This collection contains many valuable plants from all over the world; the oldest herbarium in the country, it is also one of the oldest in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1825, the Danish botanist Christian Friedrich Ecklon brought 325 species to the museum. Dr. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe came into possession of the collection in 1855, and was appointed the first Colonial Botanist in the Cape in 1858. Pappe also built his own private herbarium and bought that of Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher. After Pappe's death, the Cape Colony government purchased the Pappe and Zeyher collections. Since 1956, the three herbaria have been housed at Kirstenbosch with the Compton Herbarium, but they remain a separate union. Only in 1988 did they become the property of the South African National Biodiversity Institute.