I have missed a week of posting; apologies but I have been tied up writing a book chapter on breadfruit plants using the plant-thinking as a hook. This is in essence the thrust of my chapter; apologies for the length.John Tyley produced a watercolour painting of a Breadfruit Tree with an enslaved African man sitting beneath it. The watercolour is held by The Linnean Society of London and recently has been lent to The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge University), and The British Library for display

I’m Elisabeth Handley-Garland, and as a part of my placement work for my Cultural Heritage and Resource Management masters degree at the University of Winchester, I volunteered my time to help Dr Christina Welch with some of the transcription work of Alexander Anderson’s writing. It wasn’t something I had done much of before and was quite a challenge at first; historic cursive handwriting can be tricky to understand at the best of times, and my GCSE in Latin did me no favours with the botanical

in 1786 Alexander Anderson sent a letter to London talking about the botanical garden in St Vincent of which he had recently taken charge. Below is an extract in transcription and it contains historical language which today we find highly offensive. I have taken the decision to use the offensive word just once, then replace it with ***** as it doesn't need to be repeated. It is a tricky balancing act staying true to the original letter whilst balancing contemporary and appropriate sensitivities.

I love passionflowers, they are so beautiful and in September 2022 I found one in the area of Spring in St Vincent thats appears to be the same species of Passiflora that appears to be drawn on a manuscript underneath some of Anderson's writing; I wrote about this here, and this piece of manuscript became the sort of logo for this project.Anderson must have loved passionflowers too as in the largest plant catalogue that details species growing in the St Vincent Botanical Garden, there are 7 type

Last week I wrote about a couple of plants that Anderson described as 'beautifull' and a couple that had a particular smell. This week I explore a couple of plants where touch and taste are the two most prominent senses.Two plants Anderson noted transferred colour when touched. Bixa orellana, often now known as Anatto or the Lipstick Tree, was he noted used by the people now known as Kalinago, as 'their favourite dye for most of their Household utensils, as well as their skins and dress'. It gav

This last week I presented at the Society for the History of Natural History summer meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. The image for the call for papers was John Tyley's Passionflower so how could I resist. The theme was A Sense of Nature and for my paper I explored some of Anderson's sensorial expressions about plants growing in the Botanical Garden. I won't wax lyrical about how great the conference was, but suffice to say it was fantastic and I learnt lots, and I will be including some of Anderson

Today is Father's Day in the UK. Back in Anderson's time, a celebration for father's did not exist. But Anderson was a father. Anderson married a woman born in Antigua; her name was Elizabeth Alexander. We know very little about her but a diary entry made by Henrietta Liston, the wife of a diplomat who visited the Botanic Gardens; her diary is online and accessible here and she too was from Antigua. In her diary, Henrietta notes that Elizabeth had been made very deaf in childhood, but this did n

In 1785 Alexander Anderson inherited a botanical garden that had 9 species of trees in it that he later classed as 'Valuable Wood', by 1806 the garden had 64 species of trees listed a Valuable Wood. Today the botanical garden has a list of 47 tree species; this includes fruit trees and I will explore fruits in another post.Chrysophyllum glabrum is one of the valuable woods that is listed in both the 1785 and c.1806 catalogues. Anderson says that the tree is known locally as Nisberry and was 've

Following on from last week's post where I noted that over time Alexander Anderson focussed on planting ornamental and exotic plants over useful ones, this post highlights some of these. Anderson's 1806 plant catalogue lists 1377 plant species, of which 931 are ornamental/exotic. Of these, 121 plants he describes as beautiful, and 31 as curious. One plant that is described using both terms is Alpinia Grandifolia. There is an illustration of this plant held at The Linnean Society of London where

This past week the awards were made at the annual Royal Horticultural Show Chelsea Flower Show. There were exhibits from several Caribbean countries including St Vincent and the Grenadines who had not entered in 34 years; they won a Silver-Gilt medal as did Antigua and Barbuda with their first ever entry. There is a brief video about them here and about 4 minutes you can see how they used strips of palm leaf to reference the 'chains of slavery'. Barbados' entry won a Gold medal, as did Grenada.

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I am very pleased to note that thanks to so many very kind and generous people, the project has raised a little over £6,000, and we are now well on the way to funding the guidebook. I may need to trim down it's length a little (cut my cloth so to speak) but it will still be a very high-quality bespoke book, with specially commissioned botanical illustrations complimenting ones produced by Tyley (c.1800), and historic dried-&-pressed plant specimens, text written by academic experts, and a fullso

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Alexander Anderson wrote natural histories of several islands that he visited; one was Barbados. The manuscript, which is held by The Linnean Society of London is undated so it is not known when he wrote it but it is likely in the very late-1700s to very early 1800s. The document is not long. Transcribed it runs to just over 3,700 words (so 9-pages); untranscribed it is 12-pages in length. Anderson mentions the parish of St Lucy (St Lucia in the manuscript). He notes the following: "The Soil Ric

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Agostino Brunais (c.1730-2 April 1796) painted a number of illustrations of life in the colonial island of St Vincent. Two of these are currently under an export order by the Uk Government. One is an imaged scene of 'Sir William Young conducting a Treaty with the Black Caribs on the Island of St Vincent'. It is highly likely that one of the then-called Black Caribs, now Garinagu' present was Chatoyer. He is a highly significant man and you can read more about him in this free-to-access article.T

Cocoa (Theobroma Cacoa L.) has long been growing in the St Vincent Botanical Garden. In his co-called Hortus (c.1806) Alexander Anderson states that he brought ‘Seeds of it … from Trinidad in 1786’. I...

Dr Jasmine Hazel ShadrackDr Alexander Anderson’s Plant Catalogue really is a thing of beauty. Not only does it do an excellent job of documenting all the plants, seeds, trees and shrubs that came to h...

This post relates to the dried and pressed specimens of plants that were sent to London by Anderson and are housed in the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum (NHM). Prior to the original 'Unearthi...

Enough money has been raised to start the Botanical Illustrations for the Guidebook, so a huge thanks to those who have donated.This tree is the National Flower for St Vincent and the Grenadines so it...

I currently have a very nasty cold hence being late with this blog. So this blog is about some of the medicinal cures for coughs that Anderson recorded.Glycyrrhuiza glabia is one medicinal plant that ...

This week the St Vincent Grenadines Government acquired the island of Balliceaux. The site is hugely important to the Garifuna of St Vincent, and for Garinagu globally; Garinagu is the preferred term ...