FORESTS & GARDENS OF SOUTH INDIA:DRAWINGS COMMISSIONED BY HUGH CLEGHORN

14 May to 4 July 2010

Exhibition Guide by H.J. Noltie

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh,Arboretum Place/Inverleith Row,EDINBURGH. EH3 5LR.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5.30pm. Admission free.

To download exhibition text contact: Email ihouse@rbge.ac.uk,or consult website www.rbge.org.uk/inverleith-house

Exhibitions programme supported by The Scottish Arts Council.

CLEGHORN AND HIS ARTISTS

When the Royal Scottish Museum donated its botanical collections, including the Cleghorn Memorial Library and a vast number of botanical illustrations, to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1941, Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn of Stravithie (1820–1895) became, posthumously, one of our greatest benefactors. His herbarium had been given to RBGE in 1896, but although illustrations and specimens were now housed under one roof, no attempt to re-establish the connections between them has been made until now.

Cleghorn was born in Madras, but came to Scotland at the age of four to be raised by his aunts and grandfather near St Andrews. His schooling was at the High School of Edinburgh and Madras Academy, St Andrews, followed by studies at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he studied medicine and took Robert Graham’s summer botany class at RBGE in 1838 and 1839. In 1842 he joined the East India Company as an Assistant Surgeon and returned to his birthplace. Cleghorn probably had innate interests in the visual (his father was a friend of David Wilkie), but his determination to use Indian artists to record plants was encouraged by the Indian botanist Robert Wight (a family friend) and by the Director of Kew, William Hooker. From July 1845 to September 1847 Cleghorn was based at Shimoga, in what was then the Nuggur [= Nagar] Division of the princely state of Mysore (present-day Karnataka), during which time he employed a ‘Marathi’ artist to draw a different species each day. Illness forced Cleghorn back to Britain in 1848, where he stayed for three years, during which he wrote his important report for the British Association on the effects of tropical deforestation, and worked on Indian economic products for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

After returning to Madras in 1851 he taught botany and materia medica at the Medical College and was secretary of the Agri-Horticultural Society, and in both of these roles he employed Indian artists – to illustrate lectures and publications, and to record medical symptoms and botanical specimens. He was friendly with Alexander Hunter, founder of the Madras School of Art, and from August 1852 employed two of its students P. Mooregasan Moodeliar and T. Rungasawmy to draw plants and copy book illustrations. On Wight’s departure from Madras in 1853 his artist Govindoo was looking for a new patron and Cleghorn duly obliged. Inspired by the London Great Exhibition of 1851, the first of the Madras Exhibitions took place in 1855, and Cleghorn was greatly involved with the economic plant products exhibited. The following year he was appointed by Lord Harris, Governor of Madras, to the new post of Conservator of Forests. Before leaving for a second home leave in September 1860 Cleghorn established a forest conservancy system in Madras, undertaking three extensive Forest Tours, apparently accompanied by Govindoo.

After returning to India in 1861 the rest of Cleghorn’s career was largely spent working on forestry in the NW Himalaya, but this period resulted in only a few botanical drawings (and those by Western artists); for a time he acted as Inspector-General of Forests and he has been considered to be the founder of Forest Conservancy in India.

This exhibition is devoted to drawings from the periods 1845–7 and 1852–9; the title is taken from a book he published in London in 1861 and reflects the two major sources of Cleghorn’s botanical subjects.

FORESTS OF SOUTH INDIA

‘Forests’ is taken here in a wide sense, to represent the wild habitats from which native species were drawn for Cleghorn. During his first two spells in the Madras Presidency he experienced a wide range of such habitats. The Western Ghats, even today, are thickly covered with evergreen forest, with an annual rainfall of up to 3000 mm largely during the summer monsoon. To the east of the hills is a plateau at around 900 metres – this is much drier (the annual rainfall of Mysore is 780 mm), but extensively used for agriculture, with scrub vegetation especially on the numerous rocky hills that dot its surface. Cleghorn got to know these habitats in the 1840s: from the ‘the undulating plateau of the Mysore, the primeval forests of Coorg and Malabar, where European furniture cracks and warps, and the Malabar ghauts, where in the south-west monsoon the lancet, in pocket, coats with rust’. During this time his anonymous ‘Marathi’ artist, doubtless recruited in Bangalore or Shimoga, drew native species and some of the common agricultural crops.

After returning to India from Britain in 1851, Cleghorn was based in Madras, which has a rather limited flora. He lived at St Thomé beside the sandy beach south of Fort St George, and investigated sand-binding plants for the Government. Close at hand were the mangroves of the Adyar River, the dry deciduous forest of Guindy Park (the Governor’s country house), and salt marshes to the north of Madras. Species of these habitats were drawn for him by Mooregasan and Rungasawmy. After becoming Conservator of Forests 1856, his tours took him to teak and sal forests of the Northern Circars of Andhra Pradesh, back to his first stamping grounds of North Canara and the Ghats, and also to the Malabar Coast of what is now Kerala and the high hills of Tamil Nadu – the Nilgiris and Anamallais. Some of the species of these habitats were drawn for him by Govindoo.

GARDENS OF SOUTH INDIA

Cleghorn took a deep interest in the exotic plants that were then flooding into Indian gardens from all over the world, especially from South America and Australia. Some – such as timber trees, including acacias and eucalypts, and food plants such as Tacca and yams – were grown for potential economic benefit; others such as the jacaranda were purely ornamental.

From January 1853, with Colonel Francis Reid, Cleghorn was joint-secretary of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society. This Society, founded in 1835, had a semi-official status in that the Madras Government provided their extensive grounds beside the cathedral at a nominal rent. The Society ran flower-shows, distributed seed, and awarded Government-funded prizes to encourage enterprise and quality. Cleghorn worked closely with two garden superintendents sent out from Edinburgh by John Hutton Balfour, Regius Keeper of RBGE – Andrew Thomas Jaffrey and his successor Robert N. Brown. Both apparently took to drink, but Jaffrey, who lamented

the ‘anti-Horticultural climate’ of Madras, supervised the production of many of the botanical drawings and annotated them. Jaffrey published pamphlets on practical horticulture in Madras, and Brown a catalogue of the Society’s garden (which was better than Cleghorn’s own earlier list!). Cleghorn’s role in the Agri-Horticultural Society gave him access to a network of private gardens owned by senior Civil Servants in Madras and its hill station of Ootacamund (Ooty), some of whom appear to have imported exotics directly from British nurseries. After becoming Conservator in 1856 Cleghorn’s responsibilities came to include two governmental gardens – the Lalbagh at Bangalore, and the Government Gardens at Ooty, each overseen by a gardener sent from Kew – William New and W.G. McIvor respectively. Smaller numbers of drawings made in both these gardens are represented in the collection.

FORMAT OF ENTRIES

Currently accepted scientific name + authority (FAMILY)

Vernacular name (English, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Sanskrit). Indian names taken from Botanical & Vernacular Names of S Indian Plants by M.R. Gurudeva (2001)

Notes. Where possible reference has been made to publications by Cleghorn and contemporary Madras authors

Contemporary annotationsDimensionsCollection number

Note. Most works are executed in ink and opaque watercolour heightened with gum arabic.

1. Solanum lycopersicum L. (SOLANACEAE)Tomato, love apple (Cleghorn cat.); goode hannu, kempu chappara badane (Kan); thakkaali (Tam)

The tomato is native to the highlands of western South America; it was cultivated by the Aztecs in Mexico and taken to Europe by the Spanish. It had reached Indonesia by the time of Rumphius in the late seventeenth century, but the date of introduction of the tomato to India is something of a mystery. Although, around 1800, Roxburgh stated that ‘it is now very common in India ... generally cultivated over India, even by the natives for their own use’, in 1891 Sir George Watt could still write that ‘Natives’ were only ‘beginning to appreciate the fruit, but the plant is still chiefly cultivated for the European population’. John Graham in his Catalogue of Bombay Plants (1839) wrote that ‘the plant grows wild in many parts of the Deccan; particularly about old Forts. Probably it was introduced by the Musselmen, and has since been naturalized’.At this time the fruit seems not to have been popular even with Europeans as Graham could write that it was ‘also called the Wolf Peach [the literal meaning of the Linnaean epithet]; in allusion to its very beautiful appearance, but worthless qualities as a fruit ... used as a garnish ... [and] by some in soups &c.’ In any case this drawing is probably one of the earlier representations of the plant made in India.

Annotations: 312. Solanaceae. Solanum Lycopersicum. ‘chappara badhane gidaa’ [in Kannada script]. Shemoga, 20 Nov ’46.232 x 300 mm.CN 312

2. Gossypium arboreum L. (MALVACEAE)Tree cotton; kari hatthi (Kan); parutthi (Tam); kaarpaasa (Sans)

Cotton was of great interest in India in Cleghorn’s time, and experiments were taking place on the introduction of long-staple American varieties that could be exported for spinning and weaving in Manchester, so that India would have to purchase back woven cloth! Cleghorn’s boss, Captain Onslow, Superintendent of the Nuggur Division, experimented with the cultivation of American Cotton at Kadur, using seed sent from Coimbatore by Robert Wight, and Cleghorn reported on this to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh in July 1850. This drawing, however, shows one of the native, short-staple, Indian cottons. Although the flowers of most cotton species open yellow and turn wine-red with age, some, such as G. arboreum var. rubicundum Watt, are red from the time of opening and this drawing may show one of these. Such forms are not used commercially but are grown on a small scale in gardens in South India, and are used for making the sacred thread of the Brahmins.

Annotations: 394. Malvaceae. Gossypium arboreum, L. Shemoga, 3d May ’47.232 x 299 mm.CN 394

3. Bergera koenigii L. (RUTACEAE)Curry leaf (Cleghorn cat.); karibaevu (Kan); kariveppilai, karivembu (Tam); kiadaryah (Sans)

A small tree that can reach five metres in height, its leaves (fresh or dried) form an essential ingredient of South Indian curries. It occurs throughout the Indian Subcontinent, and in Burma, Vietnam and southern China. It was described by Linnaeus from material sent to him from the Coromandel Coast by his pupil Johann Gerhard König, who went as a surgeon to the Danish colony of Tranquebar in 1768. König later became a professional naturalist, firstly to the Nawab of Arcot, and in 1778 to the Madras Government. His friend William Roxburgh (who was with König when he died in 1785) wrote of the leaves of this plant ‘They have a peculiar flavour, which I cannot describe; at first it is rather disagreeable, but most people soon become perfectly reconciled to, if not fond of it’. Roxburgh also recorded its medicinal use by ‘native physicians’ – the bark and root as stimulants, to cure ‘eruptions and the bites of poisonous animals’, and the green leaves, eaten raw, to cure dysentery. The hard wood has been used for agricultural implements. The generic name commemorates Johan Just von Berger (1723–91), physician to Christian VII of Denmark, and was suggested to Linnaeus by König probably as a sop to his former patron G.C. Oeder, with whom he had fallen out over the naming of a polygonaceous plant found by König in Iceland (perhaps the reason for his banishment to Tranquebar). Oeder had intended to name this plant in honour of Berger, but to his annoyance König had sent a specimen to Linnaeus who named it Koenigia islandica after his former pupil.

