At Botany Bay, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander were astounded to find so many plants unknown to European science. It set them off on a collecting spree.
Joseph Banks, 3 May 1770:
Our collection of Plants was now grown so immensly large that it was necessary that some extrordinary care should be taken of them least they should spoil in the books.
In England, the specimens collected by Banks and Solander changed understandings of global botany.
The first gymea lily
The local people of Kamay have a deep-seated knowledge of these plants, many of which continue to have practical and cultural importance. Communities and scientists have started working together to inscribe this knowledge into Western botanical collections.