Plant Hunter Collection

Henry Ridley
When Henry Ridley took over directorship of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, (1888-1911)there were many overgrown jungle areas and he was tasked with making a preliminary forest survey

Portrait of E H Wilson
Ernest Henry " Chinese" Wilson, better known as E. H. Wilson, was a notable English plant collector who introduced a large range of about 2000 of Asian plant species to the West; some sixty

Richard Spruce (1817-1893) botanist and plant collector who was commissioned by William Hooker to transfer the cinchona (quinine) industry from South America to India

Chamaedorea linearis, 1823-53
Illustration of Chamaedorea linearis commonly known as, whale tail palm from Historia Naturalis Palmarum by Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, 1823-53

Ernest Henry Wilson (back row, second from right) with colleagues while working as a gardener at Kew, circa 1897. Two years later, in 1899, he would begin work as a plant collector

Joseph Rock (1884-1962), a Viennese-born naturalist, author and linguist. From 1922 to 1949 he travelled through south-west China studying the flora, peoples, culture and languages of the region

Joseph Rock and Elizabeth McClintock
Joseph Rock 1884-1962 - China Explorer aged 78 in Honolulu - with Elizabeth McClintock. Joseph Francis Charles Rock (1884, ?? 1962) was an Austrian-American explorer, geographer, linguist and botanist

Henry Ridley and houseboat, Kuala Tembeling, Malaysia, 1911
Henry Ridley standing by a houseboat at Kuala Tembeling in Malaysia, 1911. He travelled extensively in the Malay peninsula while director of the Singapore Botanic gardens

John Davenport Snowden and wife, Uganda 1916
John Davenport Snowden, botanical explorer and plant collector, with his wife, standing outside their tent at a camp near Kampala, Uganda, in 1916

Men laden with Brick tea for Tibet
Tachienlu (now Kanding), West Sichuan, China : Men laden with Brick tea for Tibet. One mans load weighs 317 lbs, the others 298 lbs

Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930) Ernest Henry " Chinese" Wilson, better known as E. H. Wilson, was a notable English plant collector who introduced a large range of about 2000 of Asian plant

Arthur Hill, Director of Kew 1922-41. A keen horseman, Arthur Hill used to take a ride every morning but unfortunately met his death in 1941 when he fell from a horse on the Mid Surrey Golf Course

Portrait of Charles Darwin, 1868, by Julia Margaret Cameron. The photograph is signed by Darwin with the inscription " I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been

Kew Plant Collector
RBG Kew botanist collecting seeds on an expedition to Tasmania, Australia, 2005

Seed Collection in the Namibian Desert
Sesriem to Sossusvlei, RBG Kew botanists seed collecting expedition to Namibia, 2007

RBG Kew expedition to Malawi
RBG Kew botanist begins the day on expedition to Mozambique, 2007

RBG Kew botanists Expedition to Jordan
Kew botanists on expedition in the Dana Nature Reserve, Jordan 2001. The tree (left) is a pistachio, Pistacia vera

William Turrill botanising aquatic plants with his vasculum slung over his shoulder. WIlliam Turrill was Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at Kew from 1946-57

Kewites and wives Kampala, Uganda, 1923
This group photograph of " Kewites and wives" was taken in Kampala, Uganda, in 1923. Second from the right: John Davenport Snowden, with his wife, centre

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