Rare Collection of BSI’s botanical paintings goes digital

Last Updated14/09/2021

An exquisite collection of rare paintings, dyes, fabrics, and type specimens of the Botanical Survey of India is all set to go public.
After an arduous decade-long exercise undertaken by the Botanical Survey of India, the entire collection of Roxburgh drawings was digitized earlier this month.
The collection will now be available at https://archive.bsi.gov.in.

Botanical painting is a school of painting that strives to infuse life and vibrancy into every part of a living thing with incredible, microscopic detail, with the flick of a brush.
Prior to the invention of photography, the botanical painting was an indispensable way to the study of Botany as it was the only existing way to visually record diverse plant species.
These paintings allowed botanists to have a better impression and understanding of novel plant species than several pages of written text that went alongside.

The rare and enticing collection of botanical paintings held by the Botanical Survey of India is a captivating record of India’s plant diversity.
It was back in the 1840s that the British botanist William Griffith discovered the rare holoparasitic flowering plant ‘Sapria Himalayana in Arunachal Pradesh.
In those times, there were not several ways to document newly discovered species of flora & fauna.
Thus, a botanical portrait of the plant with bright red flowers and sulphur yellow dots was made for the first time in 1842, by a painter named Lutchman Singh, near Kolkata.

The Central National Herbarium of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) has the biggest ever collection of botanical paintings.
It comprises close to 3,280 large botanical paintings made by about 20 painters, whose names appear on the paintings.

It was established in 1890 with the objectives of exploring the plant resources of the country and identifying plant species with economic virtue.
In 1954, the Government reorganised the BSI with following objectives:

Undertaking intensive floristic surveys and collecting accurate and detailed information on the occurrence, distribution, ecology and economic utility of plants in the country.
Collecting, identifying and distributing materials that may be of use to educational and research institutions
Acting as the custodian of authentic collections in well planned herbaria and documenting plant resources in the form of local, district, state and national flora. "