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The mystery of the missing herbarium

In 1856 the RHS sold one of the most important collections ever of dried plants in an auction. Can you help the Keeper of the RHS Herbarium find them?

Early on a very cold but dry afternoon in January 1856, botanists and their agents gathered in London to participate in an auction of arguably the most important collection of dried plants ever sold. Around 5,000 specimens from the Arctic to the Cape, gathered over 40 years for the RHS – then the Horticultural Society of London – were on offer. Within hours, the only dried record of many of the plants we grow in our gardens today was gone.

When peace came in 1815 from the Napoleonic wars, the RHS began to obtain valuable foreign plants from outside of continental Europe – plants such as Wisteria sinensis, camellias, azaleas, roses and chrysanthemums. It is a feat that any living plant should have survived the voyage as the ‘Wardian Case’ had yet to be invented, and plants were frequently heaved overboard when the return voyages hit ferocious weather conditions. As a solution gardeners were sent to the tropics to collect and care for plants on the long journeys.

John Potts was the first of these and was sent to China and India in the spring of 1821. His first shipment of plants, seeds and dried specimens arrived in the UK from Calcutta in February 1822. Potts’s success was followed by a series of collectors until 1864. They included George Don, John Forbes, John Damper Parks, David Douglas, James MacRae, Karl Theodore Hartweg, Robert Fortune, Matteo Botteri and John Weir.  All of the collectors made herbarium specimens of plants taken for cultivation so they could be named and a herbarium to house the specimens was set up at the RHS’s Chiswick garden.

Not long after the specimens then went up for auction. According to The Gardeners’ Chronicle, the sale was “to make the plants more accessible to researchers”. The fact the Society was in financial turmoil and needed the money was omitted. Building and heating multiple glasshouses was cripplingly expensive; crowds were being pulled away from the Society’s Chiswick Garden to Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens. The herbarium was the victim. Within hours, the only dried record of many of the plants we grow in our gardens today was gone.

The herbarium was the victim. Within hours, the only dried record of many of the plants we grow in our gardens today was gone.

 
Among the lots sold at this auction were dried specimens from some of the world’s most famous plant hunters, including Robert Fortune’s tea plants, smuggled without permission from China after he left the Society’s employ; David Douglas’ conifers, which later changed the English landscape; and even monkey puzzle trees from James MacRae, who survived a mutiny and cannibalism to bring back the seeds. Penstemons came from Karl Theodore Hartweg, Lupins from David Douglas and Robert Fortune brought back Jasminum nudiflorum.
 
© Yvette Harvey – Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
George Bentham’s diary entry for 21st January 1856 when he accompanied Sir William and Joseph Hooker to Chiswick to view the auction Lots
Their final resting place was unknown until Yvette Harvey, Keeper of the Herbarium discovered one of the lost collections purely by chance during a visit to the Natural History Museum’s herbarium in London, noticing, among other things, the Douglas conifers: “These used to belong to you,” the curator joked as he pointed to a beautifully pressed specimen. A short time later they met again, this time to look at the sales catalogue, discovered in the Natural History Museum’s library.  The catalogue contained annotations of the buyers, the key to tracking down the entire herbarium.
 
“That was eight years ago. I’ve been dry plant hunting ever since because getting these older specimens back is now vital for completing the story of our herbarium at RHS Garden Wisley. The RHS Herbarium houses more than 93,000 dried and pressed ornamental plants gathered over the past 300 years and includes a potato collected by Charles Darwin.
 
Keeper of the Herbarium Yvette Harvey in the Herbarium at RHS Hilltop
Many of the outstanding specimens remain for Yvette and her team, frustratingly at large: “I have few leads bar the fascinating plant-hunting journals housed in The RHS Lindley Library, which holds many of the journals made by the collectors, along with accessions registers and Lindley’s sales catalogues. “Poring over them in the long winter months produced more questions than answers,” Yvette said.
 
© RHS Lindley Collections
The name of Papillion, the mysterious man who bought the miscellaneous collection, written next to the auction
“Who, for example, is the elusive ‘Papillon’, the purchaser of two mixed lots, which have never been traced; and where did George Don’s Brazilian collection, including Catasetum macrocarpum, a rare orchid with exploding pollen, end up?”
 
As more herbarium collections around the world become digitised, many of these lost specimens are popping up. Robert Fortune’s collection, which included Jasminum nudiflorum – a beautiful winter jasmine that arrived at RHS headquarters in 1844 – ended up in Paris as did James MacRae’s Araucaria araucana – the monkey puzzle tree. Penstemon in Karl Theodor Hartweg’s Central American specimens collection found a new home in Lund, Sweden at the herbarium of Lund University. David Douglas’s American plants didn’t go far and are housed in London at the Natural History Museum alongside George Don’s collection of West African plants.

