Chronicling the discovery of the British and Irish native floras – Richard Pulteney's overlooked contribution

Abstract

Until 1897, when William Clarke produced his First records of British flowering plants, there was no publication where one could see the date and source of the discovery of all of the native plants in Britain and Ireland. Two manuscripts were traced in the library of the Natural History Museum, London, which are in the hand of Richard Pulteney, an apothecary and physician, and also author of works on Linnaeus and the history of botany in Britain. The first of these manuscripts, based on the second edition of Hudson's Flora Anglica (1778), traces each plant described in that work back to the earliest authorities; the second lists a single authority, as the ‘first describer or discoverer’ of each plant. Although Pulteney was handicapped by not having access to all of the pre-1640 literature, these manuscripts nevertheless represent an important contribution to the discovery of our flora, pre-dating, as they do, the work of Clarke by a century.