“It really is mind-blowing,” says Dr Gwilym Lewis, head of the Legume Section at the Kew Herbarium. “Science, and knowledge generally, is becoming ever more specialised. So to find someone who can bring together such very different worlds as art and science in a beautiful object that is also a coherent piece of scientific research is very rare and inspiring.” Perhaps most important of all, the painting is an embodiment of, and indeed a hymn of praise to, the Kew Herbarium, one of the world’s great scientific institutions.