The herbarium of Meise Botanic Garden (BR) is full of stories. One of these stories highlights the importance of expert curation. The Belgian agronomist Henri Homblé collected plants in Guangxi, China, in 1909-1910, while teaching in Guilin. Troubles in the revolution year, 1911, in which the imperial monarchy was overthrown and the republic established, meant Homblé had to flee. He came to Belgium where he deposited his collection at BR, then moved to Congo. There Homblé was one of the first people to collect and document the flora of Katanga. Many Homblé specimens were described as taxonomic novelties; 107 tropical African plant species are named after him. His incompletely labelled Chinese collections were erroneously considered as collected in Katanga. This supposed African origin has led to confusion with regard to the identification, and even resulted in the description of four species believed to be new for science. Robbrecht E., De Smedt S., Goetghebeur P., Stoffelen P. & Verloove F. (2021) Four flowering plant species described from Katanga (Democratic Republic of Congo) are based on specimens collected in Guangxi, China, Blumea 66(1): 82-92 https://doi.org/10.3767/blumea.2021.66.01.04