Samuel Dale was born in 1659. He was apprenticed as an apothecary before moving to practice in Braintree, Essex in 1680. There, he befriended John Ray and began to pursue an interest in botany. Dale assisted Ray in the preparation of several publications and was became a correspondent of Sloane and Petiver. In 1693, he published Pharmacologia. He also contributed papers on natural history to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In later life, Dale was licenced as a physician by the Royal College of Physicians.

Dale assembled a herbarium that was bequeathed to the Society of Apothecaries following his death. It was kept at Chelsea Physic Garden as a discrete collection housed in specially made oak presses until 1869 when it was transferred to the British Museum. It was subsequently moved to South Kensington in 1881. Today, it forms part of the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum.

Dale’s herbarium comprises 2827 specimens, 458 of which have another collector named. The remainder (2369 specimens) we consider to have been collected by Dale himself. The collections span the period from 1692 until 1739, the year of Dale’s death.

Almost all of the dated specimens collected by Dale were made after 1709. Essex and Suffolk feature prominently among English localities although English gardens represent a more significant source of specimens. There are 435 specimens from Chelsea Physic Garden (collected between 1704 and 1738); 115 specimens from William Sherard’s garden in Eltham, most collected between 1722 and 1726; 41 from the Oxford Botanic Garden (collected in 1709); and 27 from Fulham Palace collected in 1711. Other notable gardens represented include those of Lord Petre (Old Thorndon Hall), Blathwayt (Dyrham Park), Jekyll (Hedingham), Fairchild (Hoxton), Collinson (Peckham), the Duchess of Beaufort (Chelsea), Uvedale (Enfield), Sir Charles Wager (Fulham) and DuBois (Mitcham). There are collections from Dale’s own garden and one specimen from the garden of John Ray.

Thirty individuals other than Dale himself are named on labels. Isaac Rand, Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1712, its Keeper in 1719 and its first Director from 1725 is named on 124 specimens. There is a collection of 99 specimens from Mark Catesby, including material he collected in Virginia, Carolina, Jamaica and the Bahamas between 1713 and 1726, along with six specimens from the Bahamas collected by Francis Dale in 1730.

Fifty eight specimens were contributed by the East India Company surgeon Edward Bulkley. Collected between 1700 and 1712, most are from Fort St George (= Chennai, India) where he was the company surgeon although some are from Ava (= Inwa) and Pegu (= Bago) in modern day Myanmar. Indian specimens collected by Alexander Brown in 1692 are also among the earliest dated specimens in the herbarium.

Most specimens are accompanied by labels in Dale’s neat and careful hand, detailing names and synonyms that apply to the specimen. Fifteen specimens have more than one label including provenance information. Where there is a second label, we have transcribed the earliest; details of the second label can be seen in the 'Additional labels' data resource below.

The specimens are mostly stored in the Botany Historic Collections Room (HCR) where they are curated in a family order. However, localised British material is stored in the British and Irish Herbarium in the main run.

The determinations given for HCR specimens are largely the families in which the specimens are curated (albeit updated to reflect the names used elsewhere in the botany collections eg Fabaceae, Asteraceae etc). In some cases, a second determination is provided. The Catesby specimens have been determined to species as have the specimens in the British and Irish Herbarium.

At present, very few of the specimens have been imaged but this is planned for the future.