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The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained, a display at Wellcome Collection. Gallery Photo: Eszter Bonyi

All exhibition texts in screen-readable formats are available here and can be accessed via QR code.

Sound clips in this display have British Sign Language interpretation and transcripts.

Our staff regularly offer audio-described tours for this display. Upcoming dates are on the panel outside the gallery, and online.

If you want audio description for your visit today, please speak to a member of staff.

This display includes references to enslavement, colonialism, power, resistance and heritage.

If you would like further information, please speak to a member of staff.

This bitter-tasting fruit has been centrally important in West African culture and trade since at least the 11th century. Consumed as a stimulant due to its high caffeine content, kola has many religious, medicinal and social uses, and is a ritual symbol of goodwill and unity. During the 19th century, kola nut was extracted as an ingredient for European and American products, including Coca-Cola, chocolate and medicine.

In this evolving display discover a series of stories from a range of contributors about the entangled global histories, vibrant traditions, and future innovations connected to this fascinating fruit. Take part in tours and informal activities happening in this space.

‘The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained’ is the first in a series of focused displays inspired by our collections.

Introduction to ‘The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained’ display

This jar of kola nuts (scientific name Cola acuminata) is one of many thousands of medicinal plant specimens in Henry Wellcome’s museum collection. Reductively labelled as only “African” in origin, no information has been discovered so far about how it entered the collection. We know that Wellcome’s museum purchased plant specimens at London auction houses, and this jar is part of a set that may have been acquired that way. “Good sample” on the label suggests it was originally collected for economic botany – studying plants for their potential uses.

West African kola nuts in English glass jar. 1880–1920

Wellcome Collection / Science Museum Group  A656148

We are currently researching how this item entered the collection

“Through this process of uncontaining, I explore identity from the African diasporic perspective. What does it mean to be entangled by genealogy yet disconnected by geography?”

Nathan Bossoh, Curator, Historian and Musician

“The kola nut – as I’ve come to learn – is a living object which cannot be contained.”

Composed by Nathan Bossoh, Joseph Oyelade, Feranmi Ogunseyinde

‘Kola Assemblages’ explores the decay, distortion, aging, deterioration, mutation and evolutions of the kola nut and its supply chain. The visual stills reflect the different landscapes that kola nuts traverse and the ways in which the nuts are used to maintain and preserve African diasporic cultures.

Kola nuts are farmed, weighed, shipped, and are transformed by their journey from West Africa to the UK. The imported kola nuts are often visible in local London streets such as Deptford High Street. When packaged and sold, they lose their firmness and form. Some imported kola nuts are even sold with masking tape carefully wrapped around them to keep their original form intact. 

The mutation of the kola nut‘s image highlights this evolution when travelling far from their original province. The colour also gradually changes when cut and exposed to the air, from pink and cream to amber and sienna. Yet nuts in London have little potency for dyeing fabric compared with the vibrant colours seen in practices of traditional clothing dye. The tensions of kola’s degradations and transformations as it travels reflect the complexities of diasporic cultural transition and adaptability.

During his botanical studies in Jamaica, the Anglo-Irish collector and physician Hans Sloane came across the kola-tree sapling illustrated here. Sloane writes that the kola seeds (nuts) had been brought on ships which also transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. The term “Bichy tree” refers to the name that enslaved Akan Africans gave to the kola tree. In these ways, European botanical collecting and slavery were entangled operations.

Plate 184 in ‘A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, St Christophers, and Jamaica with the natural history of the herbs and trees, four-footed beasts, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, &c. of the last of those islands’

“For African-descended peoples, this caffeine-rich seed was instrumental in the memory and expression of their homeland, as well as significant for medicinal and ceremonial traditions.”

