Library treasures

The Royal Botanic Gardens Libary

The Library began in 1852 with the purchase of 26 botanical and horticultural books by Director Charles Moore. It now includes the miscellany of more than three centuries of exploration, scientific research and social history. The focus is Australia, and Sydney in particular, but science is international and the journals and books come from all countries and in many different languages.

Our vision is a virtual library, abuzz with people accessing electronic journals and databases, linking effortlessly to images from Curtis’ Botanical Magazine from the 18th century, or perhaps the gorgeous prints from Banks’ Florilegium. At its heart is the collection itself, the real Treasures of the library, kept secure and safe. Some of these works are unique and our Library is the only place you can see a particular edition or early image of colonial Australia. Others are iconic publications, found scattered through public and private libraries of the world, but only here held together as part of a vast and important information resource for scientists, plant enthusiasts and historians.

Adopt a Treasure

The Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation invites you to help us restore our important works in time for our Bicentenary by adopting one from now until 2016. Your contribution will fund vital conservation and preservation work, as well as the digitisation of rare works, and the cataloguing of the entire collection. For a total of just $1.2 million this priceless collection can be protected forever.

The Library Treasures are presented in six stories:

The Age of Exploration
Plant Hunters and Flora
History of the Royal Botanic Gardens
Generations of Gardening
Botanical and Scientific History
The Work of Margaret Flockton

We invite you to select a story at whatever level you chose. In this way, a number of people will share the adoption of each story. All adoptions over $5,000 will entitle benefactors to be recognised as Fellows of the Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation. These gifts can be pledged over five years. Some special Treasures, marked with asterisk (*), may be adopted exclusively at the Sir Joseph Banks Fellow level.

>> Download Adoption Form
>> Download Catalogue (contains full information on each of the Treasures listed below)

Catalogue of Treasures of the Royal Botanic Gardens Library

The Age of Exploration

Starting with James Cook’s expedition to trace the transit of Venus on the Endeavour, the first encounters by the Europeans of Australia’s startling botanical uniqueness were recorded in exquisite detail by intrepid naturalists and botanists accompanying exploratory expeditions.

Original pressed plant specimen from the National Herbarium’s Banks and Solander Collection 1768-71: Sir Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander
Plate of Lambertia formosa from Britten’s Illustrations of Australian Plants 1905: James Britten
Banksia serrata from Captain Cook’s Florilegium 1973*: Wilfrid Blunt, William T. Stern
Banks’ Florilegium 1980–90*: Sir Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander, Sydney Parkinson
‘A voyage around the world … 1785, 1786, 1787 & 1788 …’ 1799: Jean François De Galaup, Comte De La Perouse
Novae Hollandiae Plantarum 1804-07: Jacques Julien Labillardiere
Atlas of the voyage in search of La Perouse 1811: Jacques Julien Labillardiere
Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandae1810: Robert Brown
Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandae1813: Ferdinand Bauer
Cunningham’s expedition: Wildflowers of Australia, 2 vols 1816-18 *: Joseph Lycett
Flora Antarctica 1847, Flora Tasmaniae 1853, Flora Nova Zelandiae 1859, 1847-59*: Joseph Dalton Hooker
Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, 11 vols 1862-81: Ferdinand Von Mueller
Flora Australiensis: a description of plants of the Australian Territory 7 vols 1863-78: George Bentham

Plant hunters and flora

The passions of early plant hunters have yielded both valuable scientific findings, as well as producing startling works of art. Their extraordinary dedication and life-long scientific pursuits began and built on the scientific documentation of indigenous and world flora.

Historia plantarum universalis 3 vols 1650-51: Johann Bauhin and Johann Henrico Cherler
Herbarium Amboinense 1741*: Georg Eberhard Rumphius
A Description of the Genus Pinus *1803-24: Aylmer Bourke Lambert
Loddiges Botanical Cabinet 1817-33: George Loddiges
Sertum Orchidaceum: a wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers1837-38: John Lindley
Himalayan Journals 2 vols 1854*: Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
Phycologia Australica 5 vols 1858-63: William Henry Harvey
Australian Orchids, 2 vols 1875-93: Robert David Fitzgerald
Critical Revision of the Genus Eucalyptus, 8 vols 1904-22*: Joseph Henry Maiden

History of the Royal Botanic Gardens

‘I have transferred the Sydney Botanic Garden from a mere horticultural establishment, as I have found it, to a Botanical establishment in addition, and Scientific men throughout the world now recognise Sydney as one of the principal botanical centres ofthe world.' J. H. Maiden.