Annotations: 427. Aurantiaceae. Bergera Konigii L. ‘karepaaka gida’ [in Kannada script], Karbehoo Duk. [i.e., Dakhni], Kareepak, Duk., Kari vayroona sopoo (Bertie). Dried leaves sold in the Bazar, considered stomachic. Gardens, Shemoga, May ’47.232 x 286 mmCN 427

4. Cicer arietinum L. (LEGUMINOSAE)Chickpea; channa, kadale (Kan); chunda kadalai (Tam); chanaka (Sans)

The chickpea, probably derived from a species from SE Turkey and cultivated for more than six thousand years, is the third most important pulse crop in the world – eaten whole (fresh or after drying), or ground into a flour. The note on this drawing refers to a paper on the meteorology, geology and natural history of the Southern Mahratta country (immediately to the north of the Nuggur District) by Alexander Turnbull Christie published in 1828/9 in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. Christie listed chickpea as one of the crops sown at the end of the monsoon in September/October and eaten by horses as well as ‘natives’ – he wrote ‘An acid exudes from all parts of the plant, and is often collected in the following manner by the Ryuts [tenant farmers]. The dew which is deposited on the plant over night, is found in the morning to be strongly impregnated with acid. Long pieces of cloth are then dragged over the plants until they become quite wet with the acid liquor, which is then wrung out ... The liquor is of a brown colour, is slightly acid, contains a large quantity of saccharine matter, which gives it a sweet taste, and when allowed to evaporate very slowly, the acid is deposited in cubical crystals. It is sometimes used by the natives in their curries, instead of vinegar; and is also employed by the native doctors in medicine’.

Annotations: 57/723. Leguminosae. Viceae. Cicer arietinum Lin. Bengal gram. Chenna Hurburray Hind., Kuddlay Can. Grown on regur [black] soil, less in Nuggur than in Dharwar. The ryots here collect the exudations of a dewy morning as observed

by Dr Christie in the S. Mahr[atta] Country. This is a pleasant acid, and forms an ingredient with opium in Cholera nostrums of Native Doctors’. 1. A flower, 2 & 3. do. dissected, 4. A legume, 5. Do. opened, 6. &c Seed and sections. Cultivated, Ajampur, 23d Dec ’45.205 x 273 mmCN 57

5. Tamarindus indica L. (LEGUMINOSAE)Indian date, tamarind; hunase mara, unara mara (Kan); puli, pulia maram (Tam); imli (Hind); aamlika (Sans)

The tamarind, a large evergreen tree, is very widespread in the Old World Tropics and has been introduced and naturalised in the New World. It has been modified by man over a very long period, and is therefore considered to be a ‘cultigen’; its origin is uncertain, though was probably in Africa. In India it is commonly planted along roads and streets for the shade cast by its attractive, feathery foliage. Cleghorn described the tamarind as ‘a large and very handsome tree, of slow growth; the wood hard, durable, and fine-veined, but apt to be faulty in the centre ... used in the manufacture of oil and sugar mills ... largely planted around villages for its fruit and shade’. The characteristic, sour tasting, pulp that surrounds the seeds within the swollen pod is a key ingredient of two staples of classic South Indian vegetarian cuisine – sambar (a vegetable stew) and rasam (a thin soup), and, closer to home, of Worcestershire sauce. It is a member of the Subfamily Caesalpinioideae, with modified, more or less bilaterally symmetric flowers, with four calyx lobes, the petals (striped pink) and three fertile stamens each reduced to three in number.

Annotations: 92/884. Leguminosae. Caesalpineae. Tamarind: Indica L. ‘hunase mara’ [in Kannada script]. Hurryhur, 16 Jany ’46.231 x 294 mm.CN 92

6. Punica granatum L. (LYTHRACEAE)Pomegranate; daalimbe (Kan); maadaalai chettu (Tam); daadimaa (Sans).

There are only two species in the genus Punica, a name taken from the Latin ‘Punicum malum’ meaning ‘Carthaginian apple’. The one shown here is a cultigen of very ancient origin, with a wild progenitor perhaps from NE Turkey; the other is endemic to the island of Sokotra. In South India this small tree is grown largely for its attractive orange flowers, as the fruits scarcely reach eatable size. Large, edible fruit in Cleghorn’s time came from Persia and Afghanistan; the part eaten is the translucent pulp around the seeds, which can be turned into juice (from which grenadine is made), or dried and made into sherbet. The outline of the fruit, crowned with a persistent calyx, has been much used as a motif in sculpture and the applied arts. The plant has many uses: for example, the flowers and bark for dyeing, and the hard rind of the fruit for tanning. It also has medicinal uses Robert Brown (1866) in his catalogue of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society Garden recorded ‘The bark of the root is a remedy for tape-worm given in decoctions. It sickens the stomach, but seldom fails to destroy the worm’.

Annotations: 91/1010. Myrtaceae. Granateae. Punica Granatum L. Hurryhur, 15 Jany ’46.231 x 293 mm.CN 91

7. Capparis cleghornii Dunn (CAPPARIDACEAE)Cleghorn’s caper

When Cleghorn collected this plant on the 1500 metre hill of Ballalrayan Durga in 1846 he identified it as Capparis roxburghii, but in 1916 the Kew botanist S.T. Dunn realised that it was a distinct species and named it after Cleghorn. Dunn based his description on a Cleghorn herbarium specimen at Kew, with the number ‘D176’. Although this drawing has been trimmed, from its position in the sequence it can be identified as drawing number 176 of the Mysore series, and therefore the one referred to on the specimen – it is therefore part of the type material of the species, and gives a far better impression of its appearance than the rather poor specimen.It is a thorny, woody climber that can reach a height of two metres, and is restricted to a small area of evergreen forest in the Western Ghats of Karnataka between the altitudes of 700 and 1400 metres. It is related to the European caper (Capparis spinosa), the pickled flower buds of which are a well-known condiment. This species, like its European relation, also has edible fruits, as noted on the drawing. Cleghorn’s interests were not primarily taxonomic, and he was not a prolific collector of herbarium specimens, so very few plants bear his name – only two species besides this one, and a single genus (named by his friend Robert Wight).

Annotations: Capparidaceae. Capparis Roxburghii. Fruit edible. Balalroydroog, 13 April 1846.226 x 280 mmCN 176

8. Osbeckia stellata Ker Gawler var. hispidissima (Wight) C. Hansen (MELASTOMATACEAE)

While on his first home leave (from 1848 to 1851) Cleghorn regularly attended meetings of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and on 12 July 1849 exhibited his collection of nearly 500 drawings made in Mysore, of which this is one. He lent this drawing to Robert Wight in Madras, who got his artist Govindoo to make a copy of it. In 1850 Wight published it as a new species Osbeckia hispidissima, with a lithograph based on Govindoo’s version of the drawing (see Display Case IV). Cleghorn must have been proud of this, as at a meeting of the BSE on 13 February 1851 he exhibited Wight’s recent publication and the herbarium specimen on which this drawing was based. Osbeckia stellata is a very variable shrub to 3.6 metres, widespread in the Indian Subcontinent, and through Burma and Indo-China to China and Taiwan. It was divided into a series of varieties by the Danish botanist Carlo Hansen, though as this one, characterised by its spreading, bristly hairs, is restricted to SW India, it might better have been treated as a subspecies.

Annotations: 46. Melastomaceae. Osbeckia hispidissima. fig 1/3 reduced. Berries dye black. Wostara, 25–11–’45.205 x 268 mm.

CN 46

9. Cyphostemma setosa (Roxburgh) Alston (VITACEAE)Hairy wild vine (Cleghorn cat.); huli mangaravalli (Kan); pulinaralai (Tam).

An herbaceous scrambler, growing from a tuberous, woody rootstock; all parts are covered in glandular, bristly hairs (hence the specific epithet); the trifoliate leaves are succulent, and the berries red when ripe. The genus is mainly African, but this species occurs both in SE Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique), and southern India (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu) and Sri Lanka, where it occurs in coastal habitats and dry plains, producing its shoots and flowers in the rainy season.The whole plant is exceedingly bitter and William Roxburgh, when first describing it (in the genus Cissus), from the Coromandel Coast near Rajahmundry, remarked, drily, that ‘I unfortunately tasted both the roots and berries’. Roxburgh also recorded its medicinal use ‘the leaves toasted and oiled, are applied to indolent tumours to bring them to suppuration’.

Annotations: 448/419. Vitaceae. Vitis setosa, Wall. Cuddoor, 29 Jun ’47.234 x 293 mmCN 448

10. Momordica charantia L. (CUCURBITACEAE)Bitter gourd; haagala kaayi (Kan); pavakkaayi (Tam); kaaravella (Sans)

Like most members of the family Cucurbitaceae (including melons, cucumbers and marrows) the flowers are unisexual, borne on the same (monoecious) or different (dioecious) plants. The plant depicted here appears to have only male flowers, which are shown in detail at top left; at bottom left is shown the characteristic warty fruit at an early stage of development. The plant is a scrambling annual, widely grown (on trellises) in India, and elsewhere in the tropics, for its edible fruit and for medicinal purposes. Heber Drury in his Useful Plants of India (1859) wrote: ‘the fruit is bitter but wholesome, and is eaten in curries by the natives. It requires, however, to be steeped in salt water before being cooked’, and, on its medicinal uses, ‘The whole plant mixed with cinnamon, long-pepper, rice, and marothy oils (Hydnocarpus inebrians), is administered in the form of an ointment in psora, scabies and other cutaneous diseases ... the whole plant pulverised is a good specific externally applied in leprosy and malignant ulcers’, which gives rise to one of its other vernacular names – the leprosy gourd. Recently the plant has been used in the treatment of diabetes.

Annotations: 222/1086. Cucurbitaceae. Momordica charantia L. ‘haagala kaayi balli’ [in Kannada script]. 1– Calyx cut open, 2– Male flower, petal detached, 3–Young fruit. Shemoga, 15 July ’46.234 x 291 mm.CN 222

11. Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott (ARACEAE)Taro; kesave dhantu (Kan); shana dumpa, seppan kizhangu (Tam); arvi (Hin); aalooki (Sans).

