Flora Capensis: Sistens plantas promontorii Bonae Spei Africes

The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), a physician and pupil of Linnaeus, carried out his most important work in South Africa and Japan. Having studied in Amsterdam and Leiden, he was asked to go plant-hunting in areas where the Dutch East India Company's trading activities were opening up territory for scientific exploration. In 1771 he travelled to South Africa as a ship's doctor, spending three years searching for, classifying and propagating plants, while at the same time...