Uncovering our oldest specimen and the poisonous scandal behind its collector

Our Herbarium at Kew was founded more than 170 years ago, but the oldest specimens in the collection go back much further. They reveal the determined efforts of early botanists to catalogue the natural world, both at home and abroad. 

The sense of history inside our Herbarium is palpable. Three-storey spiral staircases and cast-iron walkways in the grand Victorian wing lead to towering wooden cupboards stuffed with bundles of dried plants from all over the world, each carefully mounted on a sheet of paper.  

Kew’s oldest pressed plants far predate the building in which they are housed, since they include specimens acquired from other, older herbaria. These centuries-old specimens tell fascinating stories about the men and women whose passion for botany turbo-charged scientific understanding during the Age of Enlightenment (roughly 1685 - 1815). 

The man behind our oldest specimen  

They include colourful characters like Samuel Browne, a surgeon working for the East India Company (EIC) at the end of the 17^th century, whose specimens from the pea family collected in 1696 from around Madras – now Chennai – are the oldest in our Herbarium. 

Browne’s collection grows 

In addition to his duties as a surgeon, Browne was commissioned to collect plants that could be useful as medicines or for other purposes. 

He was an enthusiastic collector and shipped well-prepared herbarium sheets to London, along with some seeds that were planted in the Apothecaries’ Garden in London, now known as Chelsea Physic Garden. 

Browne also collaborated with Tamil and Telegu speakers on the ground in India, allowing him to give the local names of plants he found and say how they were used by people living in the area. 

He had an extended correspondence with James Petiver, a keen collector in London, who ran an apothecary shop and belonged to the Temple Coffee House Botany Club, which met near Fleet Street and was arguably the first natural history society in Britain.  

Together, Browne and Petiver published a series of articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society between 1698 and 1703, containing accounts of the plants collected by Browne in India.  

Known as silky indigo, it belongs to the same genus as Indigofera tinctoria, the plant that was used widely in factories in India for the production of blue indigo dye. 

By the 18^th century, the surge in interest in the natural world had reached right across educated society – as highlighted by another of Kew’s venerable plant collectors, the Reverend John Lightfoot.  

Lightfoot was a keen botanist and conchologist – a collector of mollusc shells – who used his spare time for field study and research. He was a friend of Gilbert White, the famous parson-naturalist who went on to influence Charles Darwin, and both men exemplify the major contribution of the English clergy to natural history at the time. 

Lightfoot’s specimens fit for a Queen 

Lightfoot was helped in his endeavours by the Dowager Duchess of Portland, who appointed him as chaplain in 1767, when he was 31. 

She was a leading patron of the natural sciences, with an extensive natural history collection of her own, and she hosted leading scientific figures at her grand house in Buckinghamshire, including Sir Joseph Banks, who became Kew's first unofficial director on his return from the travelling the South Seas with Captain Cook. 

A note on Kew in the age of empire

During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Kew was actively engaged in global plant exchange, resulting in a complex entanglement with the history of empire. 

Led by the intense competition to find, identify and name species new to the west, Kew’s director William Hooker (1785–1865) sent plant collectors around the world to gather specimens and seeds to add to Kew’s collections, often benefiting from local knowledge. As more material was gathered, Kew’s collection diversified, resulting in the Collections we now have within our herbarium. 

Today, Kew is on a journey of reflection, re-evaluating our history, scientific practices, policies and connections to empire and colonial history.   

Old specimens, future solutions 

Over the last 300 years, Kew’s collection has grown hugely, with notable contributions from the likes of Darwin and David Livingstone. But despite all this history, the Herbarium is not a museum – it is a working collection and a centre of live scientific research. 

The need for detailed insights into the world of botany has never been greater as humanity confronts the dangers of a rapidly warming planet and biodiversity loss, with two in five plant species estimated to be under threat.