Flora Indica unearths botanical drawings. They were lost to colonialism for two centuries
Almin Khatoon | The Print | 9th March 2026
As the East India Company expanded in 19th century India, it funded local artists to document unknown plants. Huge quantities of this botanical art went back to Britain in the search for plants with commercial potential. This art was often intricate and displayed a “compositional sensibility rooted in [Indian] traditions”. In a long “bureaucratic afterlife” back in Britain the work fell into obscurity. Botanical classification became a “system of forgetting“. A review of a related book is here.