Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

How nature is defending itself in court

The idea that nature has legal rights is increasingly being taken seriously, but who gets to speak for it? Isabella Kaminski asks how the non-human can be represented within a human-made system.

  • Article

How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science

The forest of the Amazon Basin is inextricably bound up with the lives of the Indigenous peoples living there. Find out how they feel about the forest, use what it provides, and try to protect it from aggressive commercial exploitation.

  • Article

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

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

  • Article

Seeds for the future

Indigenous groups have a key role as guardians of biodiversity, and their knowledge could help us all preserve our world. To survive, we all need to collaborate, reject prejudice, and share what we know.

All stories (10)

Images

  • Ricinus Communis, Castor oil plant
  • Ricinus Communis, Castor Oil plant
  • Ricinus Communis (Castor Oil Plant)
  • Those who named the plants: Adam, Solomon, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides. Oil paintings.
  • Ancon, Panama Canal Zone: a mosquito oil plant interior showing rows of barrels. Photograph, 1910.
  • Fatsia japonica (Thunb.) Decne. & Planch. Araliaceae False castor oil plant. Distribution: Japan, South Korea. Not even in the same family as the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis. An ornamental plant, Fatsia from the Japanese word for 'eight' hachi referring to the eight-lobed leaf. The sap can cause dermatitis. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Castor oil plant (Ricinus communis): flowering and fruiting stem, leaf and fruit sections. Coloured lithograph after M. A. Burnett, c. 1847.
  • Planters Foods Limited : manufacturers of margarine, compound, edible fats, refined oils, and other high-class food preparations : registered office & works, Brombro Port, Cheshire.
  • Camellia sasanqua Thunb. Theaceae. Christmas camellia. Camellia commemorates Georg Josef Kamel (1661-1706), Jesuit pharmacist from Moravia (Czech Republic) who worked in the Philippines and sent plants to John Ray in England (Oakeley, 2012) Evergreen shrub. Distribution: Japan and China. Leaves are used in Japan to make tea (normally made from C. sinensis) and the seeds to make the edible tea seed oil. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Prostanthera ovalifolia R.Br. Lamiaceae Alpine anise bush, Oval leaf Mintbush, Purple mintbush. Woody shrub. Distribution: Australia. Minty flavoured leaves used in jams and jellies. Various essential oils are produced from commercially grown P. ovalifolia (cis-dihydroagarofuran, kessane, 1,8-cineole which is also known as eucalyptol, p-cymene,) and P. cuneata also contains eucalyptol. Concentrations of essential oils in the plants vary according to the clonal variety, growing conditions and time of year. Aboriginal peoples used Prostanthera leaves in medicinal ointments and washes, but one species, P. striatiflora, was used to poison waterholes to kill visiting emu (Hegarty, 2001). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
All images (115)

Catalogue

All works (269)