The herbarium at the Natural History Museum in London is one of the world’s biggest plant collections. Specimens gathered over more than 300 years were dried and then glued to paper in large albums, each one now housed in its own drawer in a climate-controlled chamber.
Many samples are relics of a world that once was, brought back by famous scientists such as Carl Linnaeus. At the height of the British Empire, plants were collected for scientific, medical, and economic purposes.
For years, photographer Nick Knight leafed through the herbarium’s pages, looking for specimens that were visually appealing. He estimates that he and his wife, Charlotte, flipped through thousands of drab, brown samples before finding vibrant ones—a water lily, a camellia.
