Publication of Endeavour botanist’s work

Press, 6 March 1980, Page 17

Publication of Endeavour botanist’s work

An 18-volume set: of "Florilegium” by Sir Joseph Banks, the unpublished botanical results of his voyage on the Endeavour with Captain Cook, is being published by the British Museum at a price of $6460. Four of the volumes will be devoted entirely to New Zealand and will include 183 plates. Banks intended to publish himself. He spent more than $16,450 on the copperplates alone, some 738 of which (almost all of them) have survived and remain in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History). Had Banks published as he intended to, he would have produced the most impressive British botanical work of the Eighteenth Century. Banks’ “Florilegium” will be a first edition, limited to 100 copies, and will be the first time any of the plates have been printed in colour. There will be eight volumes (337 plates) on Australia, four volumes (183 plates) on New Zealand, two volumes (89 plates) on the Friendly Isles, one volume (65 plates) on Tierra del Fuego, One volume (23 platesl on Brazil, one volume (11 plates) on Madeira, and one volume (30 plates) on Java. Five artists were employed fort many years by Banks to work up water colours from the hundreds of botanical sketches made on the voyage by Sydney Parkinson. The work was under the direction of Dr Daniel Solander. Three sets of copper plates were made for engraving, but not published. The Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington has made reproductions from these engravings from time to time, with the permission of the British Museum. The one illustrated is of the kohia (native passionfruit) — a slender vine of lowland forests from North Cape to Canterbury, The flower is small but the plant may be cultivated for its handsome orange fruit. The fruit is unpalatble to man, although much loved by the wood pigeon.

By

OLIVER RIDDELL