BOTANICAL APPENDICES 
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APPENDIX II. 
LIST OF THE KNOWN PLANTS OCCURRING IN 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA, 
NYASALAND, AND THE BRITISH TERRITORY NORTH OF 
THE ZAMBEZI 
COMPILED, BY PERMISSION OF THE DIRECTOR, FROM MATERIALS IN THE 
HERBARIUM OF THE ROYAL GARDENS, KEW 
By I. H. BURKILL, M.A. 
The following list, compiled for the most part from the plants and manuscript records 
in the Herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Kew, must be regarded as provisional. The 
knowledge of the flora of the British territory north of the Zambezi has been so rapidly 
extended during recent years, and is yet so imperfectly known, that any account 
approaching completeness is at present impossible. Little has been published hitherto, 
and the facts now collected together will serve to bring into one view nearly all we 
know of the Botany of British Central Africa. 
The first collections were made by two members of the Livingstone Expedition 
in the years 1861, 1862. Dr. (afterwards Sir) John Kirk and Mr. J. C. Meller, while 
exploring the course of the Shire River and wandering in the Mananja hills, made 
considerable collections, which were transmitted to Kew, some of them in time 
for description in the Flora of Tropical Africa. Subsequently Dr. Kirk journeyed 
up the Zambezi into the Batoka country, from the highlands of which and from the 
region of the Victoria Falls other plants were sent home. The new species 
gathered by him were described in a variety of different publications. In the 
following years Mr. Horace Waller, residing in the Mananja hills, continued to 
transmit plants to Dr. Kirk, who was at that time H.M.’s Consul in Zanzibar. After 
this comes a gap of some years in which nothing was added to our knowledge, 
until Dr. Emil Holub, in 1879, returned from a journey during which he had made 
considerable collections. Of these, a few of the plants had been gathered about 
Sesheke, almost the most northern point which he reached, and within the territory 
under consideration. At the same time (1878) Major Serpa Pinto made, in his 
journey across the continent, a small collection ' on the table-land over the river 
Ninda, and the plants of this were, in 1881, described in the Transactions of the 
Linncean Society. Again in this year, 1878, the late Mr. John Buchanan sent to Kew 
his first collection of Nyasaland plants, and Mr. L. Scott travelled collecting through 
the Shire Highlands to the head of Lake Nyasa. 
From this date our knowledge has steadily grown. Under the influence and with 
the help of Sir Harry Johnston, the region of the Shire Highlands has been 
energetically explored. The frequent mention below of the names of J. Buchanan, 
G. F. Scott-Elliot, J. McClounie, J. Last, A. Whyte, and K. C. Cameron shows how 
much has been done in this region. Further north, in 1879, Mr. Joseph Thomson 
