Catalogue of Brazilian Plants - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

George Gardner’s Catalogue of Brazilian Plants
Catalogue), a not insignificant part of his collection in the BM is missing. Since he had
clearly worked on his own set, and that of Hooker, when he was in London, lectotypes for
taxa in the ‘former papers’ should be very carefully selected.
Harley (2000, pers. comm.) has indicated that Sandwith had two copies of determinations of
Gardner’s collections, one at K the other at OXF (where Sandwith worked for a significant
amount of time). A list of determinations of the Gardner collections in the Natural History
Museum (BM) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was compiled by Hiern and transcribed,
possibly by Sandwith, although it is unsigned. A PDF transcribed version of the Hiern
determinations list is available.
A separate, numbered, list of ferns was published as one of his earlier papers (Gardner,
1842b).
The transcription
The Catalogue has been fully transcribed by me and, having become reasonably familiar with
his handwriting, there should be few errors – only a few words defeated me. Any errors that
are present I apologize for.
Layout
The Catalogue has been rebound, and what was originally five registers, or sections, is bound
in the same five parts in this volume. Gardner numbered each register and the position of the
beginning of each of these is indicated in the text.
A small, final, sixth section was added by Gardner to include ‘Medicinal and Economic plants
of the north of Brazil’. This was never published by Gardner, but we intend to publish a paper
on the plants mentioned. The numbers in this final section refer to Gardner’s collections in the
Catalogue; several species are unnumbered.
The Catalogue is laid out in three columns: number, taxon, locality. Occasional notes
(common names, frequency, etc.) were largely placed against the locality and I have adopted
this throughout, even though Gardner varied this in his earlier collections. The list is divided
in several places, the breaks headed giving an indication of the broad location of the plants in
the following part of the list, e.g. ‘Rio de Janeiro’, ‘Organ Mountains’, ‘Province of Piauhy’,
etc. Any entries for which there is no information (e.g. family, genus, locality) I have inserted
two em-rules ‘––’, rather than leaving the entry blank.
Later in the list there is a clear indication of the division of plants from the state of Goiás into
three lots. From Gardner’s correspondence it is clear that these represent lots of plants that
Gardner provided for sale to interested parties.
Corrections and Additions
Gardner’s spelling of family, generic and species names is sometimes eratic. In most instances
it is obvious to which taxa he was referring to, and the odd family names, which are quite
variable in their spelling, are of little consequence. Some examples include:
Apocyniaceae = Apocynaceae
Cinchoniaceae = Rubiaceae
Gramineaceae = Gramineae
Melastomaceae = Melastomataeae
2 | P a g e Transcribed by D.J.N. Hind, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew