Britain’s principal botanical garden occupies more than 300 acres (121 ha) beside the River Thames at Kew in southwest London. It
The tulip originated in Turkey. It was introduced into Europe in the 16th century and became highly popular in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands). Growers discovered they could pro-duce a wide range of varieties with many different colors, some a single but vivid red or yellow, some white, and some with more than one color. These more exotic multicolored varieties arose because of a mosaic virus—a virus that caused the infected plant to produce petals or leaves with specks or patches of color.
Tulips grow from bulbs, and as the fashion grew for displaying the flowers, demand for the bulbs increased. The virus that produces the most desired multicolored flowers propagates through the bulbs, and it took several years to produce bulbs that would reliably deliver the required blooms. As demand increased, the price rose and, starting in 1634, the Netherlands was consumed by a bulb-buying frenzy that was later called the tulipomania. Within the space of two or three months, the price of a single bulb of the variety Admirael de Man rose from 15 guilders to 175 guilders and a bulb of the variety Generalis-simo went from 90 guilders to 900 guilders. The most valuable variety, Semper Augustus, sold for 5,500 guilders per bulb in 1633 and in January 1637 it was allegedly worth 10,000 guilders. In 1635, some people were spending as much as 100,000
guilders to buy 40 bulbs. People told their friends about the prices they had paid for bulbs or that they had heard of others paying and as the sto-ries circulated no doubt they improved and the numbers grew larger. Nevertheless, there was certainly a rapid inflation in tulip prices. To place these in context, in 1642 Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for his most celebrated painting, The Night Watch, the annual earnings of a carpen-ter were about 250 guilders, and in 1636 French brandy sold for 60 guilders a gallon (13 guilders per liter).
The end of the frenzy began on February 3, 1637, in Haarlem. Florists seeking to auction tulip bulbs found there were no bidders. Prices collapsed until by May bulbs were selling for between 1 percent and 5 percent of their peak prices.
No one knows what caused the sudden rise and fall in the price of tulips. Many econo-mists maintain that it was not a true bubble, because tulips were genuinely in demand, and the demand exceeded the supply. The national economy was recovering rapidly from a depres-sion that followed war with Spain, and Haarlem suffered a severe epidemic of bubonic plague in the 1630s. These may have been contributing factors, but the true cause of the tulipomania remains a mystery.
tulipomania
became a botanical garden in 1752, so what is now the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is of much more recent origin than most of Europe’s botanical gardens and it is not the oldest botanical garden in Britain;
Oxford Botanic Garden was founded in 1621.
Kew Gardens consists of many specialized gardens and two out-stations that together probably contain the world’s largest and most diverse collection of living plants. It is also a partner in the Millen-nium Seed Bank Project that aims to store seeds from 10 percent of all the wild plant species in the world, and its herbarium holds about 7 million specimens, including about 350,000 holotypes. In 2003 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Kew Gardens a World Heritage Site. The fol-lowing illustration shows that much of the area is laid out informally.
The large glasshouse near the top of the picture is the Temperate House, the largest surviving Victorian glass structure.
In 1762 a pagoda in the Chinese style was constructed in Kew Gardens. This photograph of the gardens was taken from the top of it in July 2003. The gardens cover about 300 acres (121 ha) and contain the world’s largest collection of living and preserved plants. It is a World Heritage Site. (Getty Images)
Although Kew Gardens is today a center for botany and plant conservation, in the second half of the 19th century the emphasis was a little different. The gardens had been in decline during the early 19th century and by 1831 they were continuing to receive plants but were no longer sending out plant hunters to collect them. That situa-tion began to change in the 1840s. Kew Gardens began to expand its scientific research, sending seeds, plants, and advice to the colonies, and when a rail line linked Kew to central London the gardens began to attract visitors. New scientific knowledge was accumulating rap-idly, and there was great interest in putting it to practical use. Britain then controlled a very large empire, and the application of botanical knowledge amounted to identifying the plants that could be grown most profitably in a particular colony and ensuring that they were planted there. Kew was used to store, grow, study, and develop plants with commercial potential that could then provide the basis for enterprises in the colonies.
That is not how the gardens began, however. They were originally a pleasure garden. In the 17th century, Kew Park belonged to Sir Henry Capel, a public servant who held important offices, includ-ing Lord Justice of Ireland (1693) and Lord Deputy of Ireland (1695).
