Historical (pre-Linnean) botanical collections

The Historical Collections Room houses some of our most historic items, including botanical specimens collected over 400 years ago.

The algae, fungi and plant collections span several centuries, covering a period of unprecedented exploration and investigation into natural history.

The Historical Collections Room houses botanical collections made before the mid-18th century.

Collections from the late 18th century onwards, including those of Joseph Banks, are in our general collections and enquiries regarding those should be directed to the curator responsible for the taxonomic group concerned.

The Historical Collections room houses the herbarium of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), comprising 265 volumes and an estimated 120,000 plant specimens collected from over 70 countries and dependencies worldwide.

An account of the collection is provided by Dandy (1958), available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

To date, digitisation of the herbarium has been limited, but efforts are underway to increase digital access to the collection through the Sloane Lab project.

The collections made by Sloane during his voyage to Jamaica have been digitised. Other parts of the Sloane herbarium that have been digitised are those volumes collected by Mark Catesby (1683–1749) and Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716).

Sloane’s catalogue of his Vegetables and Vegetable substances, and the surviving objects, have been transcribed.

Other major collections in the Historical Collections Room include the herbaria of Paul Hermann (1646-1695), John Clayton (1694/5-1773), George Clifford (1685-1760) and Samuel Dale (1659-1739), all of which have been digitised (although the Dale Herbarium has yet to be digitised), together with that of John Ray (1627-1705).

In total, over 1300 bound volumes and exsiccatae are held in our Herbarium.