The exhibition "Seeds of Exchange" at London's Garden Museum highlights a 1773 botanical collaboration between British amateur plant hunter John Bradby Blake and Cantonese painter Mak Sau. Centered on Blake’s unpublished "Flora Sinensis," the project attempted to systematically catalogue Chinese flora, including the Camellia japonica, through detailed watercolors that blended Western objective illustration with Chinese artistic expertise. These works served as the primary medium for introducing Chinese plant species to the West long before live specimens could survive the journey.
The article explores how these botanical illustrations are deeply intertwined with the history of British colonialism and "Company Science." While Blake’s project relied on cross-cultural collaboration, it also facilitated the British Empire’s eventual domination over global trade and knowledge production. By assimilating indigenous plants into the Linnaean classification system, the British displaced local naming and cultural significance, using botanical discovery as a tool for economic monopolization and imperial expansion.