‘Zambesi seeds from Mr Moffat’: Sir George Grey as imperial botanist

Abstract

While Sir George Grey’s interest in botany is not unknown, it has tended to be discussed in passing, and usually in connexion with the gardens he founded on Kawau Island later in his life. Grey in fact had a considerable interest in botany and was active in the science from early in his career, maintaining, for example, a long correspondence with William and Joseph Hooker who, at the time, were turning the royal gardens at Kew into a centre of imperial botanical research. This article considers Grey’s botanical activity in detail, locating it in the context of the period’s model of ‘improving’ governorship and the imperial networks he made use of, while acknowledging also the very genuine interest Grey had in the science.