The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained
Wellcome Collection, London, July 2024 - February 2025
Curated by Nathan Bossoh & Ruth Horry
The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained is a display exploring the global histories, vibrant traditions, and new innovations surrounding the Kola nut, a small bitter-tasting fruit found growing across Western African tropical forests.
This bitter-tasting fruit has been important in West African culture and trade since at least the 11th century. Consumed as a stimulant due to its high caffeine content, kola has many religious, medicinal and social uses, and is a ritual symbol of goodwill and unity.
During the 19th century, kola nut was used as an ingredient for European and American products, including Coca-Cola, chocolate, and Western medicines.
These West African kola nuts in an English glass jar are one of many thousands of medicinal plant specimens in Henry Wellcome’s museum collection. There is no information so far about how this jar entered the collection, but it is part of a set of plant specimens that may have been acquired at a London auction house. The label suggests it was originally collected for economic botany (the study of plants for their potential uses).
A seating area in the second room of the gallery space where people sit down, relax, reflect, and engage with cards provided on the table writing down their personal cultural connections to the Kola nut or other plants of significance to them.
A section about pioneering nanobiotechnological research on the kola nut actively being carried out by Professor Agbaje Lateef and his team at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria. His innovative research shows potential sustainable uses of the kola nut in areas such as food, agriculture environment and healthcare.