Taro is one of the most ancient crops and has been cultivated in tropical Asia for at least 10,000 years: it is possible that rice was first known as a weed of taro terraces. The wild progenitor possibly originated in India, but the plant has been spread pantropically, and was taken to the New World probably (as later with breadfruit) as a food for African slaves. It was cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean in Classical times, and under his large genus Arum Linnaeus distinguished the New and Old World forms as A. esculentum and A. colocasia respectively. The German botanist Heinrich Schott carved up the genus Arum in 1832, retaining Linnaeus’ two species (now regarded as synonymous), placing them in the genus Colocasia (a Greek name originally applying to the sacred lotus).As noted on the drawing the starchy tubers are the main reason for its cultivation, but the young leaves are also eaten. The drawing shows the typical structure of the aroid inflorescence, with a spike (‘spadix’) of minute flowers, enclosed in a waxy, cream-coloured bract or ‘spathe’. On the spadix the broad lower section bears female flowers, above this is a narrower cylindrical male section, with a terminal, sterile, pointed ‘appendix’.

Annotations: 451. Araceae. Arum Colocasia, Colocasia Indica. Kessaga (Can.), Kaysevea gidda (Bertie), ‘kesina dhantu’ [in Kannada script]. Cultivated for the nutritious matter obtained from the Tubers. Leaves & underground stem eaten. Jungles & introduced into Gardens. Cuddoor, 15 July ’47.234 x 292 mmCN 451

12. Nelumbo nucifera Gaertner (NELUMBONACEAE)Egyptian bean (Cleghorn cat.), sacred lotus; kamala, thaavare (Kan); ambal, thaamarai (Tam); ambuja, padma (Sans).

There are two members of the genus Nelumbo, a yellow-flowered one (N. lutea) from Central America, and the one depicted here, which is widespread in the Indian Subcontinent and SE Asia into Australia. From the beauty of the flower, often springing from muddy water, it is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, the former believing it to have sprung from the navel of Vishnu. The spirally thickened water conducting elements extracted from leaf-stalks and peduncles have been used as lamp wicks. More prosaically both seeds and rhizomes are eaten. With the advent of classifications based on DNA sequences one of the greatest surprises was to discover that the sacred lotus was not related to the waterlilies as had always been supposed, but that it was related to the plane tree (Platanus) and the family Proteaceae (including proteas and banksias), and that the similarity was due to convergent evolution – from adaptation to a similar aquatic habitat and emergent growth form.

Annotations: 198/54. Nelumbiaceae. Nelumbium speciosum (Willd.) var. Rubrum. ‘thavare huvu’ [in Kannada script]. Shemoga, 15 Jul ’46.225 x 292 mm.CN 198

13. Actiniopteris radiata (Swartz) Link (PTERIDACEAE)Peacock’s tail; mayoora shikhi (Kan)

The small number of drawings of ferns in his collection (only two in the Mysore collection) suggests that, atypically for his era, Cleghorn was certainly no sufferer from pteridomania. This was more than compensated for by Richard Henry Beddome, an army officer, who in 1857 was made Cleghorn’s senior assistant as Conservator of Forests for Madras. Beddome succeeded Cleghorn as Conservator, and contributed greatly to the study of Indian ferns (also of molluscs, and flowering plants generally), and, after Cleghorn’s retirement, Beddome continued to employ Govindoo and to publish his botanical drawings. This xerophytic (drought-resistant) fern, with its characteristic fan-shaped fronds, Beddome recorded as being ‘found all over the [Madras] presidency in dry rocky places from the sea level up to 3,500 or 4,000 feet’. It also occurs in dry parts of tropical Africa and the Mascarene Islands, and from Arabia and Yemen, through Iran into India, and also in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Burma.

Annotations: 456. Polypodiaceae. Asplenium radiatum, Sw. Actiniopteris radiata, Link. Cuddoor, 6 July ’47.233 x 293 mm.CN 456.

14. Indigofera linnaei Ali (LEGUMINOSAE)Trailing indigo (Cleghorn cat.), red nerinjy; kenneggilu (Kan); cheppunerungil (Tam); vasuka (Sans).

Indigofera is a large genus (with more than 700 species) of the pea-flower family, and takes its name from the blue dye extracted from I. tinctoria. The species shown here is a low-growing perennial with a woody base, widespread in S and SE Asia from Pakistan eastwards to China, and throughout India, Indo-China, Indonesia to New Guinea and Australia; it is largely lowland but occurs up to 1200 metres in the Himalaya. The name pencilled on this drawing is in the hand of Robert Wight, to whom Cleghorn must have shown these drawings for identification. Linnaeus’ name I. enneaphylla is ‘illegitimate’ according to rules of modern nomenclature, so was replaced with the present one, commemorating Linnaeus, by the Pakistani botanist S.I. Ali in 1958. The plant has been used medicinally in India and Sir Whitelaw Ainslie recorded its use against scurvy, and that an infusion of the plant was diuretic and given for fevers and coughs. Ainslie, who was born in Duns (Berwickshire), was a predecessor of Cleghorn as an EIC surgeon in the Madras Presidency; he was author of the first book treating Indian medicines – his pioneering Materia Medica of Hindustan (1813).

Annotations: 247/621. Fabaceae. Indigofera enneaphylla Linn. Mysore, Shemoga 4th Augt ’46.235 x 293 mm.CN 247

15. Cosmos caudatus Kunth (COMPOSITAE)

The presence of this plant in South India, where it is now common as a roadside weed in the drier parts of Karnataka, is somewhat of a mystery. It was first described from Cuba where it was ‘discovered’ by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland in 1801, and its native distribution is through the West Indies, Central and northern South America. However, it was collected in the Baramahal district of Tamil Nadu by

Robert Wight prior to 1831, his specimens being identified by A.P. de Candolle as Bidens berteriana and B. grandiflora (accounting for the name on this drawing). The species is, however, widespread in SE Asia – including the Philippines, Burma, Indo-China, Sumatra and the Moluccas (also Mauritius, and Sri Lanka where it was recorded in 1860) – suggesting that it was perhaps introduced by the Spanish or Portuguese long before it was ‘known’ (i.e., named) to Western science. Although the flower heads are small, the candy pink ligules of the ray-florets makes them attractive, and once introduced it will, with the help of animal vectors (two- and four-footed), easily spread due to the pair of barbed points on the seed-like fruits.

Annotations: 289. Matricariaceae. Bidens grandiflora. Shemoga, 22d Oct ’46.234 x 288 mm.CN 289

16. Leonotis nepetifolia (L.) R. Brown (LABIATAE)Catmint-leaved leonotis; gantu thumbe (Kan); murandai (Tam)

Leonotis is a genus of nine species named for the orange-hairy flowers that were fancifully thought to resemble lions’ ears – all are native to Africa, but this species, the only annual one, also occurs as a weed in tropical America and Asia, doubtless an ancient introduction. The species was first described by Linnaeus (in the genus Phlomis), based on an illustration and description of plants growing in the Leiden botanic garden thought to have originated in Surinam. In India it was collected on the Coromandel Coast by the Tranquebar Missionaries, and it may have been one of these, J.G. König, who sent it to Sir Joseph Banks, by whom it was introduced to Kew Gardens in 1778. It is an annual (or short-lived perennial) that can reach three metres in height, and, as noted on the drawing, occurs in disturbed habitats such as waste places, field margins and roadsides. The plant has been grown in British gardens and glasshouses but in 1839 W.J. Hooker considered ‘the plant is often too tall, and its leaves too coarse and common-looking to render it a general favourite’.

Annotations: Lamiaceae. Stachydeae. Leonotis Nepetifolia R. Br. 1– Corolla densely hairy, 2– do: cut open, 3– Calyx spinous toothed, 4– Ovary 4-lobed. Abundant in waste places usually erect from 3 to 7 feet high. Shemoga, 11th Sept ’46.228 x 290 mm.CN 210

17. Solanum virginianum L. (SOLANACEAE)Jacquin’s nightshade, prickly brinjal; nelagulla, raamagulla (Kan); kandangatthari (Tam); kantakaari (Sans)

In the first paper that he read to the British Association, at the Edinburgh meeting of 1850, ‘On the hedge plants of India’, Cleghorn drew attention to the prevalence of spiny plants, including this species, in the drier parts of southern India, and their nuisance to travellers over open ground: ‘The prickles and spines of these plants wound the barefooted pilgrim, especially during the hot months, when the leaves having dropped off, the thorns are left bare and exposed, which renders travelling extremely difficult in some parts, as the spines are so strong as to pierce a shoe or sandal of dressed leather; and if the weary traveller seek to rest himself, he must beware as much of thorns, as of red ants, tarantulae, and other biting insects which

infest the soil’. C.L. Willdenow based a new species on Indian material from India probably sent to him by one of the Tranquebar Missionaries under the Tamil name ‘kandan kattiri’ and named it after Nikolaus von Jacquin, friend of Mozart, who had illustrated it in one of his lavishly illustrated works based on plants grown in the Vienna botanic garden. Jacquin had used the Linnaean name S. virginianum, which was based on American material, but the Indian and American plants are now these are now regarded as conspecific, the species being a pantropical weed, which probably originated in the New World.

Annotations: 327. Solanaceae. Solanum Jacquinii (Willd.). Gulagolakee ‘gola gauli kaayi’ [in Kannada script]. Dewarhutty, 12 Dec: 46.230 x 296 mmCN 327

18. Portulaca quadrifida L. (PORTULACACEAE)Passalaikkeerai (Tam); laghulonika (Sans)

This succulent annual occurs in disturbed habitats all over warm temperate and tropical parts of the world (except Australia). As noted on this drawing it can be eaten as a vegetable, and the cultivated purslane (a variety of P. oleracea) is well known as a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. The species was described and illustrated in the seventeenth century by Paul Hermann, a German physician to the Dutch EIC who made important collections and drawings (used extensively by Linnaeus) in Ceylon; he was later professor of botany at Leiden. The illustration (now taken as the type of the species) was published in Hermann’s posthumous catalogue of the Leiden botanic garden (Paradisus Batavus), under the name ‘Portulaca Corassavica lanuginosa procumbens’, meaning the ‘woolly, procumbent Portulaca of Curaçao’, suggests that the Leiden plant originated from the Dutch Antilles. The woolliness of the plant is variable, but is shown on the bottom right-hand detail – in one of the leaf axils. Linnaeus later grew the plant, from an Egyptian source, in his garden at Uppsala; the Linnaean epithet refers to the four-lobed corolla.

