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.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Lucas, A. M.;
(2008)
Disposing of John Lindley's Library and Herbarium: The Offer to Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB000931204/)
Book
Unger, Nancy C.;
(2012)
Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB001320951/)
Article
Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey;
(2000)
Obligatory amateurs: Annie Maunder (1868-1947) and British women astronomers at the dawn of professional astronomy
(/isis/citation/CBB000111702/)
Chapter
Allen, David E.;
(2005)
Collectors Harnessed: Research on the British Flora by Nineteenth-Century Amateur Botanists
(/isis/citation/CBB001022830/)
Book
Hou, Shen;
(2013)
The City Natural: Garden and Forest Magazine and the Rise of American Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001201267/)
Book
Allen, David Elliston;
(2001)
Naturalists and Society: The Culture of Natural History in Britain, 1700-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000100994/)
Chapter
Samantha Evans;
(2017)
Observing Plants
(/isis/citation/CBB950464002/)
Article
Gianquitto, Tina;
(2013)
Botanical Smuts and Hermaphrodites: Lydia Becker, Darwin's Botany, and Education Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB001320191/)
Book
Page, Judith W;
Smith, Elise Lawton;
(2011)
Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780--1870
(/isis/citation/CBB001214713/)
Book
Melissa Bailes;
(2017)
Questioning Nature: British Women's Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750-1830
(/isis/citation/CBB476661069/)
Article
Christie Harner;
(2020)
Animal and Social Ecologies in Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey
(/isis/citation/CBB719406434/)
Chapter
Basu, Paul;
(2012)
A Museum for Sierra Leone? Amateur Enthusiasms and Colonial Museum Policy in British West Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001201472/)
Article
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2013)
Popular Science Magazines in Interwar Britain: Authors and Readerships
(/isis/citation/CBB001320568/)
Article
Waring, Sophie;
(2015)
Margaret Fountaine: A Lepidopterist Remembered
(/isis/citation/CBB001422107/)
Article
Frederica Bowcutt;
Tamara Caulkins;
(2020)
Co-teaching Botany and History: An Interdisciplinary Model for a More Inclusive Curriculum
(/isis/citation/CBB918944672/)
Article
Johnson, Paige;
(2012)
Safeguarding the Atom: The Nuclear Enthusiasm of Muriel Howorth
(/isis/citation/CBB001251859/)
Article
Desmond, Adrian;
(2001)
Redefining the x Axis: “Professionals,” “Amateurs” and the Making of Mid-Victorian Biology---A Progress Report
(/isis/citation/CBB000100489/)
Chapter
Williams, Matt;
(2008)
Of Canals and Quarries: The Bath Geologists
(/isis/citation/CBB001022812/)
Book
Quintero Toro, Camilo;
(2012)
Birds of Empire, Birds of Nation: A History of Science, Economy, and Conservation in United States--Colombia Relations
(/isis/citation/CBB001321260/)
Article
Nathan Edward Charles Smith;
(2023)
Fertile substrate: The rise, fall, and succession of popular microscopy in Great Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB730463894/)
Be the first to comment!