Carl Maximowicz Collection - Hector Foreign Herbarium Acquisition

Carl Johann Maximowicz (1827 – 1891) was a Russian botanist who studied the flora of Japan. He was the curator of the Herbarium at the Saint Petersburg Botanical Gardens from 1852, and Director from 1869.

Between 1860 and 1864, Maximowicz travelled extensively across Japan collecting hundreds of plant specimens, seeds, tubers and even living plants. At the end of this massive expedition, he sent 72 chests full of specimens back to Saint Petersburg Herbarium. Some of these specimens were destined to help him describe the Japanese flora, a project that took 16 years to complete.

In 1885, more than 1,500 specimens of Japanese and Manchurian (north East Asia) plants were acquired by the herbarium of the Natural History Museum (UK). From there, a subset of 84 specimens reached New Zealand. These are now part of Te Papa’s foreign plants collection.

Maximowicz collected many of the specimens we have at Te Papa but there are a few by Tschonoski (Chonosuke) Sukawa (1841 – 1925), Maximowicz’s assistant in Japan. After Maximowicz returned to Saint Petersburg, Tschonoski collected more herbarium specimens and seeds for Maximowicz, mostly from areas in the interior of Japan inaccessible to foreigners.

With the help of our volunteers and technical staff, this collection is now fully digitised. To see images of these specimens scroll down to "Related Objects".