Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort's (1630-1715) plate

These ‘anomalous lower plants’ are primarily lichens, such as reindeer moss. Today, lichens are not considered plants, although traditionally they have been studied as plants. They are a symbiotic relationship between fungi and photosynthetic bacteria. The diversity of lichens only started to be unpicked about four decades after the publication of Part 3 of the Historia. This was the research of Johann Jakob Dillenius (1687-1747), first Sherardian Professor of Botany in Oxford, which was published as the Historia Muscorum (1741).

This plate, sponsored by Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715), is the only one of the 292 plates in the Historia to have been sponsored by a woman. Moreover, among all the plates’ sponsors, the Duchess is only one of two people to have left a botanical mark; the other is Petrus Houttuyn (1648-1709), professor of botany at the University of Leiden. Her garden at the Beaufort’s seat at Badminton was renowned for the diversity of plants growing and the range of species her gardeners attempted to grow. Her glasshouses were among the finest in Europe. She was an intimate part of the circle around John Ray (1627-1705), William Sherard (1659-1728), Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and James Petiver (c.1665-1718), building her own extensive herbarium, which she bequeathed to Sloane. Her garden in Chelsea eventually became the site for the Chelsea Physic Garden.