Herbarium: Colville Collection

James L Colville (1890-1974) was born in Glasgow where he trained as an ironmonger. He moved his business to Dundee to 1924, by which time he had already begun collecting botanical specimens. This collection comprises 1,635 sheets of British plants - mostly from the Tayside area collected by Colville or his friend and collaborator Ellis Crapper, but also a large number of English specimens from a Southport collector named F W Holder, with whom he regularly swapped plants. The entire collection (which dates from c.1910s-60s, though mostly 1940s-50s) was acquired at auction by Hugh Ingram, who then donated it to the University Herbarium.

A collection of Ellis Crapper's photographs and notebooks (the latter in collaboration with James Colville) is held in the University of St Andrews - click here for more information.

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