Dr Shantel George, Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow

Products containing kola nut extract, made and sold in Britain 1880–1960

Dr Tibbles Vi-Cocoa, Britain c. 1898–1906

Informational leaflet for Forced March cocaine and kola extract tablets

Burroughs Wellcome & Company, London, England c. 1884

Bottle of Forced March cocaine and kola extract tablets

Burroughs Wellcome & Company, London, England c. 1884–1907

Image courtesy of Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, LDRPS:B 71

First-aid booklet with advertising information. ‘Tabloid. A Brief Medical Guide. For Explorers, Missionaries, Travellers, Colonists, Planters and others’

Burroughs Wellcome & Company, London, England c. 1902–5

British Drug Houses, Britain c. 1950–60

Wellcome Collection / Science Museum Group A635473

Gift from Savory and Moore chemists, 1970

This display case shows products containing kola-nut extract, or advertisements for them, made and sold in Britain from the 1880s to 1950s. Dr Tibbles Vi-Cocoa was a “stimulating” cocoa drink containing kola, malt and hops, here marketed to children, elderly people and “the professional man”. Pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome & Company (owned by Henry Wellcome, whose money founded this institution) also produced a cocaine and kola-extract drug. Named Forced March, it was marketed for military, travel and “exploratory” uses. 

A booklet issued with the company’s medicine kits explicitly states that intended customers were “Explorers, Missionaries, Travellers, Colonists, Planters and others”. This raises questions about the connections between botanical knowledge, drug manufacture and empire. 

Burroughs Wellcome’s kola and cocaine drug was included in first-aid kits issued to British soldiers in the First World War, and was carried on early expeditions to the South Pole. Conversely, in the 1890s this medicine, containing a West African ingredient, was carried by British troops fighting imperial wars against African countries and peoples. Future research is needed to explore the company’s role in these activities.

Tanlaka’s film explores the social uses and meanings of the kola nut in contemporary Nso’ society. Nso’ is the biggest kingdom of the Western Grassfields and an ethnic group in the northwest of Cameroon. Kola nut is used across diverse social and religious settings, bringing people together and expressing belonging, unity, friendship and peace.

“Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of kola. Processing to obtain nuts leaves huge wastes behind. In our decade-long research, we have used the kola pod, seed, leaf and seed shell to produce nanoparticles. The nanoparticles can be developed into medical and non-pharmaceutical products.”

Professor Agbaje Lateef, Professor of Microbiology at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria

Kola nut in nanotechnology and biotechnology research

Kola nut (ọjị-Igbo) is treasured within Igbo culture. This decorative ọkwa ọjị, or kola-nut bowl, is used in the Igbo rituals of hospitality to honour guests. Kola nut is offered, blessed, broken and shared according to specific ceremony. This 19th- or early 20th-century carved wooden bowl has a space under the lid for condiments such as alligator pepper or groundnut butter, also served in present-day offerings. Today, Igbo households outside of Igbo regions may offer other refreshments to welcome guests, still symbolically called ọjị.

Maker unrecorded, Igbo from Arochukwu, Nigeria, before 1930

1942.13.369 On loan from the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Acquired in Nigeria by anthropologist and colonial official Mervyn D W Jeffreys, 1930, for Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. Gifted to Pitt Rivers Museum, 1942

Do you have a connection to kola, or thoughts on food and heritage?

Help us expand on this public display of stories.

We would like to thank the artists, lenders, contributors, and internal and external colleagues who have generously shared their works, expertise and ideas, and who have contributed to the planning, delivery and ongoing development of the display.

Special thanks to Paul Basu, Laurie Britton Newell, Zoë Varley, Catherine Walker and everyone who has contributed after the display’s opening.

BSL Translation: David Ellington, Ahmed Mudawi and Radha Starr

Curated by Nathan Bossoh, University of Southampton, and Ruth Horry, Wellcome Collection, based on a proposal by Nathan Bossoh.

The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained

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Money Makes the World Go Round, Lindsey Mendick, 2024 Commissioned by Wellcome Collection

Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights

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The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained digital guides

Exhibition text

Exhibition text

Other exhibition guides available

Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights

Jason and the Adventure of 254