The Royal Horticultural Society's 1864 botanical competition

Abstract

The Royal Horticultural Society's botanical competition of 1864 aroused an early stirring of concern for the need for botanical conservation in Britain. Competitors were required to submit a set of pressed plants collected from a single British county and although the organizer's intention was to encourage study of British plants amongst “all classes”, this laudable aim provoked an angry response from both professional and amateur botanists who claimed that it would encourage the extirpation of rare taxa. A compromise was reached and the competition rules were modified to restrict the number of plants that could be submitted and to discourage the collection of those that were rare. An analysis of the 39 medallists shows that they were equally divided between men and women and that the women were likely to be young, affluent and unmarried but that the men were drawn from a much wider demographic and social class. It is concluded that the fears of damage by large numbers of unprincipled competitors were unfounded but that the aims of the Royal Horticultural Society were also largely unmet with the majority of competitors being from professional backgrounds rather than the artisans who were to be encouraged.