In 1692 he was promoted to become lord capel of Tewkesbury. Kew Park was his house and around it Capel created a garden of exotic plants. Frederick, prince of Wales (1707–51), later leased the house, renamed it Kew Palace, and spent much of his time there. The palace was demolished in 1802, but an adjacent building bought by George III (1738–1820) is now called Kew Palace.
After Frederick’s death his widow, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719–72), the dowager princess of Wales, inherited the palace and its garden—the city of Augusta and Augusta County, Georgia, are named in her honor. Augusta greatly expanded Capel’s 10-acre (4-ha) garden. Her written instructions to the head gardener were to:
“compleat all that part of the Garden at Kew that is not yet finished in the manner proposed by the Plan and to keep all that is now finished.”
John Stuart, the earl of Bute (1713–92), a former prime minister and friend of Frederick, advised Augusta to have a garden containing all the plants on Earth. The attempt to achieve this marks the point at which Kew Gardens began to become a true botanical garden, and 1752 is given as the official foundation year of the Royal Botanic Gar-dens, Kew.
Bute also recommended the Scottish architect Sir William Cham-bers (1723–96) to design the buildings. ChamCham-bers disliked the style of landscape gardening developed by Lancelot Brown (see the sidebar
“Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown” on pages 56–57), who had designed nearby Richmond Gardens for George III, and he sought to reflect the excitement educated people were experiencing as explorers described to them the architecture and cultures of Asia. Chinese styles, known as chinoiserie, were especially fashionable in the middle of the 18th century, and it was in 1762, during Augusta’s ownership of the gar-dens, that the imitation octagonal, 10-floor Chinese pagoda was com-pleted, originally with a Chinese dragon at each corner of the roof.
Kew Gardens retain the royal in its official name, but it is now con-trolled by a board of trustees on behalf of the British government’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
sir JosepH BAnKs, unoFFiciAl director oF Kew
Princess Augusta died in 1772. Her son, George III, inherited both Kew Gardens and Richmond Gardens, and in 1802 he joined them together. George III was keenly interested in agriculture and agri-cultural research—an enthusiasm that earned him the nickname
“Farmer George”—and he turned part of the combined gardens over to raising sheep. During his reign Britain was beginning to industri-alize at home and was expanding overseas, while at the same time the country was fighting the Napoleonic Wars. The following map shows the extent of the British Empire in 1822. Although the area of the territories Britain controlled was nowhere near what it would become by the end of the century, nevertheless the colonies were widely scattered geographically and were located in many different climatic zones. Times were changing, and the role of the botanical garden changed with them. Instead of exhibiting exotic plants, Kew Gardens started to conduct serious research, and the naturalist who did most to promote that change was Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820).
Banks held no official position at Kew, but he was a close friend of the king and shared the king’s vision of using the gardens to investigate and develop commercial uses for plants that could ben-efit the colonies. Banks was highly qualified for this task. He had sailed on several expeditions to collect plants, including the 1768–71 round-the-world voyage of HM Bark Endeavour led by James Cook
(1728–79), and in 1778 he was elected president of the Royal Society, a post he held until 1819.
During his time at Kew Gardens, Banks organized expeditions to collect plants in South Africa, Ethiopia, India, China, and Australia, and he arranged for plants to be shipped from the gardens to various colonies. It was Banks who arranged the transfer of breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies on HMS Bounty (see “Captain Bligh, HMS Bounty, and the Breadfruit Trees” on pages 138–141). Banks was so successful that by about 1800 almost every ship sailing to Britain from any British colony carried plants destined for Kew, and when new plants reached Kew the gardeners worked to have them on public display ahead of any other European garden.
