‘Best job in the natural world’: seed collector enlisted as modern-day Darwin to document the world’s plants

Newly appointed expedition botanist Matthew Jeffery feels ‘daunted’ but inspired by his unique globetrotting role collecting wild species

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t was described as “the best job in the natural world”: an expedition botanist for Cambridge University Botanic Garden who would follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin and go on plant-collecting adventures around the world.

Within days of the job advertisement going viral, six people had sent it to Matthew Jeffery and suggested he apply.

“I was already working as a tree seed collector for the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens, collecting native trees from across the UK, and I’d done a lot of European plant exploring – particularly of alpine plants – on holidays with friends,” says Jeffery, 31, who has degrees in biology and plant taxonomy and had worked in horticulture at Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew.