Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
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| Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew | |
|---|---|
| |
| Type | Botanic garden, herbarium and economic botany collection |
| Website | kew.org |
| Founded | 1759 |
| Base | Kew, Richmond, London |
| Scope | International |
| Focus | Plant and fungal science, living and preserved collections, conservation |
| Other sites | Data Portal · Economic Botany Collection database |
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) is a botanic garden and plant-science institution at Kew, in Richmond, London. Its garden dates from 1759.[1] Its herbarium, registered in Index Herbariorum under the code K, holds around seven million preserved vascular plant specimens.[2][3] Its Economic Botany Collection was founded in 1847 as the Museum of Economic Botany.[4] Both collections hold cannabis. The Herbarium has ten sheets of Cannabis sativa filed under number 4665 of Nathaniel Wallich's catalogue, the dated ones gathered between 1796 and 1826. The Economic Botany Collection holds hemp fibre, cordage, seed and a pipe from Zululand for smoking cannabis.[5][6]
Status and governance
The National Heritage Act 1983 created a Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as a body corporate. The Act charges the Board with caring for Kew's collections of plants, preserved plant material, books and records, and with keeping them as national reference collections available for study.[7] RBG Kew is an executive non-departmental public body with exempt charitable status. It is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.[1][8] Kew Gardens was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.[9]
The garden began in 1759 as a nine-acre botanic garden that Princess Augusta laid out in the pleasure grounds at Kew. Kew's timeline dates its transfer from the Crown to the government, and the appointment of William Hooker as director, to 1840.[10] The Herbarium's own history gives 1841 for Hooker's appointment.[3]
The Herbarium
When Hooker became director, Kew had no official herbarium. The ground floor of Hunter House became available in 1852 and housed Hooker's herbarium. The first curator, Allan Black, was appointed in 1853. Wings were added in 1877 and between 1903 and 1969, and a climate-controlled wing in 2010.[3] The Herbarium holds around seven million preserved vascular plant specimens, including 330,000 type specimens.[3] In the 2025–26 financial year Kew completed the digitisation of its herbarium and fungarium collections, about 7.4 million specimens.[1] Index Herbariorum lists the original Wallich Herbarium (K-W) as a part of the collection that is not sent on loan.[2]
The Economic Botany Collection
The Museum of Economic Botany was founded in 1847, six years before the Herbarium.[11] As the Economic Botany Collection it now holds about 100,000 items that show how plants are used.[1] Its database was compiled in the 1980s from the information kept with each specimen, and each object received a catalogue number then. An Entry Book Number, where one survives, identifies the group of specimens with which an object was acquired. The Museum Entry Books run from 1847 to the present.[12]
Cannabis in the Herbarium
GBIF lists 20 Cannabis specimens in Kew's Herbarium dataset. Kew's own data portal adds 38 microscope slides and a DNA sample.[13][14]
The Wallich sheets
Ten of the sheets are filed under number 4665 in Wallich's catalogue and lettered A to H. Their labels name the herbaria of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, William Roxburgh and Robert Wight, a herbarium labelled "Russel", a Madras herbarium and "HBC". Two give a place and year: Nepal in 1821 and Toong Dong in Burma in 1826.[5][15][16][13] Kew's data mark all ten as "Unknown Type Material".[15][13] McPartland and Small (2020) list several of them among the representative specimens of their classification. They place the Nepal sheet, from Kathmandu, under Cannabis sativa subsp. indica var. indica. They place the Burma sheet, and a sheet from Bareilly in Roxburgh's herbarium dated 1796, under var. himalayensis.[5] They also figure achenes from the Bareilly sheet.[17]
An isoneotype
McPartland and Small designated a sheet collected by T. Thompson in 1847 in Shimla or Kinnaur, in Himachal Pradesh, as the neotype of Cannabis sativa var. himalayensis. The neotype is in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (GH). The specimen was distributed with duplicates to several herbaria, and Kew holds one of the isoneotypes.[18]
Other sheets
Other sheets include a branch of a male plant received from the Reverend Dr Callaway in Natal in 1857, under the name "Insango".[19] There are also male and female branches collected by J. Correa de Mello at Campinas, in Brazil, in 1865.[20] A sheet collected by Hooker in Morocco in 1871 is determined by E. Small as Cannabis sativa subsp. indica.[21]
Cannabis in the Economic Botany Collection
