Documenting native plants (1st of 2)

Documenting native plants (1st of 2)

Cook returned to Europe with an extensive visual and written record of New Zealand’s natural history. On the first voyage the wealthy botanist Joseph Banks and his assistant Daniel Solander assiduously collected plants new to European science. They mounted the specimens they had found, and many of their herbarium sheets survive. On this sheet is the orchid Earina mucronata, collected at Mercury Bay in 1769.