Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The algae collection at the present time contains over 25,000 specimens which includes over 10,000 British collections and a small bottle collection (nearly 500 specimens). The oldest specimen is a Scottish red alga collected in 1779 by Archibald Menzies. The British algae collectors in Victorian times worked extensively in the Devon and Dorset region and Mrs Amelia Warren Griffiths was one of several lady collectors working in this area. Orkney was a collectors dream with people like Dr John Hutton Pollexfen and later in the 1930s and 1940s with J. Sinclair. Robert Kaye Greville and George William Traill also made extensive collections which are now held at RBGE. In modern times the vast collection of David Irvine was added, followed by that of Helen Caldwell, and more recently a collection from the west coast of Scotland by staff of Scottish Natural Heritage. The foreign collection covers most parts of the world. Of particular interest are the algae collected in Kerguelens Land during the Challenger Expedition of 1874 and those collected during the 1875 Transit of Venus Expedition. Amongst the foreign collections those of William Henry Harvey are noteable.