A. Anderson Collections; Natural History Museum

Alexander Anderson, a Scottish surgeon and botanist, served as superintendent at the St. Vincent Botanical Garden, which was established in 1765 and was the first Botanical Garden in the Caribbean and probably the first in the Americas. The garden flourished under Anderson’s direction (from 1785) until shortly before his death in 1811. Prior to his move to the Americas, Anderson worked briefly at the Chelsea Physic Garden, under William Forsyth’ guidance, where most probably he has built up his gardening and horticulture knowledge.

When Anderson arrived at the St. Vincent Botanical Garden, there were ca. 60 plant species growing and by his death, it was over 1,300. This reflects Anderson’s activities with exploration, plant introduction, propagation and consequently, distribution of the plant species. Anderson travelled around the West Indies region, including the north South America and while collecting the plant specimens, Anderson also gathered information, particularly on traditional knowledge about the plant specimens, mostly by asking (and probably also by observing) the indigenous and enslaved people and recorded the traditional uses. He catalogued the plants into broad categories of use (e.g. economic, medicinal, exotics and ornamentals, valuable woods) and also listed fruits. This information certainly contributed towards the development of colonial botanical science and to medical knowledge.

This dataset was assembled as part of the project entitled: “Unearthing the contribution of indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems to the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden under Dr Anderson [1785-1811])”. This project was funded by the ‘Hidden histories of environmental science’ programme, a cross-council collaboration between the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to understand how the future of modern environmental science can be informed by the past. The project was a collaboration involving Winchester University, Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Linnean Society, Antonio Carluccio Foundation and The Museum Detox Interpretation Team.

There is no list of the dried plant specimens that Anderson sent to Joseph Banks and that are now at the NHM. As a result, the search and cataloguing of Anderson’s dried specimens housed at the Natural History Museum (BM) is an on-going task. The data set currently comprises ca.190 specimens collected by Anderson in the Caribbean and Guiana, of which 25 are type specimens.