Annotations: Portulaceae. Portulaca quadrifida Linn. Wight Ill. t. 109. t. 12. eatable mixed with Dholl &c boiled as Bagie. St Thome, 6th August 1853.253 x 363 mm.CNS 14

19. Boerhavia coccinea Miller (NYCTAGINACEAE)Spreading hog-weed (Drury); mukuratthai (Tam)

In 1753 Linnaeus described four species in a genus that he named after the great Dutch medic and botanist Hermann Boerhaave. Linnaeus had studied with Boerhaave in Leiden, as had Charles Alston, Regius Keeper of RBGE (1716–60). The genus is difficult taxonomically and is now considered to include about 20 species, mostly widespread, pantropical, annual weeds. The plant depicted here has generally been known as B. diffusa, a species based by Linnaeus on specimens from Ceylon, Jamaica, and a plate in Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus – these are now assigned to three different species, of which this drawing shows what is known as B. coccinea, having dark pink flowers, and both terminal and lateral inflorescences. This segregate species is almost certainly among the forms described (under B. diffusa) by Heber

Drury in his Useful Plants of India (1859) as, despite being a troublesome weed, having useful medicinal properties – the powdered root was used as a laxative, and an infusion against parasitic worms; it was also found a ‘good expectorant, and [has] been prescribed in asthma with marked success, given in the form of powder, decoction, and infusion’.

Annotations: Nyctaginaceae. Boerhaavia. Pasture land near the sea, St Thomé, 1856.254 x 362 mm.CNS 122

20. Vigna trilobata (L.) Verdcourt (LEGUMINOSAE)Panipayir (Tam); mudgaparni (Sans)

Vigna is an important leguminous genus, to which the mung and adouki beans, and the black gram also belong. This species, with its pretty, twice-trifoliate leaves was described as Dolichos trilobatus by Linnaeus, based on an etching in a work of 1696 by Leonard Plukenet (see Display Case III). Plukenet was a London botanist and physician to Queen Mary, and author of a series of encyclopaedic botanical works, which included many species sent to him from Fort St George, the EIC headquarters in Madras. The plants were illustrated and described with long Latin phrase names – this one was called ‘Trifolium Maderaspatana, cauliculis pilosis, scandens, Passiflorae modo trilobatus’, that is ‘the three-lobed Madras clover, with small climbing hairy stems and the habit of a passionflower’ – descriptive, but hardly concise compared with Linnaeus’ pert binomial. In the RBGE library is Cleghorn’s own copy of the collected works of Plukenet, and in the herbarium is a specimen of V. trilobata collected at Fort St George by Dr Edward Bulkley in 1703 under the Tamil name ‘narry-pyetty’. This drawing was made at St Thomé only a short distance south of Fort St George. Although the seeds are tiny, this species is widely grown in the Indian Subcontinent and SE Asia (there are also records from Africa and Peru).

Annotations: Fabaceae. Phaseoleae. Phaseolus triblobus? St Thome, Madras, July 1853.253 x 364 mm.CNS 59

21. Endosamara racemosa (Roxburgh) R. Geesink (LEGUMINOSAE)Nagaru thige (Tel)

Cleghorn visited the Calcutta Botanic Garden in December 1855 and from the note on this drawing he used the opportunity to match some of his unknown plant drawings with the 2500 ‘Icones’ commissioned in the late eighteenth century by William Roxburgh. Although this plant had been described by Roxburgh (in the genus Robinia) his drawing shows the flowers as pink, so Cleghorn did not recognise it and took his illustration to represent an undescribed species. In 1984 this species (which occurs throughout Peninsular India, and in Thailand and the Philippines) was placed in a new genus, characterised by its unique fruits. The inner layer of the pod (the endocarp) becomes separated from the outer, dries and breaks up to form a papery wing to each of the seeds – the seeds therefore come to resemble the winged fruit, ‘samara’, of the sycamore. This handsome woody climber was introduced to the Madras Agri-Horticultural Garden by its secretary, Colonel Francis Archibald Reid

(1804–62), who in 1844 had been ‘Assistant to the General Superintendent of Operations for the Suppression of Thuggee’ – he found it in what are now called the Sandur Hills, to the south of the great ruined city of Hampi.

Annotations: Fabaceae. Milletia Nov. spec., not in Roxb. Drawings. Introduced from Ramanmally Hills by Col. Reid. Hort[icultural] Gard[ens], July 1853.253 x 357 mm.CAH 27

22. Ananas comosus (L.) Merrill (BROMELIACEAE)Pineapple; anaanus (Kan); anashippazham (Tam)

Although known in the West mainly for its delicious fruit, the pineapple is also the source of an important fibre known as Manilla hemp. At the 1855 Madras Exhibition ‘a series of well dressed and hackled fibres, thread, yarn, twine and tow for sting, prepared from the common Pine apple’ was exhibited by the School of Industrial Arts run by Cleghorn’s friend, another Scottish surgeon, Alexander Hunter: it was described as ‘nearly white, very soft, silky and plant’ and a ‘good substitute for flax’. The pineapple is native to South America, where it was widely cultivated before European contact, developed from a wild progenitor probably from Paraguay. It was soon taken to the Old World, and Sir George Watt, in his Dictionary of Economic Products of India, recorded that it was ‘introduced by the Portuguese into Bengal in 1594’, the precision of the date being possible as ‘its introduction is expressly mentioned by Indian authors such as Abdul Fuzl in the Ayeen Akbarí, and again by the author of Dhara Shekoih’. This exquisite drawing, with its partial colouring, emphasises the geometrical properties of the compound fruit (a fleshy syncarp) and shows the terminal tuft of leaves from which a new plant may be propagated.

Annotations: Bromelia Ananas, L. Ananas sativus Schultz. Koppah, 11 Feb ’47.232 x 293 mm.CN 379

23. Ocimum tenuiflorum L. (LABIATAE)Holy basil (Cleghorn cat.); Vishnu thulasi, Shri thulasi (Kan); nalla thulasi, thulasi (Tam).

The cabinet containing the genus Ocimum is one of the most fragrant in the hebarium! The genus has about 65 species widely distributed in tropical and warm temperate parts of the world (especially Africa). The most familiar in Britain is O. basilicum, the basil much used in Mediterranean cuisine. The sacred basil (better known under its former name O. sanctum) is widespread in the Indian Subcontinent and SE Asia, reaching southern China and Australia. In 1857 Robert Brown was sent out from Edinburgh to succeed Andrew Jaffrey as head gardener at the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society. In the second edition (1866) of Brown’s Hand-book of the Trees, Shrubs and Herbaceous Plants of the garden he noted of the sacred basil that ‘the whole plant is of a dark purple colour, and has a grateful smell. The root is given in decoctions in fevers, and the juice of the leaves in catarrhal affections in children. Also an excellent remedy mixed with lime juice, in cutaneous affections, ring work &c. This plant is considered by the Brahmins as sacred to Vishnoo. The root is made

into beads and worn round the neck and arms of Vishnoo-Brahmins. Cultivated in gardens and near Pagodas’.

Annotations: 25. ‘thulashi’ [in Kannada script]. Labiatae. Ocimeae. Ocimum Sanctum L. Purple stalked Basil. Found abundantly in the enclosures round Hindoo temples- The juice highly esteemed as a cure for Cough. Held sacred to Vishnoo. Shemoga, 24–9–’45.190 x 309 mmCN 25

24. Carthamus tinctorius L. (COMPOSITAE)Safflower; kusube enne kaalu, kusube (Kan); sendoorakam (Tam)

The yellow florets of this member of the daisy family are widely known as an inferior substitute for (or adulterant of) saffron. In 1814, Benjamin Heyne, the official EIC Madras Naturalist, recorded its use: ‘by the natives to dye their holiday turbans and other cloths of a beautiful red: the moormen are particularly fond of this colour, though it recommends itself rather by its brilliancy than its durability’. Heber Drury in his Useful Plants of India (1859) provided further details: ‘The dried florets yield a beautiful colouring matter which attaches itself without a mordant. It is chiefly used for colouring cotton, and produces various shades of pink, rose, crimson, scarlet &c. In Bangalore silk is dyed with it, but the dye is fugitive and will not bear washing ... The flower is gathered and rubbed down into a powder, and sold in this state. When used for dyeing it is put into a cloth, and washed in cold water for a long time, to remove a yellow colouring matter. It is then boiled, and yields the pink dyeing liquid’.As noted on this drawing the plant is also cultivated (on the dry plains of Mysore) for oil, which is extracted from its seed-like fruits. The pale yellow oil used for culinary purposes, and (at least formerly) for burning in lamps.

Annotations: 93. ‘kusabi’ [in Kannada script]. Matricariaceae (Cynareae D.C.). Carthamus tinctorius (Willd.). Koosumba Duk. [i.e., Dakhni], Saffron. Cultivated for the dye as also for the oil. Hurryhur, 17 Jany 1846.231 x 295 mmCN 93

25. Datura metel L. (SOLANACEAE)Purple thorn apple; kari ummatthi gida (Kan); visha ummatthi (Tam); dhatthoora, unmattha (Sans).

A coarse herb to a metre in height; the flowers can be white or purple – formerly referred to D. alba and D. fastuosa respectively. It occurs in disturbed habitats throughout the tropics and there is no agreement over its original home. This is likely to have been New World, but its Sanskrit name, and use in Indian medicine, suggest that its occurrence long antedates the arrival of the Portuguese. Like other members of the genus the plant has gained notoriety from its poisonous alkaloids. In 1810 John Fleming, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, wrote: ‘the soporiferous and intoxicating qualities of the seeds are well known to the inhabitants; and it appears, from the records of the native Courts of Justice, that these seeds are still employed, for the same licentious and wicked purposes, as they were formerly’. These accusations were still being made in Cleghorn’s time and Brown in his 1866

Handbook of the Madras Garden wrote ‘a strong narcotic; in India frequently and sometimes fatally employed by thieves and others to deprive their victims of the power of resistance’; in Rajputana it was also reputed to be used, smeared on the maternal bosom, for female infanticide. Used with suitable caution, however, it has many more beneficial medicinal uses.

