Badminton florilegium, detail

It has long been known that Mary Somerset (née Capel), duchess of Beaufort (1630–1715), was a pre-eminent collector and patron of horticultural science (pl. 60).For the best survey of the duchess and collecting, see Douglas Chambers, ‘ “Storys of Plants”: The Assembling of Mary Capel Somerset’s Botanical Collection at Badminton’, Journal of the History of Collections, IX/1 (1997), 49–60. An excellent account of the duchess’s legacy through her hortus siccus is given in J. E. Dandy, ed., The Sloane Herbarium (London: Natural History Museum, 1958), 209–15. In the Catalogus plantarum of 1730 she was singled out for her ‘Collection . . . of the tender Exotick Plants’ in ‘those famous Gardens of Badmington [sic...