through its connection with Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the 'father of modern botany' and deviser of the binomial system of scientific naming of living things that is still used today. Linnaeus worked for Clifford at the latter's estate, near Haarlem, between 1735 and 1737 and in that time Linnaeus described the plants growing there, and wrote the Hortus Cliffortianus, in some ways a precursor of his Species Plantarum (1753). A great many of the plants in Clifford's herbarium are type specimens for Linnaean names.
Contacts: Charlie Jarvis or Mark Spencer