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.
A terrarium is usually a sealable glass container containing soil and plants that can be opened for maintenance to access the plants inside; however, terraria can also be open to the atmosphere. Terraria are often kept as ornamental items.
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 20 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.
Sir William Jackson Hooker was an English botanist and botanical illustrator, who became the first director of Kew when in 1841 it was recommended to be placed under state ownership as a botanic garden. At Kew he founded the Herbarium and enlarged the gardens and arboretum. The standard author abbreviation Hook. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
A vivarium is an area, usually enclosed, for keeping and raising animals or plants for observation or research. Water-based vivaria may have open tops providing they are not connected to other water bodies. An animal enclosure is considered a vivarium only if it provides quality of life through naturalistic components such as ample living space and natural decor that allow and encourage natural behaviours. Often, a portion of the ecosystem for a particular species is simulated on a smaller scale, with controls for environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and light.
Richard Spruce was an English botanist specializing in bryology. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to its mouth, and was one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places where he collected specimens. Spruce discovered and named a number of new plant species, and corresponded with some of the leading botanists of the nineteenth century.
Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward was an English doctor who popularised a case for growing and transporting plants which was called the Wardian case.
The Loddiges family managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries that traded in and introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens.
Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer was a leading British botanist, and the third director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed, is an illustrated publication which began in 1787. The longest running botanical magazine, it is widely referred to by the subsequent name Curtis's Botanical Magazine.
Edward Joseph Lowe FRS FGS FRAS FLS was a British botanist, meteorologist and astronomer, who published papers on a wide variety of subjects, including luminous meteors, sunspots, the zodiacal light, meteorological observations during the 1860 solar eclipse, conchology, ferns, grasses and other plants.
Pteridomania or fern fever was a Victorian craze for ferns. Decorative arts of the period presented the fern motif in pottery, glass, metal, textiles, wood, printed paper, and sculpture, with ferns "appearing on everything from christening presents to gravestones and memorials".}
John Smith (1798–1888) was a British botanist who was the first curator at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, starting in 1841. He had first been employed at the gardens as a stove boy in 1822. Along with the directors, Sir William Jackson Hooker and Sir Joseph Hooker, he oversaw the conversion of the gardens from private royal gardens to public gardens when Queen Victoria converted them, possibly saving them from oblivion. He further prevented the gardens from catastrophic decline during the late 19th century when they were neglected in funding priorities. According to the Kew website, "It is significant that when stove-boy-Smith arrived at Kew, 40 species of fern were grown but when Curator Smith retired, there were 1,084."
Botanical expeditions are scientific voyages designed to explore the flora of a particular region, either as a specific design or part of a larger expedition. A naturalist or botanist would be responsible for identification, description and collection of specimens. In some cases the plants might be collected by the person in the field, but described and named by a government sponsored scientist at a botanical garden or university. For example, species collected on the Lewis and Clark Expedition were described and named by Frederick Traugott Pursh.
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.
The Ross expedition was a voyage of scientific exploration of the Antarctic in 1839 to 1843, led by James Clark Ross, with two unusually strong warships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. It explored what is now called the Ross Sea and discovered the Ross Ice Shelf. On the expedition, Ross discovered the Transantarctic Mountains and the volcanoes Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, named after each ship. The young botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker made his name on the expedition.
The Flora Tasmaniae is a description of the plants discovered in Tasmania during the Ross expedition written by Joseph Dalton Hooker and published by Reeve Brothers in London between 1855 and 1860. Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon. Written in two volumes, it was the last in a series of four Floras in the Flora Antarctica, the others being the Botany of Lord Auckland's Group and Campbell's Island (1843–1845), the Botany of Fuegia, the Falklands, Kerguelen's Land, Etc. (1845–47), and the Flora Novae-Zelandiae (1851–1853). They were "splendidly" illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch.
Anne Maria Barkly, Lady Barkly was an Australian botanist active in the flora of Mauritius and South Africa.
