Flora of West Tropical Africa
9,129
This collection contains entries from the book Flora of West Tropical Africa, which gives physical descriptions and bibliographic information for the plant entries in the text.
Flora of West Tropical Africa, original illustrations
300
This collection contains drawings of plants from the published work Flora of West Tropical Africa by J. Hutchinson, J.M. Dalziel & R.W.J. Reay.
Francis Masson, original illustrations
13
These watercolors were painted by Francis Masson between 1772 and 1796 with a primary focus is on South African plants, though specimens from the Canary Islands and Azores are also featured. Francis Masson (1741-1805) was a Scottish botanist and gardener who enjoyed the title of being the first plant collector to be sent abroad by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Franz Bauer, original illustrations
6
These illustrations of plants of the genus Strelitzia from South Africa were painted by Franz Bauer in 1818. His paintings and drawings are extremely detailed illustrations of flower dissections, sometimes at the microscopic level, and his attention to detail in all aspects of his art is highly regarded. Franz Bauer (1758-1840) was an Austrian botanical artist. He was the first botanical illustrator for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Franz Josepf Ruppert Original Drawings of German Orchids
72
Franz Joseph Ruppert (1864-1935) was a German pharmacist, plant collector, and botanical illustrator who specialized in German orchids. During his lifetime Ruppert made drawings of all Orchids of Germany, and wrote a number of articles about European Orchids that included some descriptions of new species and varieties. A list of his publications appears in BibliOrchidea. Ruppert’s collected plants are housed in the Herbarium at Botanische Staatssammlung München, his watercolor illustrations at Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde. 63 of Ruppert’s illustrations labelled “Nachträge” (supplement) were recently discovered in a used book shop, bound together with some old photographs. Concerned about their preservation, …
Fruits, seeds and barks from the Royal Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru, by Hipólito Ruiz & José Pavón (1777-1816)
329
Fruits, seeds and barks from the Royal Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Henry Muhlenberg Manuscripts
2
The Muhlenberg manuscripts collection consists of Observationes Botanicae de Plantis Americae Septentrionalis volumes 1 and 2. These handwritten manuscripts describe North American plants; highlights include documentation for herbarium specimens, Muhlenberg's notes about specimens collected at Philadelphia gardens and on plants cultivated from Meriwether Lewis’s seed collections. Henry Muhlenberg was born in Pennsylvania in 1753 and was an ordained Lutheran minister and botanist. His book of North American grasses and reeds was published posthumously in 1817.
Herbarium Americanum
2
The Herbarium Americanum collection contains the manuscripts of Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815). The manuscripts were created in 1795, and contain specimens of North American plants bound into books. The specimens are organized according to the Linnean System. Specimen collectors include Andre Michaux, William Bartram, and John Adlum.
Herbarium Illustration and Slide Collections, Kew
1,432
This collection of holographs of plants in the field was taken by staff at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from 1951-2004. The majority of photographs are from Africa, with particular emphasis on Madagascar, Malawi, Cameroon, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Herbarium Specimens
2,750,645
The type specimen collection represents the largest collection of digitized plant specimens in the world. The collection began in 2004 as an initiative to digitize African type specimens, extended to Latin American type specimens in 2006, and since then has continued to expand its geographic extent across Europe, North America, Oceania and Asia with the aim of capturing all known plant types. The collection now includes over 2 million plant specimens from 300 herbaria worldwide, and continues to grow.
Illustrations of Southern Africa flora
1,132
These watercolors of Southern African flora were painted between 1929 and 2006 by a diverse group of artists. The majority of the specimens come from Southern Africa—Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa—but there are a few illustrations of plants cultivated in North America.
Library Collections: Baines, Thomas
25
This collection contains watercolors from Thomas Baines' expeditions in Australia and South West Africa between 1857 and 1867. Thomas (John) Baines (1820-1875) was a draughtsman and artist on the 1855 North Australia Expedition led by A.C. Gregory, and spent two years in Australia before returning to England with more than 200 watercolors from the expedition. In 1858 he returned to South West Africa, where he remained until his death.
Linnaean Annotated Library
197
This collection contains Linnaeus’s original published books in Latin from 1736 to 1747, as well as unpublished materials from 1736 to 1776. There are handwritten annotations by Linnaeus in all copies; he copiously annotated several copies of his works.
