The Garden History Blog

Last week’s post finished with Francis Masson returning to Kew in 1775 after a  successful plant collecting expedition to the Cape of Good Hope.  But he was clearly a man with itchy feet so the following year he was off again “undertaking an extensive plan of Operations” to “The Spanish Main”. However, the Caribbean wasn’t the Cape, and that was clearly where his heart lay. He eventually  returned to southern Africa for another 10 years, although there were still more transatlantic adventures to come.

Masson’s success at getting seeds, bulbs and even living plants back to Britain set off what can only be described as a mad craze for Cape plants.  Linnaeus even named a genus of rather strange South African bulbs Massonia in his honour for doing this.

More significantly he is, according to Sir James Smith, the founder of the Linnean Society, the man responsible for the “novel sight of African geraniums in York or Norfolk” and for the fact that “now every garret and cottage window is filled with numerous species of that beautiful tribe and every greenhouse glows with the innumerable bulbous plants and splendid heaths of the Cape.”

There was just one problem with all this globetrotting: the late 18thc was a time of almost continual worldwide warfare with its consequent political upheavals, and plant hunting was, unsurprisingly,  not exempt from its influences.

So….read on to find out more about the adventures and discoveries of one of Britain’s greatest, if least well-known, plant hunters…

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