Peter Collinson (botanist)

A Fellow of the Royal Society and an avid gardener, Collinson served as the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in Georgian era London.

Collinson supported the struggle of Thomas Coram, William Hogarth, and others to establish a charitable institution that would welcome babies abandoned by their mothers.

He came to realise that there was a market for such things in England and, in the late 1730s, began to import North American botanical seeds for English collectors to grow through financing the travels of John Bartram.

Yearly, he distributed the New World seeds collected by Bartram to British gentry, nurserymen, and natural scientists including Dillenius, Philip Miller, Lord Petre, the Dukes of Richmond and Norfolk, James Gordon,[1] John Busch, etc.

His presentation copy of Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands was passed down to his grandson Charles Streynsham Collinson (1753-1834) and was sold for £15 10s after his death[2] Collinson maintained an extensive correspondence and was friendly with notable scientists in London and abroad including Sloane, Carl Linnaeus, Gronovius, Dr. John Fothergill, Cadwallader Colden, and Benjamin Franklin.