Images Dated

Adansonia digitata, Willd. (Baobab or Upside-down tree)

Watercolour on paper, no date (late 18th early 19th century). Hand painted copy of an illustration commissioned by William Roxburgh (1751-1815). In his 'Flora indica' Roxburgh describes this plant as a tree which is very scarce in India, and 'probably not a native of Asia'. Roxburgh tells that in the Botanic Garden of Calcutta, where this tree blossoms in May and June, and ripens its seed in the cool season, there is a 25 years old plant of 'Adansonia digitata', with an irregular, short and sub-conical trunk, which is 18 feet in circumference. In a letter sent to Roxburgh the 2nd of July 1802, from Mantolle, in Sri Lanka, General Hay Macdowell notes: 'In my walk last night on the ruins of this once rich and extensive city, called by the natives Mande or Maddoo-ooltum, I chanced to observe a tree whose prodigious magnitude induced me to measure it...fifty feet in circumference, above six feet from the ground, the natives call it Peerig, and from what I have been able to collect, it is not indigenous here.'

© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Psoralea aphylla, Jacq. ('Leafless Psoralea)

Original illustration from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, published as plate 1727, 1st May 1815. Watercolour and pencil on paper. Native of the Cape of Good Hope. Cultivated in the Royal garden at Hampton Court since at least 1690. The figure here was taken from a specimen in the conservatory of Lee and Kennedy

© RBG KEW

224. Study of Cereals cultivated in Kumaon, India

An old brass chatty, with a Cob of Maize or Indian Corn (Zea Mays, L.) lying in front. The purple brown and the green spikes hanging on the left are varieties of Millet (Setaria sp.), behind them the Ragi (Eleusine coracana, Gaertn.), and on the righ

© RBG KEW

Art, Artist, Brsaa Chatty, Cereals, Cob, Flower, India, Indian Corn, Kumaon, Leaves, Maize, Marianne North, Painting, Purple Broen