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.
Catalogue
- Books
Fifty plants that changed the course of history / written by Bill Laws.
Laws, BillDate: c2010- Pictures
- Online
The blossom and fruit of a coffee tree (Coffea arabica) Photograph.
Reference: 28232i- Books
- Online
A collection for the improvement of husbandry and trade. Consisting of many valuable materials relating to corn, cattle, coals, hops, wool, &c. With a compleat catalogue of the several sorts of earths, and their proper product; the best sorts of manure for each; with the art of draining and flooding of lands; as also full and exact histories of trades, as malting, brewing, &c. the description and structure of instruments for husbandry, and carriages, with the manner of their imrovement; an account of the rivers of England, &c. and how far they may be made navigable; of weights and measures, of woods, cordage, and metals; of building and stowage the vegetation of plants, &c. with many other useful particulars, communicated by several eminent members of the Royal Society, to the collector, John Houghton, F.R.S. Now revised, corrected, and published, with a preface and useful indexes, by Richard Bradley, F.R.S. and professor of botany in the University of Cambridge. In three volumes.
Houghton, John, 1640-1705.Date: M,DCC,XXVII. [i.e. 1727 - 1728]- Pictures
- Online
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.
Date: [c. 1840]Reference: 28057i- Books
The doctor's garden : medicine, science, and horticulture in Britain / Clare Hickman.
Hickman, Clare (Welcome Research Fellow in Medical History & Humanities)Date: [2021]