Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
Open every day 10am-6pm
(except Christmas Day)
Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
The greatest flowers artists have been those who have found beauty in truth; who have understood plants scientifically, but who have seen and described them with the eye and hand of the artist.
– Wilfred Blunt, The Art of Botanical Illustration, 1950
Botanical illustration can serve the needs of botany, documenting and supporting the description of plants and flowers for science records. But it can also serve the needs of art, conveying the beauty of a plant to viewers. It can at once be precise, carefully measured and accurate, and aesthetically pleasing, capturing the fleeting colours of a flower in bloom, or of a herbarium specimen before its colours fade.
Te Papa, home to both the national art collection and the WELT Herbarium, holds a wide range of botanical illustrations, from Joseph Banks’ Florilegium to Sarah Featon’s exquisite 19th-century watercolours of Aotearoa’s indigenous flora.
Talented artist and botanist Nancy Adams had a passion for algae and seaweed. This small display of collected specimens and vivid watercolours celebrates the centenary of Adams’ birth.
On now
Wed 22 July – November 2026
Exhibition Ngā whakaaturanga
Nancy Adams (1926–2007) was one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most notable botanists and a talented artist. One of Te Papa’s most prolific botany collectors of all time, she also painted and drew an incredible number of botanical illustrations. She used her artwork to produce important books about Aotearoa New Zealand’s flora, including seaweeds, flowers, trees, and alpine plants.
Humanities technician Cassandra Bahr has been working in the Collected Archives at Te Papa, cataloguing and rehousing papers from people connected to Te Papa’s collecting areas. Here, she highlights the archives of scientific illustrator and orchid specialist Bruce Irwin (1921–2012).
Ever wondered how different people’s surnames end up as part of the scientific names given to plants and animals? It is considered very bad form to name a new species that you describe after yourself, but someone else might do it for you as a mark of respect. That is what happened to nineteenth century botanical collector and draughtsman to the Colonial Museum and Geological Survey, John Buchanan FLS (1819-1898).
Joseph Banks’ collection of coloured botanical engravings was painstakingly printed in a limited edition of 110 sets, titled Banks’ Florilegium.
In 1889 Sarah Featon and her husband Edward Featon published The Art Album of New Zealand Flora, in which they sought to dispute the ‘mistaken notion that New Zealand is peculiarly destitute of native flowers’.
Self-taught botanical artist, Georgina Burne Hetley published The native flowers of New Zealand in 1888 after travelling throughout the country collecting and drawing plants, which she believed were highly endangered and thus needed to be recorded for the future. It describes 45 species of flowers, accompanied by 36 stunning colour plates.
We have several copies of the so-called “blue books” of New Zealand ferns. These were produced by Herbert Dobbie and Eric Craig in the late nineteenth century and were made by a process akin to blueprinting, described by Dobbie himself as “a simple form of photography or nature printing” employing light-sensitive iron salts, most commonly on paper.
Published in 1885, this book includes 44 watercolour plates painted and described by Scottish born Hawaiian botanist Francis Sinclair.
Flora vitiensis: a description of the plants of the Viti or Fiji Islands with an account of their history, uses and properties is the result of the collaborative work of German botanist Berthold Carl Seemann (1825-1871) and Scottish botanical illustrator Walter Hood Fitch.
The magnificent plant world of Aotearoa New Zealand in art and object.
The authors of ‘Flora: Celebrating Our Botanical World’ discuss their work with Te Papa Press.
A luscious tribute to an early New Zealand botanical artist, by Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson.
The Essential Audrey Eagle: Botanical Art of New Zealand offers botanists, gardeners, and art lovers Audrey Eagle’s exquisite botanical artworks – in a compact, portable format.
Botanical artist Audrey Eagle, author of the Montana medal-winning ‘Eagle’s Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand’, talks about her remarkable life and work.
We are saddened to hear of the recent death of New Zealand botanical illustrator and author, Audrey Eagle (1925–2022).
Sarah Featon Kohekohe, about 1885, watercolour. Te Papa (1992-0035-2277/76)
Kowhai-ngutu-kaka. Clianthus puniceus, circa 1885, New Zealand, by Sarah Featon. Purchased 1919. Te Papa (1992-0035-2277/71)
New Zealand snow groundsels Dolichoglottis lyallii and Dolichoglottis scorzoneroides, 1885, by Sarah Featon. Te Papa (1992-0035-2277/34)
