Research
Who was Hugh Cuming?
Hugh Cuming (1791-1865) was a British naturalist and collector, who set sail for the Philippines on the 15th of January, 1836. The excursion to the Philippines was not Cuming’s first journey abroad. By 1836, following many years voyaging and living in South America and Polynesia, Cuming had established himself as a prolific and successful collector. His trip to the Philippines was keenly anticipated by important figures in zoological and botanical circles including William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865) and the Edward, Thirteenth Earl of Derby (1775-1851). Naturalists in England were eager to learn more about what Cuming might discover in these relatively unexplored Islands.
During Cuming's voyages, he shipped around 130,000 specimens of dried plant material, several living orchid plants, 30,000 conchological species and varieties, and also large numbers of birds, reptiles, quadrupeds and insects. These collections were sold to and distributed among many individuals and institutions. Over 3000 dried plant specimens are now located in the Cambridge University Herbarium, making the collection a significant repository of material gathered by Cuming.
"Hugh Cuming" by Maull & Polyblank, circa 1855
(© National Portrait Gallery, London, licensed under CC BY 4.0). Resized from original.
What is the project?
Digitising Philippine Flora is an interdisciplinary collaborative project between the University of Cambridge Herbarium and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. The project aims to use Cuming's Philippine specimens to trace the story of Cuming’s voyage to the Philippine while situating the collection within the broader history of Philippine natural history. We started out with just a couple of boxes of unidentified plants found on a shelf in the back of the Herbarium and have since found and digitised over 3500 specimens within the Herbarium.
What information are we collecting?
The aim of this zooniverse project is to identify Cuming's specimens, and where possible record relevant local knowledge about plant names and uses. In doing so we hope to create an accessible database detailing this previously unknown collection of Philippine flora.
There are two strands to the zooniverse.
One strand is focused on identifying species from sheets which are do not have labels or identifiers.
The second strand is focused on gathering further information on plants which have already been identified. The purpose is to update the names of these species, or to correct mis-identifications. By asking about use and value, we hope to learn more about how these plants are understood from botanical and cultural perspectives.
