Access the Economic Botany Collection

Online

The Economic Botany Collection Database holds records of all specimens in the collection.

The database can be searched by many categories, including plant name, country, region, plant part and uses. Specimen labels, Museum Entry Books, collection files and Kew’s main Archives are all important additional sources of information. 

Loans and sampling

Loans to other museums allow us to reach wider and larger audiences. We do everything we can to facilitate loans to suitable venues, including often sharing packaging and couriering with other London-based lenders.

There are minimum requirements for security and environmental control which limit loans to certain types of venue.

Destructive sampling of raw materials, for example for DNA or chemical characterisation, is permitted for projects that meet criteria for scientific impact and methodology.

Where substantial assistance in choosing samples is given — usually the case — the relevant Kew staff member is usually a co-author on a resulting publication.

Sampling of artefacts is only undertaken where it will result in substantially increased understanding of the object, for example through radiocarbon dating.