Robert Plant (1818–1858): A Victorian plant hunter in Natal, Zululand, Mauritius and the Seychelles

Abstract

In the 1850s Robert William Plant collected plants and other natural specimens in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. This one-time Englishman compiled a dictionary for gardeners before emigrating to Natal in 1850. There he worked as the agent for Samuel Stevens, the London dealer in 'curiosities of natural history'. Though Plant collected mainly plants, he also sent consignments of beetles, butterflies, bird skins and shells back to Britain. He published the first scientific paper on Zululand and was requested by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to write the first Flora natalensis. It was while collecting for this never-to-be-completed treatise that Plant contracted malaria in Maputaland. He died in St Lucia in 1858 and in doing so became South Africa's martyr to botany. What emerges from this study is a picture of the difficulties faced by plant hunters in mid-19th-century South Africa, the sort of plants they collected and the necessity for them sometimes to diversify into other natural history products to survive.

When commerce, science, and leisure collaborated: the nineteenth-century global trade boom in natural history collections

“…In the Seychelles, Robert Plant depended on his local helpers; William Wallace made extensive use of indigenous assistance in the area around modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia; and expeditions into remote inland regions of Australia usually drew upon the aid of Aboriginal people. 82 All of this suggests some degree of continuity with procurement practices prior to the nineteenth century, but the expansion thereafter of commerce and scientific research in natural history increased the importance of local cooperation. Hugh Cuming serves as an example of the extensive knowledge of supply-chain logistics needed by collectors in remote locations.…”

The relationship between black tax, poverty, and educational levels: a case study in Mbizana Local Municipality

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