Walter Broadway Papers

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This collection consists of papers relating to Broadways work in the Botanic gardens and Agricultural departments of the West Indies. There are a number of notebooks containing registers and lists of plants collected by Broadway (BDW/1), as well as loose papers and correspondence (BDW/2) which relate to his research into West Indian Plants, most notably his work with Trinidad Ferns (BDW/3). The collection includes a series of published material in the form of pamphlets and article off prints which relate to American Botany, collected by Broadway (BDW/4)

Walter E. Broadway was born in Exbury, Hampshire in 1865. He started his career as a gardener at Kew, before spending 30 years working in the Agricultural departments of Trinidad and the Windward Islands. He was an enthusiastic Botanist and collector, collecting in the West Indies [Caribbean], Venezuela and French Guiana. Broadway's first appointment in the West Indies was as Assistant Superintendent at the Botanic Gardens, Trinidad in 1888. Broadway became a well-known collector of Trinidad and South American Antophyta and Bryophyta (duplicates of his specimens can be found in more than 25 foreign herbaria).From 1894 to1905 he worked as Curator of the Botanic Gardens, Grenada. After leaving this post he went on to start up his own nursery business. Broadway then became Curator of the Botanic Gardens, Tobago, from 1910 to 1915; in 1914 he became Horticulturalist to the Department of Agriculture, Trinidad, and moved back to Trinidad in 1915 to work as the Assistant Botanist from 1915 to 1922. As well as his official posts in employment in the West Indies, Broadway was Secretary to the Trinidad Horticultural Society and Beekeepers Association, and had started his own nursery business in 1905 after leaving the appointment of Curator of the Botanic Gardens, Grenada. He also contributed to a number of botanic journals and publications, including Orchid Rev, as well as publishing his own work in a book entitled 'The Bromeliaceae of Trinidad and Tobago' (1933).Walter Broadway was considered to be an authority on West Indian Plants as a result of his experience gained there. For his services to Horticulture throughout his life he received the M.B.E in the 1934 Kings Birthday Honours. Specimens from his plant collecting can be found at BM(NH), Berlin, and at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew