This painting of Tapioca, which is also known by its scientific name of Jatropha manihot, can be found in the first volume of the the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings. Today, Tapioca is seen as the least nutritious of the poor man's foods. The collection consists of 477 watercolours of flora and fauna that had been painted for William Farquhar when he was the Resident of Malacca between 1803 and 1818, before he took up the post of the first Resident of Singapore from 1819 to 1823.