Annotations: 9. ‘ummathi kaayi’ [in Kannada script]. Solanaceae. Datura fastuosa L. Springs up on rubbish, and seems to be one of those plants which follow man. Very common, Shemoga, 29 Augt 1845.195 x 313 mmCN 9

26. Cannabis sativa L. (CANNABACEAE)Indian hemp; bhangi gida, gaanjaa gida (Kan); bhangi, ganja (Tam)

This notorious, dioecious, annual herb, has two major uses: northern forms ‘subsp. sativa’ (especially male plants) are an important source of fibre, at least formerly used for ropes, fabrics (the origin of the word canvas) and paper; southern forms ‘subsp. indica’ for their narcotic resin. Heber Drury in his Useful Plants of India described the various products of the plant thus: ‘The officinal part of the Indian hemp consists of the dried flowering-tops of the female plant, from which the resin has not been removed. This is called Gunja. The resin itself, which exudes from the leaves, stem, and flowers, is called Churrus. And what is known as Bhang is the larger leaves and capsules without the stalks. The properties of Indian hemp are stimulant, sedative, and antispasmodic, often equalling opium in its effects ... Gunja has a strong aromatic and heavy odour, abounds in resin, and is sold in the form of flowering-stalks. Bhang is ... only slightly resinous: its intoxicating properties are much less. Gunja is smoked like tobacco. Bhang is not smoked, but pounded up with water into a pulp, so as to make a drink highly conducive to health, and people accustomed to it seldom get sick’. Clearly, then, as now, there have been different attitudes to its benefits to human health and from his annotation on this drawing, Cleghorn’s view tended towards the censorious.

Annotations: 28. Urticaceae. Cannabieae. Cannabis sativa L. Cultivated (too much). 1– A nut, 2– Vertical section. Shemoga, 29–9–’45.192 x 245 mm.CN 28

27. Cuscuta chinensis Lamarck (CONVOLVULACEAE)Chinese dodder

The dodders form a cosmopolitan genus of about 145 species belonging to the same family as morning glories, from which they differ in being parasites, with reduced vegetative parts and lacking in chlorophyll, which obtain their nutrition from a vascular plant host. This species was first described in 1794 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck from a specimen twining round a basil plant in the Jardin du Roi in Paris – it is thought that its seeds had arrived from China, mixed with those of the basil. The species has a wide distribution from Ethiopia through Afghanistan and India to China and Australia and grows on a notably wide variety of host plants. The individual shown here (of which the specimen survives in the RBGE herbarium – see Display

Case I) was growing on a member of the family Acanthaceae (perhaps a species of Justicia) forming a garden hedge in St Thomé, the suburb of Madras where Cleghorn lived at this time. In South India Robert Wight recorded it on the rosy periwinkle and an Amaranthus, and J.S. Gamble on Ipomoea pes-caprae (a member of the same family, so verging on the cannibalistic); in China it is a major parasite of soybean. The seeds of the plant have been used medicinally for skin complaints (including acne and dandruff).

Annotations: Cuscuta. Parasitic on an Acanthaceous Hedge. St Thomé, 12 Septr 1854.219 x 278 mm.CNS 102

28. Calophyllum polyanthum Choisy (GUTTIFERAE)Poon spar tree; koove, ponne, siriponne hoo (Kan); pinnai, pongu (Tam)

The preservation of the poon spar tree of the Western Ghats of Canara (Karnataka), was one of the major concerns of Alexander Gibson in Bombay and Cleghorn in Madras, as its timber was in great demand for making ships’ masts. Despite this, there was uncertainty over the correct botanical name of the tree that supplied this valuable commodity, and this drawing was made in order to throw light on the problem. The influential Robert Wight (followed by E.G. Balfour) considered the source of the valuable ‘poon spars’ to be Dillenia pentagyna; but Cleghorn (and Gibson) at this point knew that it was a Calophyllum, though there remained confusion over the species concerned – Cleghorn initially knew it under the name C. angustifolium of Roxburgh (a species from Penang), but it is now known to be C. polyanthum. This drawing, looking like a copy of an engraving, is likely to have been made with publication in mind. However, the annotation shows it to have been made from a dried specimen (which still exists in the RBGE herbarium – see Display Case II) sent to Cleghorn by Mr S. Müller his assistant Conservator in North Canara. Müller (unlike Cleghorn) had received a professional training in forestry, in the Black Forest of Germany.

Annotations: Calophyllum. True Poon Spar from Mr S. Muller. From a dried specimen. N[orth] Canara, Feb /58.219 x 281 mm.CNS 16

29. Hopea ponga (Dennstedt) Mabberley (DIPTEROCARPACEAE)Ilappongu (Mal); haiga (Kan).

Like many ‘dipterocarps’, this is an important timber tree; it can reach 20 metres in height and occurs in evergreen forest of the Western Ghats from southern Maharashtra to southern Tamil Nadu. This drawing was made (and a specimen collected, still in the RBGE herbarium – see Display Case II) in 1857 on Cleghorn’s route from Bangalore to Mangalore, at the start of his first forest tour. The drawing shows the wings that develop from two of the calyx lobes (which help to disperse the fruit), but does not show the most characteristic feature of this species, the spiny galls, caused by the scale insect Mangalorea hopeae, that commonly occur in leaf axils and on the inflorescence. These figured prominently in Rheede’s illustration of ‘Ponga’ in the fourth volume of his Hortus Malabaricus of 1683, where they were mistaken for

fruits (see Display Case III). This misled taxonomists and the German botanist A.W. Dennstedt took it to be an Artocarpus (related to breadfruit and jak fruit). The genus was named by William Roxburgh after his teacher John Hope, Regius Keeper of RBGE 1761–86. Francis Buchanan, another Hope pupil, had (like Dennstedt) tried to identify the plants depicted in Hortus Malabaricus, but identified it as a Broussonetia (paper mulberry). Only in 1960 was it finally realised to be a dipterocarp, previously known as Hopea wightiana.

Annotations: Hopea. Boon Ghaut, April /57.Signed P. Govindoo.231 x 301 mm.CNS 17

30. Vateria indica L. (DIPTEROCARPACEAE)White dammar tree, piney varnish, Indian copal; dhoopada mara (Kan); vellaikoondricam (Tam)

This species was named by Linnaeus, based on a description and illustration under the name ‘Paenoe’ in Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus (1683). At this time very large trees must have existed, as Rheede described trunks being hollowed out to make boats that could hold 60 or more men! The timber is not greatly valued, but has been used for making coffins and packing cases, and is now in demand in Kerala for plywood. However, this large evergreen tree, which occurs in the forests of the Western Ghats of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (up to an altitude of 1220 metres), has other economic uses, as shown by the common names. The resin from the bark, as also noted by Rheede (boiled with oil), is used as a pitch or varnish. Up to 50 % of the seed is made up of a fat, known as Malabar tallow, which has traditionally been used to make soap and candles. This drawing, which shows the fruit, with its characteristic persistent and reflexed calyx, was made at Mangalore on the Malabar Coast, the day after Cleghorn finished writing the first of his Forest Reports for the Madras Government. Cleghorn admired the beauty of this species as an avenue tree in Malabar and Canara, but in December 1855 lamented the waste of the fruits that were allowed to rot, and recommended that experiments be made on the tallow for use as a lubricant for the wheels of railway rolling stock: he thought this a possiblity as the fat remained solid at 95˚F.

Annotations: Vateria Indica. Mangalore, 2 May /58.230 x 272 mm.CNS 18

31. Garcinia morella (Gaertner) Desrousseaux (GUTTIFERAE)Gamboge; aradaala, arisina gurgi (Kan).

One of the chief motives of the EIC was to find economically useful plants in India to reduce the need for expensive imports, and here is an example. In 1852 Cleghorn srote: ‘Finding my colour-box becoming exhausted, I have been enabled to supply ... all its deficiencies without difficulty from the natural products of the surrounding forests of the Malabar Ghauts, including yellow from the Garcinia’.The pigment gamboge then came from Ceylon and Siam, so Cleghorn, while accompanying a party making a road survey in the Nuggur district, was delighted to

find it growing wild in Western India (see Display Case II). The gum is used not only as a pigment but has medicinal uses and Cleghorn sent specimens back to Edinburgh where they were analysed by Robert Christison, his old teacher and Professor of Materia Medica. This drawing was copied and sent to Christison who published it as a woodcut in the Pharmaceutical Journal (see Display Case IV). The genus (to which the mangosteen also belongs) is difficult taxonomically and there was much discussion in which Robert Graham, Regius Keeper of RBGE 1820–45, was involved. He placed this species in a new genus, based on the circumscissile dehiscence of the anthers, from which he derived a generic name Hebradendron (literally Jew-tree), which, perhaps fortunately, has been subsumed back into Garcinia.

Annotations: 118. ‘Arashanagorag’ [in Kannada script]. Garciniaceae. Hebradendron Cambogioides (Grah[am]). Garcinia pictoria (Rox[burgh]). ordinary [i.e. life-] size [against a leaf outline]. A tree 30 to 50 feet high. Nuggur, 27 Feb 1846.178 x 228 mm.CN 118

32. Santalum album L. (SANTALACEAE)Sandalwood; gandhada mara, shreegandha (Kan); sandhanam (Tam); chandana (Sans).

In the Jury Report of the 1855 Madras Exhibition the wood of this small tree was described as ‘chiefly remarkable for its agreeable fragrance, which is a preservative against insects. It is much used in making work-boxes, walking sticks, penholders, and other small articles of fine ornament, but cannot be procured of a large size’. Alexander Hunter at the Madras School of Art made ‘many hundred of engravings’ upon the wood, and found it almost the equal of boxwood. In Karnataka it is still highly valued for carving, for the extraction of oil, making incense and the powder, as a paste, for making tilak marks on the forehead. In Cleghorn’s time sandalwood was still ‘found in abundance in Coorg and Mysore, and sparingly in Canara’, occurring in ‘a belt between the Mulnàd (rain country), and Maidan (open plain)’. One of Cleghorn’s jobs as Conservator was to preserve this valuable timber, and to prevent smuggling – Mapillas (Kerala Muslims) were in the habit of entering Mysore territory and taking it back to the coast where they exchanged it with Kurumbas for salt-fish and coconuts. The plants regenerate freely from seed and in Mysore Colkars managed wild stocks by preventing their being over-run with creepers; after about 20 years the stems could be ‘cut into billets, which are classed according to size, and disposed of [i.e., sold by Government] by weight’.