The collection's database lists about 110 objects of the hemp family. Most are fibres, cordage and textiles. Among the objects filed under Cannabis are a string bag from Yunnan, a money bag from Thailand, a sample of hemp muslin from China, fibre and cloth from Korea and an indigo-dyed hemp textile from Vietnam.[22] The rope and cord filed under Cannabis include ropes and a sandal cord from Japan, ropes of hemp from Serbia given in 1907, ropes from Safranbolu in Turkey and a rope as used in Kashmir.[23][24] Among them are hemps given by Chatham Dockyard in 1855, St Petersburg hemp included. Another is a portion of hemp cable, given in 1840, whose label identifies it as from the Royal George, sunk at Spithead in 1782.[25][26] Others are seed and paper. A few objects relate to cannabis as a drug:
- broken leaves of hemp from Kashmir, given by Dr Aitchison in 1876;[27]
- cannabis seed in a lot of Chinese drugs bought at a drug store in Perak;[28]
- a horn pipe from Zululand, catalogued as a pipe for smoking cannabis. Its note describes the horn as partly filled with water, with the smoke drawn from the large end.[6]
Data and images
Accessions
Accessions held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Artefacts
| Country | Catalogue number | |
|---|---|---|
| Bag (Kew EBC 75780) | China | EBC 75780 |
| Bag (Kew EBC 91926) | Thailand | EBC 91926 |
| Cord (Kew EBC 43418) | Japan | EBC 43418 |
| Rope (Kew EBC 43413) | India | EBC 43413 |
| Rope (Kew EBC 43422) | Japan | EBC 43422 |
| Rope (Kew EBC 43430) | Serbia | EBC 43430 |
| Rope (Kew EBC 43433) | Japan | EBC 43433 |
| Rope (Kew EBC 79159) | Turkey | EBC 79159 |
| Textile (Kew EBC 43417) | Korea | EBC 43417 |
| Textile (Kew EBC 91920) | China | EBC 91920 |
| Textile (Kew EBC 99880) | Vietnam | EBC 99880 |
| Water pipe (Kew EBC 67634) | South Africa | EBC 67634 |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (9 July 2026). Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2026 (PDF) (Report). HC 483. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Royal Botanic Gardens: Herbarium (K)". Index Herbariorum. New York Botanical Garden. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "The Herbarium". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Economic Botany Collection". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 McPartland, J.M.; Small, E. (2020). "A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives". PhytoKeys. 144. Supplementary file 1, pp. 76–78. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.144.46700.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Pipe for smoking cannabis, EBC 67634". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "National Heritage Act 1983: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (sections 23 to 26)". legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew framework document". GOV.UK. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "History of Kew". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ Nesbitt, Mark. "Curating Biocultural Collections in the 21st century". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Help". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "Occurrence search: Cannabis in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Herbarium Specimens". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence search: genus Cannabis". Kew Data Portal occurrence services. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Occurrence 1051242042: Cannabis sativa, K001039639". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 1051242060: Cannabis sativa, K001039640". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ McPartland, J.M.; Small, E. (2020). "A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives". PhytoKeys. 144: 92. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.144.46700.
- ↑ McPartland, J.M.; Small, E. (2020). "A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives". PhytoKeys. 144: 96. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.144.46700.
- ↑ "Occurrence 6194769666: Cannabis sativa, K004003480". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 6194764248: Cannabis sativa, K004003478". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 4519454856: Cannabis sativa subsp. indica, K001604462". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Natural indigo dyed hemp textile, EBC 99880". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
- ↑ "Simple search: Cannabis". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Simple search: hemp". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "St Petersburg Hemp, EBC 43398". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Portion of cable made of hemp, EBC 43403". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Broken leaves of hemp, EBC 43407". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Seed, Chinese drugs, EBC 69171". Economic Botany Collection database. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Herbarium Specimens". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. doi:10.15468/ly60bx. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Economic Botany Collection Specimens". GBIF. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. doi:10.15468/c3dx8a. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Citation". Kew Data Portal. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 4 October 2026.