Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Book extract

What the wind can bring

In this extract from ‘This Book is a Plant’, Amanda Thomson shares a newfound fascination with flowers, and reveals why our relationship with plants can also be complicated.

  • Article

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.

  • Article

Hunting lost plants in botanical collections

A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.

  • Article

The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.

All stories (4)

Images

  • Textiles: men working at large fabric printing machines. Engraving.
  • Textiles: women and children working at large cotton manufacturing machines. Engraving.
  • A tea plant (Camellia sinensis), its flowers and seeds, bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • The blossom and fruit of a coffee tree (Coffea arabica) Photograph.
  • A date palm tree (Phoenix dactylifera) and segments of the fruit bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • A Brazilian rubber tree (Hevea Brasiliensis), its flower and fruit segments bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • A sugar cane plant (Saccharum officinarum), its flower and sections of stem, bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • A sugar cane plant (Saccharum officinarum), its flower and sections of stem, bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • A coffee plant (Coffea arabica), its flower and fruit segments bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
  • A tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum), its flowers and seeds, bordered by six scenes illustrating its use by man. Coloured lithograph, c. 1840.
All images (11)

Catalogue

All works (117)