Annotations: 35. ‘gandhadha mara’ [in Kannada script]. Santalaceae. Santalum album L. Shemoga, 15–10–’45.195 x 314 mm.CN 35

33. Tectona grandis L. f. (LABIATAE)Teak; saaguvaani mara, thaegada mara (Kan); thaekku maram (Tam); saaka (Sans).

One of the most important timber trees of India, in Cleghorn’s time much prized for ship building. This drawing (and a related herbarium specimen – see Display Case II) is of great significance for the history of forest conservation in India. During a survey

of Mysore in 1800/1 Francis Buchanan (who studied at RBGE under John Hope in 1780) noted teak in abundance to the west of Shimoga. When Cleghorn revisited this area 45 years later he was shocked by the decline in teak, which he attributed to the burning of forests for shifting cultivation (‘kumri’). It was this that ignited his own interest in forest conservation; to his writing a seminal report on the effects of tropical deforestation for the British Association in 1851/2; and, in 1856, the setting up of the Madras Forest Department. In 1862 Cleghorn wrote: ‘This well-known and far-famed tree grows straight and lofty, with cross-armed panicles of showy white flowers. It seems to require eighty years to attain perfection. The wood is very hard but easily worked; it is soon seasoned, and, being oily, does not injure iron [tools], and shrinks little. It is probably the most durable timber known; hence its value in ship-building ... It is a matter of regret, considering the vast importance of teak timber to England as a maritime nation, that the preservation of the teak forests was so long disregarded’.

Annotations: 18. ‘thyaga’ [in Kannada script]. Verbenaceae. Tectona Grandis Thun[berg]. Shemoga, 15–9–’45194 x 313 mmCN 18

34. Murdannia spirata (L.) G. Brückner (COMMELINACEAE)

Though this exquisite plant was drawn in a Madras garden, it is, technically speaking, an arable weed – showing the subjective nature of such definitions. It would not, however, make a good garden plant as the flowers are extremely short-lived. It is a widespread annual, occurring from India and Sri Lanka, through SE Asia to the Philippines and Java. This genus was described in 1840 by John Forbes Royle, whom Cleghorn assisted arranging Indian plant products for the Great Exhibition. The name was given by Royle ‘in compliment to Murdan Aly, a plant collector and keeper of the Herbarium at Saharunpore ... who had acquired a remarkable tact and quickness in detecting new plants, as well as in remembering the characters by which genera and families are distinguished, so as to be able at once to arrange a new discovery in its appropriate place’. Murdan was only the second Indian to be commemorated in a generic name. The plant is related to the tradescantia, and the distinguishing characters of the genus are well shown in the ‘exploded’ flower at bottom left – opposite the three sepals are three fertile stamens with bearded filaments; between which are three sterile staminodes, each with a three-lobed antherode.

Annotations: Commelina sp. [Agri-]Horticultural Gardens, 1856.231 x 267 mm.CAH 139

35. Hygroryza aristata (Retzius) Nees (GRAMINEAE)Valli pullu (Tam)

This floating, aquatic, feathery-rooted grass can form large masses on lakes, tanks and slow-moving streams. It is the only member of a genus described by the German botanist Christian Nees von Esenbeck in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal in 1833. The generic name, literally ‘water rice’, is appropriate as it belongs to the same Tribe of the grass family as the cultivated rice, Oryza sativa. This relationship is seen in the structure of the spikelet shown on this drawing mid-left – the single flower

consists of an ovary with two feathery stigmas, six stamens (most grasses have three), two white, basal lodicules, an awned, pink-tinged lemma (to right), a greenish palea (to left), with no subtending glumes. The species, widespread in India and Sri Lanka also occurring in SE Asia and into southern China, was first described by the Swedish botanist Anders Retzius from material sent to him from India, possibly by J.G. König from the Coromandel Coast. The grass is palatable to cattle and the seeds are said to be eaten by people, though probably only as a famine food. When Rheede described and illustrated it in his Hortus Malabaricus in 1690, he recorded an arcane medicinal use: that ‘tickling of ears, contracted slowly from blocking by phlegm, is removed by this plant boiled in the oil of Sergelim’.

Annotations: Floating in shallow tanks – Common. H.C[leghorn]. A[gri-] H[orticultural] Gardens, [Madras], Oct 1855.207 x 244 mm.CAH 144

36. Cynodon dactylon (L.) Persoon (GRAMINEAE)Bermuda grass; hurryallee grass (Cleghorn); arugam pul (Tam); durva (Sans); garika gaddi, ghericha (Tel); doob (Hind).

This species occurs throughout tropical and warm temperate parts of the world, and was described (in the genus Panicum) by Linnaeus based on specimens from Portugal. It was known to earlier authors including Caspar Bauhin, from whom Linnaeus took the epithet, meaning ‘finger’, from the narrow, radiating spikes of the inflorescence. Due to its leafy stolons it is a popular tropical lawn grass, and makes good fodder, especially for horses. Cleghorn had this drawing lithographed for his 1855 ‘Memorandum on Indian grasses’ for the Madras Military Department (see Display Case IV). The plant is used medicinally, and is of significance to Hindus as one of the plants on which the nectar of immortality (amrita) fell during the churning of the primeval ocean. It was one of the 78 Indian plants on which Sir William Jones published in 1795, quoting the A’t’harvana Veda: ‘May Dúrvà, which rose from the water of life, which has a hundred roots and a hundred stems, efface a hundred of my sins, and prolong my existence on earth for a hundred years’. It is sacred to the elephant-headed god Ganesh, used in funeral rites, and given to newly wed daughters when departing for their husbands’ homes. The artist who has taken such pains with this drawing doubtless agreed with Jones, who thought ‘its flowers, in their perfect state, are among the loveliest objects in the vegetable world, and appear, thro’ a lens, like minute rubies and emeralds in constant motion from the least breath of air’.

Annotations: Cynodon dactylon. Doob. Hind., Gerickay. Tel. ... Tam. St Thome, Novr

1855.220 x 270 mm.CNS 158

37. Rubia cordifolia L. (RUBIACEAE)Indian madder; manjitti, poovatthu, shevelli (Tam); manjishta (Sans)

The root and woody stems of various species of the genus Rubia (including the European R. tinctoria) yield the red dye madder. There is, however, confusion over the correct name for what is probably a complex of similar, untidily sprawling,

species occurring in hilly parts of Asia and Africa. The dye-yielding species of the Himalaya is now known as R. manjith, but the South Indian form shown here is still known under the name R. cordifolia. In Cleghorn’s second Forest Report (1859) he wrote, under the name ‘munjit’, of the plant depicted here that ‘Samples of this dye-root have been sent to Calcutta and England for experimental trial and report. The product is abundant upon the slopes of the Nilgiris; and if it could be prepared for export so as to be packed in small compass, a trade would probably spring up. There appears to be very little difference between the Nilgiri and Punjab article’. This exquisite drawing resembles the copies that Cleghorn’s artists made for him from engravings, but as no model can be found it must represent a carefully composed plate, perhaps prepared for publication in connection with Cleghorn’s commercial interest in the plant.

Annotations: Rubia cordifolia. Nilgiri.225 x 279 mm.CNS 77

38. Impatiens parasitica Beddome (BALSAMINACEAE)

The genus Impatiens is richly represented in the Western Ghats, and species still remain to be described. This one was described only in the year of this drawing – by Lieut. Richard Henry Beddome in a paper in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science (of which Cleghorn was an editor). Beddome was Cleghorn’s assistant Conservator, responsible for the rich forests of the Anamallai (‘elephant hill’) range, and this species may have been collected on the expedition to the area with Cleghorn the previous year. This species is restricted to the Anamallai and adjacent hills, growing on tree trunks between 1500 and 2100 metres. When Beddome published a plate of this species in 1874, he noted that it was by then cultivated in the Nilgiris: ‘a most profuse bloomer, a small mass in a pot being often covered with 60 or 80 flowers and remaining in full bloom from May till November; it is quite hardy in the open air in Ootacamund, never being injured by the slight frosts we experience, it grows admirably in lumps of brick and charcoal’. This drawing is unusual among the collection in showing the plant in a habitat setting; the 1874 lithograph, though based on a different drawing, signed ‘Alwis’, shows a similar habitat, and it is therefore just possible that this drawing may also be the work of one of the de Alwis family of botanical artists who were based at the Peradenyia garden in Ceylon.

Annotations: Impatiens nov. sp. I. parasitica. Anamallai, Sept. 59.227 x 276 mm.CNS 24

39. Rudbeckia amplexicaulis Vahl (COMPOSITAE)Clasping coneflower

An annual herb to 70 cm, which occurs in moist, disturbed habitats in the south-eastern states of the USA and Mexico, but is widely cultivated and sometimes escapes. It was grown in botanic gardens in Madrid, and probably also Vienna, in the 1790s, but was introduced into cultivation to Britain forty years later, by Thomas Drummond from New Orleans and Texas. Drummond, who for a period took over the running of George Don’s botanic garden in Forfar, was a significant North American

plant collector, who, after 1831, collected for the Glasgow Botanic Garden before coming to a sticky end in Havana in 1835. From the annotation on the drawing the plant may have been sent to the Lalbagh garden in Bangalore from the Cape of Good Hope. This North American genus was named by Linnaeus for his teacher Olof Rudbeck, professor of medicine at Uppsala, and is characterised by its prominent conical receptacle to which the disc florets (shown here in details top and bottom right) are attached. The disc florets are often dark in colour, giving rise to another common name for the genus: black-eyed Susan. (This species is sometimes still placed in a segregate genus as Dracopis amplexicaulis, the name on this drawing).

Annotations: Senecionidae. Dracopis amplexicaulis, Cass[ini]. (D.C. prod[romus]. V. 558.). [C(ape of) G(ood) H(ope) – deleted]. Mexico. Lalbagh Garden, 25 Nov 1859.248 x 319 mm.CMG 37

40. Oenothera tetraptera Cavanilles (ONAGRACEAE)

This evening primrose was described by Antonio Cavanilles from plants growing in the Madrid botanic garden, which had been sent from Sotoluca in Mexico and flowered in 1795. According to William Curtis, who described and illustrated it in the Botanical Magazine in 1800, it was introduced to Britain by way of seeds given by Casimiro Gomez Ortega, director of the Madrid garden, to the Marchioness of Bute. This was Charlotte (née Windsor), whose husband, the first Marquess of Bute, was British Ambassador to Spain from 1795 to 1798 (his father, the third Earl, was the botanical Prime Minister whose patronage allowed John Hope to move the RBGE to its Leith Walk site in 1763). According to Curtis when the flowers of this species open they are pure white, ‘but in the morning they change to a purple colour, fade, and their place is supplied by a fresh succession’. Clearly those shown here are in the latter stage; also shown in the drawing is a fruit with the four wings from which the epithet is derived. It is not known when this species, which is native from Texas, through Mexico to Colombia and western Venezuela, was introduced to India, but by the 1880s it had escaped and become naturalised both in the Nilgiri Hills and on the grassy slopes below Simla in the Himalaya.

Annotations: Onagraceae. Œnothera. Richardson’s Garden, Yercaud – Salem.217 x 273 mm.CMG 28

41. Combretum coccineum (Sonnerat) Lamarck (COMBRETACEAE)Scarlet Poivrea (Brown cat.), Madagascar or scarlet combretum; L’aigrette (Sonnerat); chigonier de Madagascar (Lamarck)

This spectacular climbing shrub was a favourite in British hothouses in the nineteenth century and was in cultivation at RBGE by 1827. It is native to Madagascar, and one of several spectacular plants introduced from there to Mauritius, and thence to the rest of the world. It was first described by Pierre Sonnerat while naturalist on an expedition to India and China (1774–81) sponsored by Louis XVI. Sonnerat later worked as a naturalist based in Pondicherry, where he commissioned botanical drawings from Indian artists, but William Roxburgh was dismissive of his botanical abilities. According to the nurseryman George Loddiges the flowering panicles of this

plant could be ‘above a foot in each direction ... composed of an innumerable mass of blossoms, which are of the most brilliant red that can be conceived’. In his 1866 Handbook of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Garden, R.N. Brown noted that it was ‘a very elegant climbing shrub, well adapted for covering trellis work’. The generic name on the drawing is one given by A.P. de Candolle to include this and several other species and commemorates Pierre Poivre, Sonnerat’s uncle, and founder of the Mauritius botanic garden, but the genus is no longer regarded as distinct from Combretum. (See Display Case I).

Annotations: Poivrea. Horticultural Gardens [Madras], May 1855.234 x 294 mm.CAH 39

42. Furcraea cf. foetida (L.) Haworth (AGAVACEAE)Mauritius hemp; seemai katthaalai (Tam)

A genus of about 20 species of large, succulent, rosette plants from tropical America; the flowers have characteristically swollen filaments (top right) and styles. Most are ‘hapaxanthic’, that is, die after flowering, and several, including this one, are cultivated for fibre extracted from the leaves. This species propagates itself by bulbils that develop into plants, which arise on the inflorescence where flowers have fallen. The genus was named, by E.P. Ventenat, after Antoine François Fourcroy, a distinguished chemist and naturalist with a somewhat clouded reputation for the role he played (or didn’t) as a member of the Convention during the French Revolution in which the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier lost his head. In 1855, under the name F. gigantea, fibre from this species (5–6 feet in length) was exhibited by A.T. Jaffrey from the Agri-Horticultural Garden, which was said to be ‘a little finer than the Agave fibre, but possessed of similar properties’. In South India the plant is widely naturalised: in Karnataka, at least, growing in slightly wetter areas than the various naturalised species of Agave. In common with many groups of which it is hard to make herbarium specimens, the taxonomy and definition of species within the genus is uncertain, and J.R. Drummond and D. Prain in 1906 doubted the identity of the ‘Mauritius Hemp plant of S. India’ with true F. foetida.

Annotations: Amaryllidaceae. Fourcroya gigantia Vent[enat]. [Agri-]Hort[icultural] Gardens, 2nd August /53.254 x 364 mm.CAH 138

43. Pelargonium cf. inquinans (L.) L’Héritier (GERANIACEAE)Scarlet geranium (Cleghorn cat.)

In the wild this species is a softly woody shrub up to two metres in height, restricted to the area between the Eastern Cape and Transkei of South Africa. It is used there medicinally (for headaches and colds) and to assist with (or at least disguise) personal hygiene problems. It was one of the first pelargoniums to be cultivated in Europe and has been widely used in hybridization (the drawing may not be the ‘pure’ species). It was described in the genus Geranium by Linnaeus, who cited earlier descriptions and illustrations including one made in James Sherard’s garden at Eltham published by J.J. Dillenius in 1732, but it was first grown in England by Henry Compton, Bishop of

London, in his garden at Fulham Palace. The species was transferred to the genus Pelargonium by the French botanist Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle during his stay in London in 1786/7. The circumstances were strange: L’Héritier had fled France with the South American herbarium of Joseph Dombey, which became the subject of a diplomatic incident between France and Spain. He took the opportunity to study the plants in London herbaria and gardens, and left a manuscript on Geraniaceae with Joseph Banks, some of which (including this species) were published in Hortus Kewensis. The full manuscript was never published as L’Héritier’s life was cut short in 1800, the victim of an unknown assassin. The epithet, which means ‘stained’, refers to the leaves which Linnaeus believed turned brownish when handled.

Annotations: Geranium. Garden, Bangalore.185 x 275 mm.CMG 8

44. Ochroma pyramidale (Lamarck) Urban (BOMBACACEAE)Balsa wood tree, down tree, downy-leaved ochroma (Cleghorn cat.)

This tree, which grows to 20 metres, is native to tropical America (from Mexico to Brazil) and the West Indies. It is renowned for its extremely light wood, which (at least until the advent of computer games) was much favoured by small boys for making model aeroplanes. Given its properties and handsome, bat-pollinated, flowers it was noted by early travellers to the Antilles and formally described in the Linnaean system under various names at the end of the eighteenth century. Although Antonio Cavanilles coined the name Bombax pyramidale and made an excellent description and plate of the plant, it was J.B. Lamarck who first published Cavanilles’ name. The Swede Olof Swartz first described the genus in which it is now placed, and called it Ochromus lagopus, one of the names on this drawing. Humboldt and Bonpland found the tree in Mexico in 1787, and the latter described it in his account of the botanical finds of their travels under the other name appearing on this drawing – Cheirostemon platanodies. This generic name, literally ‘hand-stamen’, refers to the five fused stamens, which wrap like a hand around the spirally-twisted stigma. The inside walls of the long, five-angled fruit are covered in long brown hairs, called by Lamarck a ‘duvet’. This was one of the ‘silk cottons’ exhibited at the 1855 Madras Exhibition, then used only for stuffing pillows, but of potential use in paper making. Alexander Tulloch (1788–1878) was a senior officer with the 33rd Madras Regiment of Native Infantry, and in 1855 was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Agri-Horticultural Society.

Annotations: Bombacaceae. Ochroma lagopus. Cheirostemon platanoides H[umboldt]. & B[onpland]. Genl. Tulloch’s Garden, Madras. Fl. Feb ’57.482 x 305 mm.CMG 1

45. Fuchsia cultivar ‘Princeps’ (ONAGRACEAE)Prince’s fuchsia

The genus has about 105 species mainly in Central and South America (with one in Tahiti and four in New Zealand); its name commemorates the sixteenth century herbalist Leonhart Fuchs. Many of the species have red flowers and are pollinated by

hummingbirds. One of the first to be cultivated was F. magellanica, discovered on the Straits of Magellan by the French naturalist and explorer Philibert Commerson in 1768; this is widespread in Chile and Argentina and was described by Lamarck in 1788. The following year (under the name F. coccinea) it was illustrated in the Botanical Magazine, when it was said to be obtainable from the firm of Lee of Hammersmith. Fuchsias became extremely popular in the first half of the 19th century and F. magellanica (which has contributed largely to the makeup of this cultivar) was used extensively in selection and hybridization. Of these F. magellanica ‘Riccartonii’ is one of the best known, raised c. 1835 by James Young, gardener on the Gibson-Craig estate of Riccarton, now the campus of Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of Edinburgh. ‘Princeps’ was raised by Robert Prince in 1852 in the Exeter nursery of Lucombe and Prince. The epithet, meaning ‘chief’ or ‘head’, though apt for an exceptionally handsome plant, was doubtless also a pun on the breeder’s surname.

Annotations: Onagrarieae. Fuchsia princeps. Ut[akamun]d, 30 Sept [?1859].243 x 288 mm.CMG 27

46. Stigmaphyllon aristatum Lindley (MALPIGHIACEAE)Awned stigmaphyllon (Lindley); awn-leafed stigmaphyllum (Cleghorn cat.)

Stigmaphyllon is a genus of woody vines, with around 100 species in tropical America, named for the three expanded, green, ‘leaf-like’ stigmas that curve over the three largest of the stamens. This species was described in 1834 in the Botanical Register by John Lindley, based on cultivated material from ‘South America’ growing in the hothouse of a Mrs Marryatt of Wimbledon. Nothing else is known of this species, or its origin, though clearly it was in cultivation long enough to have reached Madras by the 1850s. Much more commonly cultivated as an ornamental in the tropics (including India) is S. ciliatum and it is not certain that S. aristatum is really distinct from that species, which appears to differ in only superficial characters including having unlobed, ovate leaves and petals that are not densely fringed.

Annotations: Malpighiaceae. Stigmaphyllon aristatum Lind[ley]. Bot. Reg. t. 1659. S. America. Hortl Gardens, 10 March 1855.230 x 284 mm.CAH 19

47. Passiflora caerulea L. (PASSIFLORACEAE)Blue passion-flower (Cleghorn cat.)

Passiflora is a large genus of about 430 species of climbers, occurring throughout the tropics except Africa. This is perhaps the best known species, hardy outdoors even in Britain where it was introduced in 1699, and native from Brazil to Argentina. It occurs in many varieties and has been widely used in hybridization. It can climb to a length of 15 metres and has edible orange fruits. The genus was clearly a great favourite in Madras – no fewer than 14 species or varieties are listed in Cleghorn’s 1853 catalogue of the Madras Agri-Horticultural garden, and there are drawings of eight of these in his collection. The generic and English names refer to the bizarre floral structure, which is said to have been used by early Spanish/Portuguese missionaries as a teaching aid to illustrate the instruments of Christ’s passion – the

five yellow anthers representing the wounds, the purple stigmas (here four, but usually three) the nails, the corona of filaments (outgrowths from the top of the calyx tube) the crown of thorns, the awned sepals the lance, and the tendrils the whips. In an interesting recent cross-cultural adaptation, this symbolism has been translated into an Indian version relating to Krishna. The original Krishna-kamal was the blue waterlily, but this has been (at least partly) transferred to the blue passion-flower, the five stamens representing the Pandhava brothers

Annotations: Passiflora. Horticultural Gardens, 17th May 1855.231 x 293 mm.CAH 48

48. Spathodea campanulata P. Beauvois (BIGNONIACEAE)African tulip tree; paatadi (Tam)

A large, usually evergreen, tree to 21 metres tall, widespread in tropical Africa, but now popular as a street tree throughout the tropics for its brilliantly coloured flowers. It was first described from West Africa by the French botanist Palisot de Beauvois in 1805, and introduced to British hothouses where Joseph Paxton flowered it for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth in 1852. It is not known when the tree was introduced to India, but when this spectacular drawing was made in 1855 Cleghorn had difficulty identifying it, suggesting that it was probably then a recent introduction. Cleghorn sought help with identification from his friend the Madras Civil Servant Walter Elliot of Wolfelee, lending Elliot his own copy of the volume of De Candolle’s Prodromus with the account of Bignoniaceae; Elliot’s reply of 5 March 1856, with its correct identification, was pinned by Cleghorn to the drawing and survives. The flower buds, with their spathe-like calyx (from which the generic name is derived), are filled with fluid, and can be used as water pistols by mischievous children – accounting for the common names of ‘fountain tree’ and ‘squirt tree’. (See Display Case I).

Annotations: Bignon[iaceae]. Spathodea campanulata vide Bot. Mag. [plate 5091, 1859]. AH Gardens. 17 March 1855. (Extensive description and drawing of leaf on verso).321 x 498 mm.CAH 79

49. Clerodendrum calamitosum L. (LABIATAE)Hurtful clerodendron (Hooker)

A shrub to two metres in height, first described from Java. It is probably native only in Indonesia, but is widespread in SE Asia. Widely cultivated pantropically, it has escaped from cultivation and become naturalised in habitats such as sugar plantations, and is a weed in Kerala. Sir William Hooker illustrated it in the Botanical Magazine in 1862, when it had ‘only recently been known in our gardens’, describing it as ‘a modest, unobtrusive plant, with .... pure white blossoms’. Hooker also gave the etymology of the strange epithet: ‘the earlier known species [of Clerodendrum] were supposed to have medicinal properties ... two suspected of being injurious or poisonous were called infortunatum and calamitosum’. As noted on the drawing this plant reached Madras from Calcutta – the note is in the hand of A.T. Jaffrey,

supervisor of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society’s Garden from 1853 to 1857. Jaffrey had previously worked for the Caledonian Horticultural Society in Edinburgh and had been selected for the Madras job by J.H. Balfour, Regius Keeper of RBGE. Cleghorn, reporting back to Balfour, considered Jaffrey ‘a capital Gardener but like Scotchmen, of that class, is marvellously free and easy – and speaks to Lord Harris [Governor of Madras] in a manner which I would not venture to do’. (See Display Case I).

Annotations: Clerodendron fragrans vera A.T. J[affrey]. ?H.C. Intd. from Calcutta. 1855. A.T.J.225 x 272 mm.CAH 105

50. Nicandra physalodes (L.) Gaertner (SOLANACEAE)Physalis-like Nicandra (Cleghorn cat.); sudakka thakkali (Tam)

This annual herb is native to Peru, but is widely cultivated as an ornamental in Europe, Asia and North America. It was first described in the deadly nightshade genus, Atropa, by Linnaeus, based on a plant grown in his garden at Uppsala, from seed sent him by Bernard de Jussieu collected on the 1735 French Expedition to South America by Bernard’s brother Joseph. Linnaeus considered this species to be intermediate between the genera Atropa and Physalis. It resembles the latter (to which belongs the Cape gooseberry, Physalis peruviana), in the sepals, which grow greatly after flowering to enclose the fruit. It was later placed in its own genus. The plant, like many members of the nightshade family, contains alkaloids, and it is said to ward off flies, hence the common name ‘shoo fly’. Cleghorn’s identification on the drawing is incorrect, referring to another species with an ‘accrescent’ calyx now known as Withania somnifera.

Annotations: Physalis somnifera. Domesticated. Ootac[amun]d, 16 Augt 1859.256 x 319 mm.CMG 55

51. Tacca leontopetaloides (L.) Kuntze (DIOSCOREACEAE)Kaattu karunai (Tam)

The tuber of this species (shown faintly at top right) was formerly an important source of starch; though the tubers are bitter and poisonous in the raw state, the starch can be extracted by maceration and careful washing. The plant is probably native in SE Asia, where it is a coastal species, dispersed by its floating, corky fruits, but widely cultivated in the Pacific Islands and Africa. Under the name on this drawing it was described from Tahiti by Johann Reinhold & Georg Forster from Captain Cook’s second voyage, and it has been known (and exported) as Polynesian or Tahitian arrowroot. It had, however, been previously (1741) described and illustrated by the Swiss-born, St Petersburg-based, botanist Johann Amman from ‘India’ under the name ‘Leontopetaloides’, on which Linnaeus based his Leontice leontopetaloides. Though it had been grown in India earlier (it was imported from Malaya to Madras by a Dr Harris, who sent it to Roxburgh in Calcutta in 1800), an associated drawing of a tuber records that the plant illustrated here was a recent introduction to the Madras

Garden (from Mergui, Burma, in 1853). Tubers, which Roxburgh reported could be the size of a child’s head, were exhibited at the 1855 Madras Exhibition. Annotations. Fig. 8. Tacca pinnatifida. Hort[icultural] G[ardens] Madras.221 x 278 mm.CAH 134

52. Dioscorea bulbifera L. (DIOSCOREACEAE)Bulbous-rooted yam (Cleghorn cat.), air potateo, Otaheite yam; pannukkizhangu (Tam); varaahikanda (Sans)

Yams form a large genus of c. 630 species that occur throughout tropical and warm temperate parts of the world – the name Dioscorea commemorates Pedanius Dioscorides the first-century Greek physician, whose De Materia Medica was the most important herbal for more than a thousand years. The plants are climbers growing from underground tubers and some, including this species, also have bulbils in the leaf axils – the tubers and bulbils are starch-rich and an important food source. Some have medicinal uses, and several species provide diosgenin, a precursor of progesterone used in the manufacture of contraceptives. The species shown here is probably native in India, but is widely cultivated pantropically. The plants are dioecious and that shown here is female, having flowers with inferior, three-angled ovaries (the hermaphrodite flower, centre right, and the stamen at top are unconvincing and redundant). In the Cleghorn collection is a series of drawings of yam tubers made for his friend, the ethnobotanically- and antiquarian-minded Walter Elliot. Elliot was stationed in the Northern Circars in what is now Andhra Pradesh and wrote a dictionary of Telugu plant names. Associated with the tuber drawings are ones of the vegetative parts of the various species and varieties made in the Agri-Horticultural Garden in Madras, of which this is one – the Telugu name shows it to have been introduced from the Straits of Malacca. (See Display Case I).

Annotations (verso): D[ioscorea] bulbifera, Malacka kaya, Tel[ugu].279 x 440 mm.CY 12

53. Eucalyptus cinerea F. Mueller ex Bentham (MYRTACEAE)‘Blue gum’; Argyle apple

There was great interest in planting Australian trees in the Nilgiris, largely for use as firewood, and Cleghorn wrote a report on the subject in 1859. The favoured genera, for their fast growth, were Acacia and Eucalyptus, choices later to be regretted. The first Eucalyptus was planted by the engineer Captain Frederick Cotton in 1843, and the main species grown was the Tasmanian blue gum, E. globulus. It is recorded that in 1856 Captain Morgan imported seed of ‘blue gum’ from Australia, but the following year it was still considered so rare that a plant from the Government Gardens cost 12 annas. It is not known if Morgan’s introduction involved more than one species, but the plant shown here (and related herbarium specimens labelled ‘Eucalyptus perfoliata’ – see Display Case II) could be part of this introduction, as large scale planting did not take place until 1863. This was drawn from a plant in the garden of Kempstow, a house next to the famous Ooty Club (where the rules of snooker are said to have been drawn up), which belonged to Mrs Brooke Cunliffe,

wife of a Madras Civil Servant. The juvenile and mature foliage of many eucalypts differ greatly in shape, and the clasping (‘perfoliate’) form shown here is typical of the immature foliage of several species. However, the fact that this bears flowers (in groups of three) at the juvenile stage shows it to be E. cinerea, a native of New South Wales and Victoria.

Annotations: Eucalyptus pendula. Kempstow [Ootacamund], 10 Augt /59.242 x 331 mm.CMG 30

54. Pinus wallichiana A.B. Jackson (PINACEAE)Bhutan pine, blue pine

This tree was known to Cleghorn as Pinus excelsa D. Don, a name suggested to Don by Nathaniel Wallich, based on specimens collected in Nepal by Francis Buchanan in 1802. The name had previously been used for a different species, so A.B. Jackson renamed it after Wallich. Wallich, a Danish surgeon and botanist, was superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden 1817–46, and saw this species when he visited Nepal in 1820/1. The tree can reach 30 metres in height and 2 metres in girth; its needles are in bundles of five and it occurs from Afghanistan and Pakistan through the Himalayas as far east as Bhutan. Cleghorn would come to know it well in the NW Himalaya in the 1860s, but this specimen was drawn from a specimen in the garden of Cluny, one of the oldest houses in Ooty, built by a Captain Macpherson (and named for his ancestral Inverness-shire seat), but in Cleghorn’s day belonging to Captain J. Gunning of the 17th Madras Native Infantry. The seed was doubtless supplied by W.G. Mc Ivor from the Ooty Government Garden, which became part of Cleghorn’s responsibilities in 1857. McIvor had come from Kew as superintendent of the garden and as early as 1852 was trying potential timber species from as far afield as Europe, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia. He had obtained seeds of Pinus excelsa and other Himalayan species from the NW Provinces in 1849, but found that they would only succeed if seed was sown after the SW monsoon.

Annotations: Cluny – Utakamund, May 1860.245 x 304 mm.CMG 71

55. Jacaranda mimosifolia D. Don (BIGNONIACEAE)Jacaranda; neeli paadari (Kan); swarna sundari (Tel)

One of the most widely cultivated tropical ornamentals in the world, on account of the beauty of its flowers, which turn whole trees into hazes of mauve-blue. A deciduous tree to 15 metres in height, native to NW Argentina and Bolivia, it was introduced to Britain around 1818 and described from the hot-house of the Comtesse des Vandes at Bayswater, London. Curiously two botanists, both born in Forfarshire, both working in the (recently late) Sir Joseph Banks’s house in Soho Square – David Don in the front part, Robert Brown in the back – described the same material under two different names both published on 1 June 1822. Don’s, with its appropriate epithet (‘mimosa-leaved’) has fortunately prevailed over Brown’s J. ovalifolia. The following year Don sent a paper on the family Bignoniaceae to Edinburgh University’s Wernerian Society, in which he drew attention to the curious asymmetric anthers of

Jacaranda – one is shown in the detail at the bottom left of this drawing, where the upper locule is seen releasing its pollen, the lower reduced to a small bump. It is not known when the jacaranda was first introduced to India, but this drawing probably represents an early introduction and it is listed neither in the 1853 nor the 1866 catalogues of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society Garden. This was drawn from a specimen in the Nungumbaukam garden of the merchant John Vans Agnew, who worked for Arbuthnot & Co. and was Danish Consul.

Annotations: Jacaranda mimosifolia. Mr Agnew’s Gardens, April 1855.246 x 299 mm.CMG 51