Plants from Fort St. George India collected by Samuel Browne in 1697

Samuel Browne (d. 1698) was a surgeon employed by the English East India Company (EIC) at Fort St. George, Madras (now Chennai) in India. In 1697, Browne sent a herbarium of 316 specimens collected in and around Chennai to the EIC. Many of those specimens were accompanied with vernacular names, descriptions and notes on their properties and uses. Browne’s specimens were studied by James Petiver who published descriptions with Browne as co-author. Those descriptions made reference to polynomial names in many other published works. This dataset comprises the specimens included in the Browne herbarium with identifications for all specimens.

A paper describing this dataset by Prakash, R. O. et al (2024) can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CZGKSJUBDFA687KPPI9H/full?target=10.1080/23818107.2023.2296095. Further to Prakash et al. (2024), the determinations have been further revised and are reflected in the portal.