Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.
Nicotiana is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the family Solanaceae, that is indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various Nicotiana species, commonly referred to as tobacco plants, are cultivated as ornamental garden plants. N. tabacum is grown worldwide for the cultivation of tobacco leaves used for manufacturing and producing tobacco products, including cigars, cigarillos, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and dipping tobacco.
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.
George Bentham was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studied law, but had a fascination with botany from an early age, which he soon pursued, becoming president of the Linnaean Society in 1861, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862. He was the author of a number of important botanical works, particularly flora. He is best known for his taxonomic classification of plants in collaboration with Joseph Dalton Hooker, his Genera Plantarum (1862–1883). He died in London in 1884.
John Stevens Henslow was a British priest, botanist and geologist. He is best remembered as friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin.
Hugh Falconer MD FRS was a Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist, and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna, and geology of India, Assam, and Burma, and was the first to suggest the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium. He studied the Siwalik fossil beds, and may also have been the first person to discover a fossil ape.
Nicotiana glauca is a species of flowering plant in the tobacco genus Nicotiana of the nightshade family Solanaceae. It is known by the common name tree tobacco. Its leaves are attached to the stalk by petioles, and its leaves and stems are neither pubescent nor sticky like Nicotiana tabacum. It resembles Cestrum parqui but differs in the form of leaves and fusion of the outer floral parts. It grows to heights of more than two meters.
Nicotiana alata is a species of tobacco. It is called winged tobacco, jasmine tobacco, sweet tobacco, Persian tobacco and tanbaku.
Nicotiana tabacum, or cultivated tobacco, is an annually grown herbaceous plant of the Nicotiana genus. The plant is tropical in origin, is commonly grown throughout the world, and is often found in cultivation. It grows to heights between 1 and 2 meters. Research is ongoing into its ancestry among wild Nicotiana species, but it is believed to be a hybrid of Nicotiana sylvestris, Nicotiana tomentosiformis, and possibly Nicotiana otophora. It is the most commonly grown of all plants in the genus Nicotiana, the plants' leaves commercially grown to be processed into tobacco.
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now widely accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Hewett Cottrell Watson was a phrenologist, botanist and evolutionary theorist. He was born in Firbeck, near Rotherham, Yorkshire, and died at Thames Ditton, Surrey.
Dr Robert Kaye Greville FRSE FLS LLD was an English mycologist, bryologist, and botanist. He was an accomplished artist and illustrator of natural history. In addition to art and science he was interested in causes like abolitionism, capital punishment, keeping Sunday special and the temperance movement. He has a mountain in Queensland named after him.
Fertilisation of Orchids is a book by English naturalist Charles Darwin published on 15 May 1862 under the full explanatory title On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, and On the Good Effects of Intercrossing. Darwin's previous book, On the Origin of Species, had briefly mentioned evolutionary interactions between insects and the plants they fertilised, and this new idea was explored in detail. Field studies and practical scientific investigations that were initially a recreation for Darwin—a relief from the drudgery of writing—developed into enjoyable and challenging experiments. Aided in his work by his family, friends, and a wide circle of correspondents across Britain and worldwide, Darwin tapped into the contemporary vogue for growing exotic orchids.
Sir Richard Owen was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils.
Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen by Christian Konrad Sprengel was published in 1793, but received little acclaim during the author's lifetime. Sprengel's ideas were rejected by other naturalists when it was published, but the importance of this work was duly appreciated by Charles Darwin some sixty years later. Darwin's use of Sprengel's ideas and reference to this book in the seminal work on the Fertilisation of Orchids established Sprengel's book as one of the most important works in the fields of floral biology and pollination ecology and its author as a founding father of these fields.
Nicotiana clevelandii is a species of wild tobacco known by the common name Cleveland's tobacco.
The Flora Antarctica, or formally and correctly The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, is a description of the many plants discovered on the Ross expedition, which visited islands off the coast of the Antarctic continent, with a summary of the expedition itself, written by the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker and published in parts between 1844 and 1859 by Reeve Brothers in London. Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon.
Christian Ramsay, Countess of Dalhousie informally Lady Dalhousie, néeBroun; was a Scottish botanist and natural historian. She married George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie and travelled with him when he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, Governor General of Canada and Commander in Chief of the Indian Army. While travelling, she collected and catalogued many species of plants, presented scientific papers to societies and donated many collections to different botanical groups.
Goniothalamus giganteus is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Malaya, Myanmar, Sumatra and Thailand. Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Thomson, the British botanists who first formally described the species, named it after its exceptionally large flowers.
