Tracing knowledge about plants of and from Sri Lanka

The tropical regions of the Indian Ocean are rich in biodiversity and historically important spaces for knowledge production and circulation. European imperialism and colonisation had led to extensive extraction of materials and dispersal of knowledge – knowledge that are today stored in European repositories, separated from their origins and from each other.

This project re-connects digital sources to reconstruct an understanding of the historical environment of Sri Lanka as an island.

The materials featured have been drawn from digital collections at the following institutions and libraries:

Charles E Jarvis (2016). Hermann Herbarium Data set, Natural History Museum London, United Kingdom.

Icones Plantes Malabaricum, BPL 126D, Leiden University Libraries, the Netherlands.

Herbarium Vivum, Chart. A 785, Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, University of Erfurt, Germany.

Collectio plantarum Zeylanicum, Ms. 3912, Bibliotheque de l’Institute de France, Paris, France.

These were thought to be Paul Hermann’s personal herbaria. Paul Hermann was a botanist working for the Dutch East India Company on Sri Lanka in the late 17th century. His materials ended up in Joseph Bank's collection, which later became part of English scientist Hans Sloane's extensive scientific collection.
Paul Hermann's personal herbaria in 5 volumes
A manuscript produced by an as-yet unidentified physician working for the Dutch East India Company in the vicinity of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. The Latin name of this manuscript may be misleading, as the plants featured are not only from Kerala in India (then-called Malabar coast by the Dutch), but also plants from Sri Lanka. The plants are described using Malayalam, Sinhalese and Tamil names.
Icones Plantes Malabaricum
This Paul Hermann herbaria was initially sent to Jan Commelin, director of Amsterdam botanic gardens, inherited by botanist Johannes Burmann, later sold by his descendants to Swiss-French botanist Benjamin Delessert.
Collectio plantarum Zeylanensium

Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder

This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.

Using the CollectionBuilder-CSV template and the static website generator Jekyll, this project creates an engaging interface to explore driven by metadata.

CollectionBuilder