Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

Foraging for a taste of the past

Follow tips from a professional forager to recreate delicious 18th-century recipes from plants growing wild in parks and on urban wasteland.

  • Article

Maladaptive daydreaming, gender myths and me

Can you daydream too much? Excessive daydreamer Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on studies into “maladaptive daydreaming” and asks why so few fellow dreamers seem to be men.

  • Article

How we bury our children

Following her baby daughter’s funeral, Wendy Pratt found that visiting the grave gave her a way to carry out physical acts of caring for her child. Here she considers how parents’ nurturing instincts live on after a child’s death.

  • Article

Appointments with plants

In our ‘always on’ culture, poet Elizabeth-Jane Burnett find a route away from screens – by following the ways of the trees and plants outside.

All stories (7)

Images

  • Rose petal
  • An orchid (Cattleya guttata): flowers, leafy stem and petal. Coloured etching by G. Barclay, c. 1842, after Miss Drake.
  • An eight-petalled lotus with Vishnu in the center, and eight other deities in each petal representing the eight cardinal directions (?). Gouache painting by an Indian artist.
  • A bee with legs perches on the edge of a petal poised to pollinate the centre of a purple flower; an AIDS awareness initiative advertisement about by Ribe and Vjle Counties Health, Denmark. Colour lithograph by Jens Bach Andersen, 1992.
  • A bean plant, possibly a Phaseolus species: flowering and leafy stems with separate leaf and petals. Watercolour.
  • A mother cries in grief while comforting her dying daughter, who holds a rosebud with falling petals. Coloured lithograph by J. Bouvier.
  • A young woman seeks confirmation of her companion's love from the petals of a flower. Engraving by Carl Meyer after Adolf Theer.
  • A plant (Vigna capensis) related to cowpea: flowering and fruiting stem with separate fruit and petals. Coloured engraving after F. von Scheidl, 1772.
  • Dianthus caryophyllus L. Caryophyllaceae Carnation, clove-gilliflowers - Mediterranean Culpeper (1650) writes that ‘Clove-gilliflowers, resist the pestilence, strengthen the heart, liver and stomach, and provokes lust.’ They smell strongly of cloves, and an oil made from the petals is used in perfumery, soaps etc. The petals are sometimes used as a garnish for salads. In herbal medicine they are used to make a tonic. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • A daisy used for 'He loves me, he loves me not' game with several petals missing and a yellow condom instead of the flower's centre; representing protection against AIDS. Colour lithograph after M. Kolvenbach and G. Meyer, 199-.
All images (435)

Catalogue

All works (466)