Peter Collinson (botanist)

Peter Collinson (1694 to 1768) was an English gardener, botanist and horticulturist, a Fellow of the Royal Society who served as the middleman in an international exchange of scientific ideas in Georgian London. The son of a London woollen draper, he entered his father's business and developed an interest in botany; the family belonged to the Gracechurch Street Meeting of the Quakers. A cloth merchant by trade, largely with North America, his real love was gardening, and through business contacts he obtained seeds and plants from around the world. His collections, first at Peckham and later at Mill Hill, became famous. In the late 1730s he began importing North American seeds for English collectors by financing the travels of John Bartram, and each year he distributed Bartram's seeds to gentry, nurserymen and naturalists including Dillenius and Philip Miller. He was also patron of the artist and naturalist Mark Catesby. He wrote to Sir Hans Sloane in 1728 and was proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Society the same year, and he was a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital.