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The European Discovery of the Indian Flora
Abstract
List of plates The ancient world The first European settlements Arrival of the British Botanical research begins Sir William Jones The Roxburgh era Francis Buchanan Calcutta Botanic Garden after Roxburgh Other botanical gardens William Griffith and Robert Wight The Himalayas Ceylon Pursuit of the picturesque A century of change The search for useful plants Green medicine Tea and opium Rubber, coffee, and forestry Gardening in India Indian flowers in European gardens Transportation of plants Epilogue Bibliography Index.
... Based on his collection, 22 new species were described by Thomas Nuttall (1853). The finest snow-white Rhododendron nuttallii labelled as Prince of Rhododendrons, was also described from the same collection (Desmond 1992). ...
... This specimen was ticketed by his uncle Thomas Nuttall with his own name. Though Nuttall never visited India, but he labelled, studied and deposited the material of Booth (Desmond 1992, Noltie 1983). ...
Pyrrosia boothii is a rare fern of Eastern Himalayan sect with a narrow distribution and listed under the different categories of IUCN. During British Raj in India this species was reported only from Bhutan. Though there are some collections from Sikkim but they remain unnoticed for nearly a century, furthermore, there is no collection of this species from Sikkim by subsequent Indian workers. Recently present author recollected it from Sikkim after the gap of nearly 125 years. During the typification Hovenkamp cited Holotype but the species was published with syntypes which is corrected here. In present communication history, collection, taxonomy, nomenclature and typification of this rare fern are discussed in brief.
... His lectures caught the attention of John Clark Marshman (1794-1877), editor of the weekly Friend of India, who encouraged the East India Company (EIC) to hire Helfer (Nostitz 1878). One of the EIC's earliest business interests were nutmegs and other spices produced by British settlements in Penang, Malacca, Amboina, Sumatra, and further islands of the Malay Archipelago, and the importance of these plant resources had led the Company to recommend the founding of a botanic garden in Calcutta in 1787, which became the nucleus of the modern botanical exploration of India (Desmond 1992;Thomas 2006). ...
... Helfer's insect, bird, and plant collections reached Europe by two routes. In 1858, when the East India Company was abolished, Kew (K), at the request of Joseph Hooker, received from the cellars of East India House "eleven wagon-loads" of dried plants and many drawings from Calcutta (Desmond 1992). Hooker supervised the identification of the material, and the distribution of duplicates, which were given Kew distribution numbers and labels. ...
Between 1836 and 1840, Jan Vilém Helfer collected thousands of insects, birds and plants in Burma, the Andaman Islands and the Mergui Archipelago, with many first records from these regions. His botanical specimens are preserved in Prague, Kew, Calcutta and many other herbaria. Yet no account has been published of his itinerary, and the volume of his collections has not previously been appreciated. We bring together the available data on Helfer, reconstruct his itinerary and the two routes by which his plants were distributed, and explain the different numbering systems used on the labels of Helfer's duplicates. Based on what his widow transferred to the Czech National Museum in Prague, Helfer collected almost 48,000 beetles, 609 bird skins, 14 mammal skins, 508 Lepidoptera, and 6,086 herbarium specimens or collections. His diaries and his wife's account of their travels have allowed us to reconstruct his itinerary, and we have generated new labels for 305 collections, most of which have two or three duplicates. Helfer's Burmese and Andaman herbarium contains some of the first records of economically important plants in which he was particularly interested.
... Botanical exploration of Sri Lanka started in the seventeenth century under Dutch colonial rule (Desmond, 1992). After 1796, however, Britain took over as the ruling power and Ceylon became a Crown Colony, which led the way to establishment of the first Royal Botanic Garden in 1812 at two lowland sites near Colombo (Noltie, 2007(Noltie, , 2013. ...
... After 1796, however, Britain took over as the ruling power and Ceylon became a Crown Colony, which led the way to establishment of the first Royal Botanic Garden in 1812 at two lowland sites near Colombo (Noltie, 2007(Noltie, , 2013. The first 'Superintendant and Chief Gardener' was William Kerr (Desmond, 1992) who died in 1814 after only 2 years in the post and was succeeded in 1817 by the Kew-trained Scot Alexander Moon, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks in London. After 4 years, Moon set up the present botanic garden and herbarium at Peradeniya in the central highlands, and put Sri Lankan botany on a firmer foundation (Burkill, 1965). ...
This overview presents a historical summary of the past collectors of bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, and some of the researchers who studied and published the results of their explorations. The first British collectors of the early nineteenth century were linked with the development of the Botanic Garden and herbarium in Peradeniya, of which George Gardner and George Thwaites made the greatest contributions, resulting in three publications by William Mitten on both mosses and liverworts. By the mid-nineteenth century, collectors from other countries took the lead, firstly Johannes Nietner from Germany and Odoardo Beccari from Italy. By the early twentieth century, Victor Schiffner from Austria and Max Fleischer from Germany became the leading bryologists throughout SE Asia, and both visited Ceylon. Fleischer’s work was part of a monographic revision of all mosses resulting in many new genera and species. After Fleischer, the most important bryologist was the German Theodor Herzog, who was the first to describe the ecological structure and bryological richness of different forest zones in southern Ceylon, with insight into forest loss from agricultural and population expansion, and a summary of biogeographical links of the bryoflora. The English bryologist H.N. Dixon took over from Mitten in describing many new moss species. Since independence in 1948, bryology in Sri Lanka has had major input from some local bryologists, such as B.A. Abeywickrama, as well as several important visitors, notably H. Inoue from Japan, C.C. Townsend from England, P.P.M. Tixier from France, and Maurice Onraedt from Belgium. Awareness in Sri Lanka of the need to taxonomically revise the extensive and scattered herbarium collections, has led to the running of some bryophyte workshops and training of new Sri Lankan bryologists. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to produce the first comprehensive bryophyte flora of the country, and priorities for future work are outlined.
... Much of the information he collected was never published but many of his plant collections were incorporated in the East India Company Herbarium, now housed at Kew and usually referred to as the Wallich collection. (Desmond, 1992;Watson & Noltie, 2016). Strobilanthes hamiltoniana was first collected by Buchanan-Hamilton on 29 November 1808. ...
Strobilanthes hamiltoniana is described and illustrated. It is named after Francis Buchanan‐Hamilton who discovered it in Assam in 1808. Over the years, it has been known under different names which reflect both taxonomic changes and the variability of the species. Wild forms from the Himalayan region are predominantly white‐ or pale lilac‐flowered, whereas cultivated and naturalized plants found elsewhere are pink‐flowered and nearly always sterile. Propagation is, therefore, by cuttings. It is widely cultivated in places with a tropical climate or where tropical conditions can be replicated. It has become widely naturalized and even invasive on some oceanic islands.
... But after the visit of Linnaeus's pupil J.G. Koenig in India, and joining the society of "The United Brothers" at Tranquebar in 1768, an extensive, organized with collaboration with more than one institutions or organizations. The research articles on the history of botanical explorations in India, time to time were published by several stalwarts such as King (1899), Agharkar (1949), Biswas (1943), Santapau (1956), Burkill (1965), Subramanyam (1977), Stewart (1982), Desmond (1992), Rau (1994) and Pandurangan et al. (2015) etc. The detailed comprehensive account of history of plant explorations of India with details of plant explorers is described by the author. ...
The paper contains details of history of plant explorations of Indian subcontinent
... Mysore (now Mysuru, Karnataka) in the early 19 th century was the center of the princely state of Mysore in Southern India. Heyne also participated in a general agricultural survey of the Mysore and Malabar territories (Roy, 1986: 26), and his other scientific activities were also confined to Southern India (see Bor, 1954;Stewart, 1982;Desmond, 1992;Watson, Noltie, 2016;etc.). ...
Nomenclatural corrections and comments are provided on several taxa of Chenopodiaceae occurring in the Himalayas and Xizang/Tibet and adjacent areas, following the recent monographic revision of the family in that region and earlier publications. In particular, the original identity of the name Atriplex bengalensis (Chenopodium bengalense) is discussed and it is confirmed, based on additional evidence, that the name was originally (before its epitypification in 2014) applicable to a robust diploid of the Chenopodium ficifolium aggregate, not to the robust hexaploid currently known as C. giganteum. It is thus also concluded that the recent proposal by Mosyakin and Mandák (2018) to conserve the name C. giganteum with a conserved type corresponding to the current understanding and application of that name will best serve nomenclatural stability. A nomenclatural solution alternative to the proposal to reject the name A. bengalensis might be the following: (1) to conserve the name Atriplex bengalensis with a conserved type (in fact, to reject the current epitype that taxonomically differs from the lectotype) and (2) to conserve simultaneously the name C. ficifolium against C. bengalense. The nomenclaturally paradoxical situation with the names Chenopodium pallidum, C. harae, and Atriplex pallida (all now considered homotypic, as justified by Mosyakin and McNeill in 2018), which emerged from the conflicting lectotypification and epitypification of the name C. pallidum, is revisited and reconsidered. Possible options for dealing with that nomenclatural problem are outlined: (1) keeping the status quo, (2) proposing to conserve the name C. pallidum with a conserved type other than the standing lectotype, and (3) proposing to reject the name C. pallidum. The last option is considered preferable. Additional considerations are presented on a possible taxonomic identity of Chenopodium strictum as originally described by Roth; it is confirmed that that name was misapplied to a widespread Eurasian tetraploid species now properly known as C. betaceum. The identity of the name Bassia fiedleri is discussed; being a replacement name for Echinopsilon divaricatum, it is homotypic with Bassia divaricata (Kar. & Kir.) Kuntze (nom. illeg., non F. Muell.) and is a taxonomic synonym of Grubovia dasiphylla (as correctly stated by Kadereit and Freitag in 2011), but not a synonym of Bassia scoparia. Several comments on type designations of selected taxa of Chenopodiaceae from the Sino-Himalayan region are provided as well; e.g., for Acroglochin persicarioides and associated names, Chenopodium karoi, and Salsola monoptera.
... Griffith, born at Ham in Surrey, was perhaps the most adept and energetic botanist in India at that date (Desmond 1992), having studied under John Lindley in London. In late 1835 Wallich had been sent on Company business to Assam to investigate indigenous tea plants. ...
In 1840, Theodore Edward Cantor, nephew of Nathaniel Wallich, served as an assistant surgeon with the British forces on an expedition to China during the First Opium War. Cantor, a keen naturalist, was requested to use the opportunity to collect natural history specimens for the East India Company. Despite only spending four months on Chusan (Zhoushan), Cantor managed to amass a considerable number of specimens on the voyage and during the time in China. Cantor sought assistance from William Griffith with the identification of the plants, Edward Blyth with the birds, William Benson with the molluscs and Frederick Hope with the insects. Cantor published an account of Chusan and its fauna in Annals and magazine of natural history in 1842, but he also submitted the work to the Asiatic Society of Bengal to be published in Asiatick researches with many coloured plates and a chapter on the plants by William Griffith. The cost and slow progress with producing the plates contributed to the demise of Asiatick researches and the failure to publish the Chusan report as intended William Griffith's paper on the botany was issued in a small number of preprints paginated either from 1 or from 33 in late 1844 or very early 1845. Sets of the twelve hand-coloured lithograph plates that were completed were issued with proof copies of pp 1-32 representing the introductory material written by Cantor as Zoology of Chusan, probably in 1847.
... The teachers are requested to go through the relevant publications on the AJC Bose Indian Botanic Garden pertaining to its history, illustrated floristic accounts, plants that are likely to be found in each division, about the monuments, etc. before bringing their students for a visit. Their attention is being drawn to four such publications (Bose ef al., 1987; Desmond, 1992; Chowdhery & Pandey, 2007; Robinson, 2008) which would be helpful to them. ...
Note: Some of the information given in this article have changed. The teachers and students are requested to get in touch with the garden authorities for the latest information.
When, how, and why did the Himalaya become the highest mountains in the world? In 1800, Chimborazo in South America was believed to be the world's highest mountain, only succeeded by Mount Everest in 1856. Science on the Roof of the World tells the story of this shift, and the scientific, imaginative, and political remaking needed to fit the Himalaya into a new global scientific and environmental order. Lachlan Fleetwood traces untold stories of scientific measurement and collecting, indigenous labour and expertise, and frontier-making to provide the first comprehensive account of the East India Company's imperial entanglements with the Himalaya. To make the Himalaya knowable and globally comparable, he demonstrates that it was necessary to erase both dependence on indigenous networks and scientific uncertainties, offering an innovative way of understanding science's global history, and showing how geographical features like mountains can serve as scales for new histories of empire.
十九世紀初旅居廣州、澳門的英人社群曾在澳門設置一個小型博物館，這個存在僅五年、久遭遺忘的博物館晚近在國際學界受到注意，但現有研究並未充分說明此博物館為何會在該時機點出現在該地，也未說明此博物館的基本特徵和意義。憑藉當時報刊文章、日記、遊記、書信中的零星資料，本文嘗試建立該博物館的基本人事時地物資訊，並進一步探索此個案所透露的歷史意義。
由於孟加拉亞洲學會及其附屬博物館是這個澳門博物館推動者的主要參照對象，當時正逐漸形成的亞洲學會網絡因此是幫助我們瞭解此博物館的第一層脈絡。又由於博物館展品有許多屬於自然史類標本，當時英、印、中之間所形成的自然史資訊與物質的流通網絡遂為本文所強調的第二層脈絡。尤其是以加爾各答植物園為中心所構成的植物與種子交換網絡，亦可見到與澳門博物館有關的人員之參與。藉由梳理廣、澳與當時加爾各答、倫敦在自然史方面的往來關係，本文還原了澳門博物館在一個全球性流通網絡的重要節點地位。
再以歷史縱深來看，澳門英人社群雖因規模過小而在當時無法成立一個亞洲學會，但其經驗多少促成後來移居香港、上海的英、美人社群的相關組織，本文結論部分因此連帶說明此澳門博物館的歷史遺緒。
In the early nineteenth century, British expatriates living in Canton and Macau established a small museum in Macau. Having existed for only five years from 1829 to 1834, the museum was all but forgotten until recent international academic studies revived interest in the institution. However, existing research does not fully explain why this museum emerged then and there, nor does it examine its basic characteristics and broader implications. Relying on fragments of evidence from news articles, diaries, travelogues, and written correspondence at the time, this article investigates the people, circumstances, times, places, and material objects related to the museum in order to further explore the case and reveal its historical significance.
This article is structured into two main parts. The first part discusses the museum’s origins, location, and collections, as well as the individuals involved in its founding and operations. The second part explores the larger context, including relevant institutions and networks of exchanges among them. Because the Asiatic Society of Bengal and its affiliated museum were the primary models for this British museum in Macau, understanding the Royal Asiatic Society network that was gradually forming at the time can help to clarify the museum’s historical context. Moreover, this article emphasizes the natural history information and material flows among Britain, India, and China, since India’s involvement in this network has been particularly neglected in earlier research. Specifically, the Calcutta Botanic Garden constituted one of the hubs within this plant and seed exchange network, in which people related to this British museum in Macau participated. By sorting through natural history exchanges among relevant individuals then living in Canton, Macau, Calcutta, and London, this article restores this museum to its proper place in history as an important node in several global networks.
In historical perspective, the British community in Macau was too small to establish a local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as they had intended. However, as British and American expatriates moved to Hong Kong and Shanghai in later years, their experiences in Macau contributed to the establishment of similar societies. In light of those activities, it can be concluded that this British museum in Macau, despite its short-lived existence, had a lasting historical legacy.
In the early nineteenth century, British expatriates living in Canton and Macau established a small museum in Macau. Having existed for only five years from 1829 to 1834, the museum was all but forgotten until recent international academic studies revived interest in the institution. However, existing research does not fully explain why
this museum emerged then and there, nor does it examine its basic characteristics and broader implications. Relying on fragments of evidence from news articles, diaries, travelogues, and written correspondence at the time, this article investigates the people,
circumstances, times, places, and material objects related to the museum in order to further explore the case and reveal its historical significance.
This article is structured into two main parts. The first part discusses the museum’s origins, location, and collections, as well as the individuals involved in its founding and operations. The second part explores the larger context, including relevant institutions and networks of exchanges among them. Because the Asiatic Society of Bengal and its affiliated museum were the primary models for this British museum in Macau, understanding the Royal Asiatic Society network that was gradually forming at the time can help to clarify the museum’s historical context. Moreover, this article emphasizes
the natural history information and material flows among Britain, India, and China, since India’s involvement in this network has been particularly neglected in earlier research. Specifically, the Calcutta Botanic Garden constituted one of the hubs within this plant
and seed exchange network, in which people related to this British museum in Macau participated. By sorting through natural history exchanges among relevant individuals then living in Canton, Macau, Calcutta, and London, this article restores this museum to
its proper place in history as an important node in several global networks.
In historical perspective, the British community in Macau was too small to establish a local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as they had intended. However, as British and American expatriates moved to Hong Kong and Shanghai in later years, their experiences in Macau contributed to the establishment of similar societies. In light of those activities, it can be concluded that this British museum in Macau, despite its shortlived existence, had a lasting historical legacy.
This article assembles scattered pieces of evidence to demonstrate that the famous Chinese “Selden map”, acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1659, was duplicated in the later seventeenth century by the Oxford mathematician and orientalist Edward Bernard (1673–91), as part of his abortive attempt to edit a definitive corpus of classical and post-classical mathematical texts. It was Bernard’s copy, and not the original Selden map, that was publicly exhibited in Oxford in the eighteenth century. Some discussion is also furnished of other Chinese maps received in contemporary Oxford comparable to the Selden map, notably what I name the “Brown/Styleman” map, presented to the Bodleian Library in 1698. These discussions will help us to rethink how contemporary European scholars might have approached oriental maps.
On 28 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina burst the levees of New Orleans.1 The storm and resulting flood brought about one of the three most serious natural disasters in American history.2 In comparison to other past natural disasters perhaps only the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004 will have made such a decisive psychical impression on popular memory and attitudes. But the 2005 flood had two almost equally sizeable predecessors; the Mississippi floods of 1927 and 1937; events that certainly loomed large in American history and in landmark works in the written history of the global environment. In particular these floods prompted Gordon East to write The geography behind history, published the year after the 1937 flood.3 In it East warned that:
If only by its more dramatic interventions, a relentless nature makes us painfully aware of the uneasy terms on which human groups occupy and utilise the earth. The common boast that man has become master of his world has a hollow ring to it when we recall the recurrent floods and famines which afflict the peasants of northern China, the devastating floods of the Mississippi in 1937, the more recent destruction by ice of View Falls bridge across the Niagara river, the assertion that in Central Africa ‘the desert is on the move’, the widespread soil erosion in parts of Africa and the Middle West of the United States and finally the continual threat of drought which hangs over the great grain lands of the world — alike in the United States, Canada and South Russia. These and similar happenings or forebodings serve to emphasise the fact that, even for peoples which have reached high levels of material culture, the physical environment remains a veritable Pandora’s Box, ever ready to burst out and scatter its noxious contents.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in the strategies employed by Europeans for gathering natural-historical, ethnographic, and geographical knowledge beyond the confines of the metropolis in the context of European expansion. Academic attention has focused in two main directions. One examines the specificity of these modes of ‘field’ inquiry in contrast to the more common focus in science studies on knowledge making in the controlled setting of the laboratory.1 The other looks at the genre of ‘instructions to travellers’—often written by sedentary men of science in Europe—aimed at teaching travellers what to observe in foreign lands, how to regulate and standardize their gestures and techniques when collecting the requisite objects, and, finally, how to report on them.2
As these quotes demonstrate, the pervasiveness of nineteenth-century European belief in the power of environments to affect health meant that discerning and mitigating its adverse effects took on particular importance in empire. Contemporaries held that imperialism displaced European bodies, and sometimes even minds, by subjecting them to unknown environmental influences, the effects of which could have immediate and far-reaching impacts. Tropical climates sapped the fighting powers of British soldiers or prevented administrators from efficiently overseeing empire while by the early-twentieth century, the spectre of white degeneration in the settler colonies and in India haunted policymakers, leading to increased government intervention in society to alleviate its ill effects. To colonists, indeed, the very security of the British Empire seemed to hinge on the interaction of people and environments. Fears of tropical climates prevented permanent European migration to India and, at different times, to parts of tropical Australia, but made India’s higher altitudes attractive, along with migration to temperate parts of Australasia. Europeans encountered existing unhealthy environments, but could also, through pollution, create equally dangerous places. As well as facilitating the migration of people from India to Australasia, anxieties about the environmental impacts on health stimulated detailed environmental health surveys, anti-pollution legislation, urban tree planting, and the introduction of plants such as eucalyptus, which were believed to improve the health of a particular locality.
Cynoglossum marifolium was described and validly named in 1824, in a posthumous publication of Roxburgh. Clarke in 1885 unaccountably relegated it to the synonymy of Heliotropium marifolium Retz., where it has since remained, even though the original description forbids such placement. No original specimen is known to exist, but an original watercolour drawing inscribed "Cynoglossum marifolium R.", commissioned by Roxburgh from an unknown Indian artist, was recently offered for sale and has been acquired for the Palermo Herbarium (PAL-Gr). It is here designated as lectotype. An almost identical drawing exists at Kew. Roxburgh's plant's correct identity is Bothriospermum marifolium (Roxb.) DC., a species that has so far been confused with the closely related B. zeylanicum (J. Jacq.) Druce.
The Danish-Norwegian colony of Tranquebar in south-east India is a little explored case of science and ‘patriotic enlightenment’ in the colonial world of the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the period 1768–1813, Tranquebar emerged as a local south Indian hub of science and improvement. The symbol of this development was the establishment of the Tranquebarian Society, the third learned society east of the Cape of Good Hope. The article examines the unique assemblage of scientific networks, people, instruments, institutions, and ideas of local and global origin that converged in Tranquebar, and it investigates the fusion of local problems and radical ideas of enlightenment, education, and improvement that united government, mission, and merchants in Tranquebar in the quest for ‘useful knowledge’.
In the nineteenth century, place bore immediately and urgently on questions of imperialism, race, and health. This article considers European strategies to control local environments and improve healthiness through the exchange of people, plants, ideas and garden designs between India and Australia. Migration removed Europeans from unhealthy environments, either permanently (to Australia and elsewhere) or temporarily (to hill stations in India). Trees like the eucalyptus were introduced into India to enhance European health, based on belief they drained sources of disease. I argue a crucial new understanding of the intersection between health and place in the nineteenth-century British Empire can be provided by tracing the networks through which people, plants, and ideas moved to consider the broader imperial frameworks.
research South Asia provides evidence for introduced banana cultivars that are surprisingly early in the Indus Valley but late elsewhere in India. Although phytolith data are still limited, systematic samples from fourteen sites in six regions suggest an absence of bananas from most of Neolithic/Chalcolithic South Asia, but presence in part of the Indus valley. Evidence from textual sources and historical linguistics from South Asia and from China suggest the major diffusion of banana cultivars was in the later Iron Age or early historic period, c. 2000 years ago. Nevertheless Harappan period phytolith evidence from Kot Diji, suggests some cultivation by the late third or early second millennium B.C., and the environmental context implies hybridization with Musa balbisiana Colla had already occurred. Evidence of wild banana seeds from an early Holocene site in Sri Lanka probably attests to traditions of utilisation of M. balbisiana, a plausible area for hybridization with cultivated Musa acuminata Colla bananas, perhaps already being moved by the later third millennium B.C. Hybridization here, and/or in the New Guinea area now seems more plausible than hybridization in northern Southeast Asia (from Burma through Eastern India) as Simmonds had hypothesized.
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