Some of the collections in herbaria around the world

The RHS will eventually be able to reassemble the old herbarium, albeit electronically. “It would be unethical to demand the originals back now,” says Yvette. But in order to complete the collection she wants to fill the gaps and find the collections that have yet to be traced.

More on recreating the lost herbarium here

 
The entire collection is not only of huge scientific significance to taxonomists but also to horticulturists.  It contains DNA from the original plants that were introduced to our gardens and the parents of a great many of the plants that are still growing in our gardens today. A dried plant can be studied at any time of the year and for years to come when flowering is long over and even after the

cultivar has become extinct its genetic code can still be unveiled. 
 
“These long-lost gems and others could literally be anywhere: stored carefully in a loft or forgotten about in a trunk. If you can help unravel these mysteries, I would love to hear from you. I’m keen to lay these last ghosts to rest,” said Yvette.

If you think you can help, please email [email protected]

Help us find the lost herbarium?

 

  • The herbarium of Robert Fortune (1812-1880) was sold in two separate Lots. Most commonly known as the man who introduced tea to India whilst working for the East India Company. Earlier in his career Robert Fortune collected extensively in China for the Horticultural Society of London. Lot 32 has been traced and is in Paris. The second Lot, Lot 36- a small parcel of specimens of the Tea Plant collected by Fortune, is still missing. This was sold to a seller called “Papillon” for 11/-. Although no trace can be found of ‘Papillon’ it seems likely that this might be a nom de plume for Auctioneer John Crace Stevens - his close relative was a keen butterfly collector, buying on behalf of John Lindley, Botanist and Secretary of the RHS. A bundle filled with Robert Fortune’s tea plants has since been discovered by Lauren Gardiner, Curator of the Cambridge University Herbarium, within Lindley’s herbarium. But perhaps this wasn’t the parcel sold as Lot 36?
 
  • Where did George Don’s collection of plants from Jamaica and Grand Cayman (Lots 16 & 17), purchased by an unknown buyer, known only as ‘Roberts’ end up?  According to Don’s Journal, in Jamaica he saw hedges of bromeliads, Bombax, tamarind trees, Pentadesma butyracea, cacti, Phyllanthus angustifolius, Mimosa, Ruellia tuberosa and more. Grand Cayman was a much shorter trip and his journal mentions cream coloured flowered Plumeria, three different Epidendrum, Cercis and a Chrysobalanus.
 
  • Where did the sets of duplicates of Hartweg’s collections purchased by unknown buyers Harris and Saunders end up? Who were Harris and Saunders?  George Bentham’s archive contains two lists of the buyers of Hartweg’s first trip and also his next.  On the first trip, Harris was the 10th buyer whilst Saunders was the 19th, both procured 250 specimens for £5 10s.  Only Saunders purchased specimens from the second trip, he was the 18th buyer, procuring 97 specimens for £2 6d.
 
  •  Who is ‘Syme’ or ‘Simes’ and where did he store Lot 3, specimens from Greenland and Hudson’s Bay that were possibly collected by Douglas whilst he was under the protection of the Hudson Bay Company and based at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River and had many death defying adventures, particularly during his final overland journey from Vancouver to Hudson Bay
 
  • Where are the Javan specimens made by John Damper Parks? Lot 38.  This is very intriguing because his itinerary didn’t appear to include much time in Java as opposed to his time in China.  To add to the complication, Parks is often spelt Parkes and frequently confused with other collectors with the same surname.
  

About the RHS Herbarium

The current herbarium, set up in 1916, is based at RHS Wisley coordinates plant hunting, describing, pressing, drying, labelling, mounting, imaging to storage, display and researching plants.  The digitised specimen collection is available freely to view via the RHS Digital Collections portal that is shared with the Lindley Library. The herbarium receives funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
 
The herbarium is within Science and Collection’s Cultivated Plant Diversity team that includes experts in cultivated plant names (major contributors to the annual RHS Plant Finder) and Registrars to some of the most well-loved garden plants such as daffodils, dahlias, lilies and rhododendrons.

About the author

Yvette Harvey is  Keeper of the 1851 Royal Commission Herbarium based at RHS Garden Wisley, one of over 3000 herbaria distributed throughout the World. She is a professionally trained killer (of plants) and curates a specialist collection of dried and pressed ornamental plants.

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