At a meeting of the Royal Society in London, in 1789, Joseph Banks read a report by the naturalist Robert Saunders, who was then working in Bengal for the East India Company. By this time, Banks had emerged as Britain’s pre-eminent scientific organizer. Committed to the improvement of nature at home and across the world, he sought to ensure that botany would be of commercial benefit to empire.1 Through his oversight of an imperial network of botanists, Banks facilitated the global exchange of plants, crops and natural knowledge with the aim of maximizing the productivity of colonial territories.2 Saunders was a minor participant in this network. Several years earlier, he had joined a diplomatic mission from Bengal to Tibet via Bhutan, spending much of the trip gathering new ecological information. It was his account of the plants, soil and mineral resources he observed during this journey, which Banks communicated to fellow members of the Royal Society.