Banks was born in London on February 13, 1743. His father, Wil-liam Banks (1719–61), was a wealthy landowner with an estate in Lin-colnshire and a Member of Parliament. Bank entered Harrow School
Territories controlled by Britain
© Infobase Publishing
© Infobase Publishing
05/14/2009
The colored areas indicate territories controlled by Britain in 1822. At that time the British Empire was still expanding, but the territories were widely scattered and located in many different climatic zones.
in 1752 at the age of nine, and in 1756 he enrolled at Eton College but was ill after a smallpox inoculation during the 1760 summer vaca-tion and did not return to Eton at its end. Instead he entered Christ Church College, University of Oxford, in December 1760 but left in 1764 without taking a degree. On his father’s death in 1761 Banks inherited the Lincolnshire estate and moved to London, dividing his time between London, Oxford, and Lincolnshire. He continued his botanical studies at Chelsea Physic Garden and made friends with many of the leading scientists of the day, including Linnaeus (see “Carolus Linnaeus and the Binomial System” on pages 83–86).
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1766 and in the same year made his first botanical excursion overseas, to Newfoundland and Labrador. His descriptions of the flora and fauna of that region established his scientific reputation and secured his appointment to Cook’s Endeavour expedition. In March 1779 Banks married Doro-thea Hugesson, and the couple settled in a house in Soho Square, London, where Banks lived for the rest of his life. He was knighted in 1781. In his later years Banks was a trustee of the British Museum. He died in London on June 19, 1820.
sir williAM HooKer, tHe First oFFiciAl director
Both Joseph Banks and George III died in 1820, and in the years following their deaths interest in the gardens waned and they came close to being abandoned. The new king, George IV (1762–1830), had little interest in them. The decline was arrested with the arrival of the first director, Sir William Hooker (1785–1865), in 1841. The following illustration shows Hooker at about this time.
Banks had recruited a number of young botanists as plant col-lectors. One of them was his protégé William Hooker, who had been elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1806 at the age of 21. Banks sponsored Hooker for an all-expenses-paid expedition to Iceland in 1809. Unfortunately, the ship caught fire on the return journey and all of Hooker’s notes and specimens were destroyed.
Banks offered him the unpublished notes from his own 1722 expedi-tion, but Hooker’s memory was excellent and he was able to write a full report, Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809. This established his scientific reputation, and in 1812 Hooker was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Later, Banks invited Hooker to collect
plants in Java, but Hooker declined. This did not affect the friendship between the two men, and in 1820 Banks helped Hooker to obtain the post of Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow, a position he held until he moved to Kew in 1841. He was a popular lecturer and as well as his teaching and research commitments he established the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow and Glasgow Botanic Garden.
William Jackson Hooker was born in Norwich on July 6, 1785, into a wealthy fam-ily. He was educated at a school in Norwich, and after leaving school he devoted himself to travel and to studying natural history, at first with a special interest in ornithology and entomology, but turning later to botany.
Hooker spent most of 1814 on botanical excursions through France, Switzerland, and northern Italy. He married in 1815 and set-tled at Halesworth, a small town in Suffolk, where he developed a large herbarium that acquired an international reputation.
An authority on cryptogams—plants that
reproduce by spores rather than seeds, including algae, lichens, mosses, and ferns—in 1818 Hooker published Muscologia Britan-nica, which was an account of all the mosses of Great Britain and Ireland. Between 1818 and 1820, he followed this with Musci exotici (Exotic mosses), published in two volumes, describing non-British mosses and other cryptogams. Among his many other publica-tions, Hooker also compiled Flora Scotica, published in 1821, British Flora (1830), and the five-volume Species Filicum (Species of ferns) between 1846 and 1864. At Kew, Hooker’s principal contribution was the renovation of the buildings, redesign of the landscape, and the establishment of the herbarium. Hooker died from a throat infection on August 12, 1865.
William Hooker’s son, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), attended his father’s lectures at Glasgow from the age of seven. He was educated at Glasgow High School and graduated in medicine
Sir William Hooker (1785–
1865), the English botanist who in 1841 became the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (George Bernard/Science Photo Library)
from Glasgow University in 1839. His medical qualification allowed Hooker to sail to the south magnetic pole as assistant ship’s surgeon on HMS Erebus as part of the expedition led by Sir James Clark Ross (1800–62). He succeeded his father as director at Kew. Joseph Hooker was director from 1865 to 1885. He continued to develop the landscape of the gardens and supervised the building of the Temper-ate House. His most important contribution, however, was probably the restoration of the links with British overseas territories that had weakened since they were first established by Sir Joseph Banks.
Hooker guided the development of the rubber plantations of Malaysia and India and the introduction of Liberian coffee to Sri Lanka.