Natural History Museum of London Archives: Alfred Russel Wallace Manuscripts
765
Alfred Russel Wallace was a naturalist and explorer of the 19th century perhaps best known for his independent discovery of the theory of evolution by natural selection; his paper was jointly published with Charles Darwin's paper on the subject in 1858. Wallace's manuscripts and correspondence, dating from 1840-1913, preserves a record of his career and provides insight into his many conversations, relationships, and discoveries across his fields of scientific study. Many letters contain lengthy descriptions and even transcriptions in some cases, allowing for a rich keyword search across hundreds of objects.
New Caledonia and Vanuatu plants
496
The New Caledonia and Vanuatu plants collection is a series of photos taken by plant collector J.N. Labat. Images include scientific identifications and detailed locality information to provide photographic context to the plants of New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Many genera are represented, including Acacia, Arthroclianthus, Nephrodesmus, Begonia, Trichotosia, Ficus, Fagraea, and Dendrolobium.
Oak Spring Garden Library: Collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon
101
This collection contains selected works from Rachel Lambert Mellon’s celebrated collection of rare books, manuscripts, works of art and artifacts relating to gardening, landscape design, horticulture, botany, natural history, and travels. An accomplished gardener herself, Rachel Lambert Mellon established the Oak Spring Garden Library in Virginia in 1980 to house her collection.
Olive Coates Palgrave, original illustrations from "Trees of Central Africa"
111
This collection contains Olive Coates Palgrave's original illustrations from the 1956 guide Trees of Central Africa. Palgrave's illustrations provide a study of the trees of Central Africa (which was then Rhodesia and Nyasaland) such as Acacia, Adansonia, Cassia, Strychnos, and Widdringtonia.
Photographic images of Southern Africa flora
2,543
This collection consists of photographs of live plants taken by staff of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) Compton and KwaZulu-Natal herbaria. Most photographs feature plants from South Africa, with some from Malawi, Lesotho, and Namibia as well.
Photographs of Randu Flora
1,634
The Flora Randu collection contains photographs by Father Jos Stevens of plants growing in Ferme Randu and the surrounding area in southwest Katanga, DRC. There are photographs of more than 300 plant species representing 81 families and 229 genera. Jos Stevens worked as a missionary in the inland of Katanga from 1961 to 1998 and again from 2003 to 2012. Most of these photographs were taken between 2006 and 2009.
Plant Author Names
2,637
The Plant Author Names Collection is a compilation of records of Plant Author Names with life dates, specification, abbreviation, and work areas.
Plant Collectors
68,301
The Plant Collectors Collection is a compilation of records of more than 68,000 Plant Collectors with life dates, specification, initials, and group(s) collected.
Plant Determination Lists
7
Written by Sir John Kirk and Dr. David Livingstone, these hand-written letters, field notes, and lists detail the findings of their late-nineteenth century expeditions to the Zambezi region of Africa. Sir John Kirk and Dr. David Livingstone were Scottish explorers of the nineteenth century, an era of Colonial exploration and an explosion of interest in the natural world.
Plants of Mascareignes
5,001
The Plants of Mascareignes collection consists of over 5,000 photographs of plants from the Mascareignes Islands, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar comprising Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Agaléga, Cargados Carajos shoals, plus the former islands of the Saya de Malha, Nazareth and Soudan banks.
Rariorum Africanum Plantarum, Burmann
369
This collection of Johannes Burmann's work contains one of the earliest records of Cape flora. His copper plate engravings were a major influence for Linnaeus, who often cited Burmann’s work in his studies. Johannes Burman (1707-1780) was a Dutch botanist and physician. He wrote one of the first works dedicated entirely to Cape flora, and was a friend of Carl Linnaeus and a powerful proponent of the Swedish botanist's ideas.
Rauh Field Books
78
This collection of Dr. Werner Rauh’s field books spans a large portion of his career, from 1954–1994. It covers expeditions to Peru, Madagascar, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Reunion, Swaziland and Kenya, the Arabian Peninsula, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Guatemala, Bolivia and Chile, Spain and the Canary Islands, Papua-New Guinea, Brazil, Central America, and Cuba. Werner Rauh was born in Germany in 1913. By his retirement in 1983 he had expanded the University of Heidelberg’s garden from three greenhouses to 15. In his lifetime, he published more than two dozen books and 300 items on the tropical high regions, Africa, Peru, …