Francis Blackwell Forbes (August 11, 1839 – May 2, 1908) was an American botanist with expertise in Chinese seed-producing plants who also worked as a merchant and opium trader in Asia.
Due in part to his family's deep involvement with the opium trade, Forbes developed a lifelong interest in the poppy and other plants.
This led to his capstone work, the multi-volume survey An Enumeration of All the Plants Known from China Proper, Formosa, Hainan, Corea, the Luchu Archipelago, and the Island of Hongkong.
His coauthor was the British botanist William Hemsley (who is said to have done the bulk of the work on the later stages of the project, owing to Forbes's time being limited by outside business commitments), and the illustrations were by Matilda Smith.
It met with lavish praise from such contemporary experts on Asian flora as Karl Maximovich and Ferdinand von Richthofen.
[6] The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) holds documents pertaining to his plant-collecting activities, including botanical notebooks for the years 1869–1880s.