title: Ethnobotanical insights from an historical herbarium: the Samuel Browne collections from early modern India
Creators: name: Prakash, Ranee Om
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2022

description: This thesis is an ethnobotanical study of medicinal plant use in India and Sri Lanka that has 
used Traditional Knowledge (TK) documented in the herbarium and literature to investigate 
temporal as well as spatial aspects of plant use with a particular focus on the herbarium made 
by Samuel Browne in the 1690s around Fort St. George (Chennai, Tamil Nadu). Two 
different times (the 1670s to 1690s, and the last fifty years) and three areas (Tamil 
Nadu/Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Sri Lanka) have been considered. In addition to the 
Samuel Browne herbarium which contains specimens from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh 
in southeast India, the herbarium and records of plants made by Paul Hermann from Sri 
Lanka and the Hortus Malabaricus of Hendrik Van Rheede have been used as sources of 
historical information on plants and their uses in South Asia.
We identified the 316 plant specimens in the Samuel Browne herbarium, 313 to species level, 
and analysed the bibliographic references used by Petiver to identify plants, providing 
insights into early modern taxonomy and the way in which the herbarium and information 
assembled by Browne was documented. The Samuel Browne herbarium contains 29
examples of conspecific specimens, significantly more than other early modern herbaria that
have been used to examine TK to date. This allowed the use of the herbarium to investigate 
spatial variation in extent of variation in local names and traditional uses across collecting 
sites. There was consistency in the application of local names in only seven cases. Of these, 
only three species reported the same uses. Often, despite having the same name, uses 
differed. The analysis of conspecific specimens in the herbarium of Samuel Browne revealed 
a high variation in TK. Furthermore, the knowledge recorded did not reflect documented 
formalised knowledge of Ayurvedic and Siddha medicine. Heterogeneity in TK was also examined across peninsular India during this period at a 
broader spatial scale by comparing the names and uses of species recorded/collected in 
Samuel Browne’s herbarium from Southeast peninsular India with those in Hortus 
Malabaricus and those in the herbarium of Paul Hermann. We observed no significant 
differences in how plants were used overall when comparing data from Browne’s reports to 
data compiled from the works of Van Rheede and Hermann, although there was a significant 
difference between the uses as reported by Van Rheede and Hermann. A total of 848 species 
were reported across the three sources but only twenty-five (3%) of species were reported by 
all three sources and only three of those species had shared uses. This again demonstrates a 
high degree of variation in the use of plants between these areas in the late 17th century and
provides little support for the concept of a “core medicinal flora” across the region. 
Continuity and change of plant use through time was investigated in a diachronic analysis 
that compared TK in the early modern herbarium of Samuel Browne with TK reported in 
contemporary studies from the same areas. We found a shift in plant use from Browne’s time 
to the present day with plants now often having more therapeutic applications. Differences in 
the mode of application and plant parts used were observed between the 1690s and recent 
times with decoction commonly recorded in Browne’s reports whereas taking plant 
medicines as edibles is more common today. Fifty-five species had at least one therapeutic 
application conserved between historical and contemporary studies and 24% of the 
vernacular names reported in Browne are still in used today. Whilst there have been changes 
in the way plants are used and referred to, there is continuity of use and names over the more 
than 250 year period considered. 
This study has shed new light on Indian medicinal plant use in early modern times, and 
highlights how historical herbaria such as that of Samuel Browne’s are useful resources to 
address ethnobotanical questions.