The story of the Royal Botanic Gardens dates back long before the bestowal of its ‘Royal’ prefix. Officially known then as the ‘Botanic Gardens’, this institution began on 13 June 1816 behind the high walls of the Governor’s Demesne. The Gardens has always been right in the centre of Sydney’s history and culture, and the Library has captured that involvement in images, sound and story.

Photography*

Domain panoramas c. 1904
The Garden Palace from the North Shore c. 1879-92
Government House and the Governor’s Baths c. 1879
Government House grounds and Farm Cove c. 1879
Garden Palace ruins c. 1882
The Gardens on glass plate slides - late 19th C (digital display)
Built heritage in the Gardens - late 19th C (digital display)
Garden landscapes - late 19th C (digital display)
Statues, fountains, ponds and streams - late 19th C (digital display)

Archival Treasures: Maps, Plans and Registers

Maps and plans ‘rescued from the attic’ 1821-
Register of plants and seeds, September 1828-August 1935, 20 vols 1828-1935
Records of letters sent and received by the Gardens 1828–1917

Art and Artefacts

Pencil drawing of Government House, c. 1850s
Allan Cunningham’s collecting box, c. 1817
‘Botanists’ artefacts 1800-1900s: 1. J. H. Maiden’s Linnaean Society Medal; 2. Robert Brown’s Snuffbox; 3. J.H. Maiden’s William Branwhite Clarke Medal 1878; 4. Charles Moore’s Silver Judge’s Medal for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition; 5. Dr. Joyce Vickery’s Medal of the British Empire
Archaeological finds - unknown as yet

Stories of the Past

Oral histories - ongoing project

Generations of gardening

The longevity of leading gardening journals and magazines attests to the hold that gardening has taken in our culture over the past few centuries. Generations of changing advice, scientific studies, landscape designs and fashions in gardening are recorded in our collections.

Curtis' Botanical Magazine 1787-*: William Curtis et al.
Edward’s Botanical Register 1815-47: Sydenham Teast Edwards et al
Gardener’s Chronicles 1841-
Loudon’s Encyclopedia of Plants 1841: John Claudius Loudon
L’illustration horticole 1854-96: Jean Jules Linden
Floral Magazine 1874-1980: Richard Dean, J. N. Fitch

Botanical and scientific history

‘If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ Sir Isaac Newton

Today it’s impossible to conceive the directions in which science, and particularly botany, would have taken without the contributions of Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin and other ‘giants’ of the botanical world.

De Materia Medica 1550: Pedanius Dioscorides
John Gerard’s Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes 2nd ed. 1636*: John Gerard
Species Plantarum 2nd ed. 1762-63: Carolus Linnaeus
Systema Naturae 2nd ed. 1766-68*: Carolus Linnaeus
Plantae Rariores Horti Elthamiensis 1732: Johann Jakob Dillen (Dillenius)
Transactions of the Linnean Society (London) 1791-: The Linnean Society
Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 17 vols 1824-39: Augustin Pyramus De Candolle
The Origin of Species 1st ed.* 1859: Charles Darwin
Report of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76, 1873-76
At Anchor: narration of explorations afloat and ashore of the voyage of HMS Challenger 1878: J.J. Wild

Work of Margaret Flockton*

Margaret Flockton commenced work at the National Herbarium at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens in June 1901 as its first botanical illustrator. Between 1901 and 1927 she executed over 1,000 botanically accurate drawings, lithographs and coloured sketches that are still used for plant taxonomy and identification today.

Flockton worked with Joseph Henry Maiden, Director of the Gardens, on the Forest Flora of New South Wales and the Critical Revision ofthe Genus Eucalyptus. Maiden named a Western Australian species of eucalypt after her, Eucalyptus flocktoniae.

Margaret Flockton was a member of the Royal Art Society, which exhibited 33 of her paintings. She had a high reputation as a lithographic artist at a time when she was Australia’s only female exponent of the art.