personality clash? We simply do not, and never will, know. But by 1781 Dombey had sent his specimens back to France. On their way back from Lima to Paris, his collections were captured by a British vessel and sent to the British Museum, together with invaluable notes on the cultivation of Cinchona (the only source of quinine, the only e ective anti- malarial drug of that time, and therefore of huge political and economic importance), where they stay to this day. Dombey le Peru for Chile and spent the next three years documenting its poorly known flora by collecting an incredible series of specimens. On his return to Europe and the Spanish port of Cadiz, his ill luck returned. His Chilean specimens were seized as property of the Spanish crown. Dombey fought a protracted legal battle for their release and export to France but lost. He was only allowed to return home with a fraction of his specimens and only if he agreed not to publish any findings until any Spanish works were complete. On his arrival back in Paris in 1785, Dombey found a city and a country on the verge of revolution. He soon fell into depression, perhaps because his four years in South America was deemed a failure, or perhaps because of the turmoil of the revolution. He petitioned the Revolutionary Directorate to leave France during the Reign of Terror and was tasked with crossing the Atlantic to meet Thomas Je erson and introduce France’s new metric system to the United States. He never made it. He was captured by pirates and died in exile on the Caribbean island of Monserrat. What does this have to do with our herbarium? Around a year ago, I came across a specimen in our collections. It was from Lima, Peru, and was collected by Dombey. With the help of my predecessor as curator, John Parnell, I started digging, and had soon come across several specimens, all collected by Dombey, and all from Lima. How could this be? All Dombey’s Peruvian collections were supposedly already accounted for in London. Our ‘smoking gun’ was a Dombey specimen with the words ‘herb Dugage’ written in the corner. This referred to Elizabeth Dugage de Pommereul, a French botanist and a contemporary of Dombey’s during his time at the Botanic Garden in Paris. Dugage was something unheard of in 18th century Paris; a female botanist. Dombey and Dugage were regular correspondents, and we now know he sent a letter to her when he arrived in Lima, containing a selection of specimens of the most beautiful flowering species from Lima. They were accompanied by specimens of grasses, Dugage’s passion and study group, and specimens of three species in a genus Dombey intended to name as the genus Dugagesia in her honour. Dombey’s letter was never answered. Dugage died of breast cancer before his letters arrived in Paris. Her herbarium was broken up and sold, with perhaps a significant part of it le undiscovered in Trinity until recently. The Dombey collections in Trinity's herbarium are one of our many treasures. They are among the earliest herbarium collections from South America held in any herbarium anywhere in the world. They are a legacy of kings, colonialism, and spies. Despite his turbulent life, our specimens show Dombey found the time to send a selection of beautiful flowers to a colleague and that he intended to dedicate a genus to her memory. Was she more than a colleague? We will never know, but we do know that there are many more stories as personal as they are political to be told from our herbarium.
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