hi
nivi tha
Dear all,
Shall we learn the etymology of the plant names.....Circium wallichii...
Circium- Ancient grrek name for thistle
wallichii- after the name of the scientist Wallich
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Selvalakshmi S.
tanay bose
Dr. Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854)
Nathaniel Wallich was born at Copenhagen, in Denmark on January 28, 1786. In 1806 Wallich obtained the diploma of the Royal Academy of Surgeons at Copenhagen and in the autumn of that year was appointed Surgeon to the Danish settlement at Serampore, then known as Frederischnagor in Bengal. He sailed for India in April 1807 and arrived at Serampore in the following November after a long sea voyage around the African Cape.
The Danish alliance with Napoleon turned disastrous and resulted in many Danish colonies being seized by the British, including the outpost at Serampore. Wallich was held as a prisoner of war but later, in 1809, he was released from his parole on the merit of his scholarship. On his release Wallich was appointed assistant to William Roxburgh, the East India Company's botanist in Calcutta. Although ill health forced Wallich to spend the years 1811-1813 in the relatively more temperate climate of Mauritius, he still pursued his studies.
Wallich's keen interest in the native flora and fauna of India, and his scholarly work with collecting and cataloguing was making impressions both locally and abroad. As a member of the Asiatic Society Wallich was the driving influence behind the Society's foundation of the Oriental Museum of the Asiatic Society in February 1814. Offering both his services and a number of items from his own collections Wallich founded the museum and took charge as the Honorary Curator and then Superintendent. However, Wallich continued to work in the medical profession and by August 1814 he was working as Assistant Surgeon for the East India Company and consequently he had to resign as Superintendent of the Museum in December 1814.
The Museum, later known as the Indian Museum in Calcutta, thrived under the guidance of its enthusiastic founder and the many collectors he supported and inspired. Most of them were Europeans except a solitary Indian, Babu Ramkamal Sen, initially a Collector and later the first Indian Secretary to the Asiatic Society.
Wallich had been involved with the East India Company's Botanical Garden at Calcutta almost from the day he arrived, but took on a permanent position as Superintendent of the Garden in 1817. Although he continued his duties at the Museum, by 1819 he devoted himself entirely to the garden.
As a well respected botanist Nathaniel Wallich prepared a catalogue of more than 20,000 specimens, published two important books -- Tentamen Flora Nepalensis Illustratae (1824-26) and Plantae Asiaticae Rariories (1830-32) and went on a number of expeditions himself. However, one of Wallich's greatest contributions to field of plant exploration was the assistance he regularly offered to the many plant hunters who stopped in Calcutta on their way to the Himalayas.
Wallich was responsible for packing many of the specimens that came through the gardens on the way to England, and over the years he developed some innovative methods, including packing seeds in brown sugar. Strange as it may seem, the sugar preserved and protected the seeds very well and, in fact, Wallich had one of the best records for keeping plant material alive for shipping prior to the development of the Wardian Case.
Wallich retired to London in 1847 and died there on April 28, 1854.
On the occasion of his bicentenary, in 1986, the Indian Museum instituted an annual lecture series in memory of the founder of the museum movement in India.
Although Wallich's main herbarium is at Kew (K-WALL), there are numerous duplicate specimens at the Botanical Museum, Copenhagen.
Reference: http://www.plantexplorers.com/explorers/biographies/wallich/nathaniel-wallich.html
Dinesh Valke
Many thanks ... keep them coming !!
Regards.
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Balkar Arya
Thanks for sharing such a nice info
Regards
Dr Balkar Singh
Head, Deptt. of Botany and Biotechnology
Arya P G College, Panipat
Haryana-132103
09416262964
tanay bose
Tanay
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Padmini Raghavan
May I make a suggestion? Could you also include a pic of the plant being discussed?
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tanay bose
SIR WILLIAM ROXBURGH
ROXBURGH, WILLIAM, a physician and eminent botanist, was born at Underwood in the parish of Craigie, on the 29th June, 1759. His family was not in affluent circumstances, but they nevertheless contrived to give him a liberal education. On acquiring all the learning which the place of his nativity afforded, he was sent to Edinburgh to complete his studies, which were exclusively directed to the medical profession. After attending for some time the various classes at the university necessary to qualify him for this pursuit, he received, while yet but seventeen years of age, the appointment of surgeon’s mate on board of an East Indiaman, and completed two voyages to the East in that capacity before he had attained his twenty-first year. An offer having been now made to him of an advantageous settlement at Madras, he accepted of it, and accordingly established himself there. Shortly after taking up his residence at Madras, Mr Roxburgh turned his attention to botany, and particularly to the study of the indigenous plants, and other vegetable productions of the East, and in this he made such progress, and acquired so much reputation that he was in a short time invited by the government of Bengal, to take charge of the Botanical gardens established there. In this situation he rapidly extended his fame as a botanist, and introduced to notice, and directed to useful purposes many previously unknown and neglected vegetable productions of the country. Mr Roxburgh now also became a member of the Asiatic Society, to whose Transactions he contributed, from time to time, many valuable papers, and amongst these one of singular interest on the lacca insect, from which a colour called Lac Lake is made, which is largely used as a substitute for cochineal. This paper, which was written in 1789, excited much attention at the time, at once from the ability it displayed, and from the circumstance of its containing some hints which led to a great improvement on the colour yielded by the lacca insect.
In 1797, Mr Roxburgh paid a visit to his native country, and returned (having been in the mean time married,) to Bengal, in 1799, when he resumed his botanical studies with increased ardour and increasing success. In 1805, he received the gold medal of the Society for the Promotion of Arts, for a series of highly interesting and valuable communications on the subject of the productions of the East. He had again, in this year, returned to England, and was now residing at Chelsea, but in a very indifferent health; he, however, once more proceeded to Bengal, and continued in his curatorship of the Botanical Gardens there till 1803, when, broken down in constitution, he finally returned to his native country. In this year he received a second gold medal for a communication on the growth of trees in India, and on the 31st of May, 1814, was presented with a third, in the presence of a large assembly which he personally attended, by the duke of Norfolk, who was then president of the Society of Arts.
Soon after receiving this last honourable testimony of the high respect in which his talents were held, Mr Roxburgh repaired to Edinburgh, where he died, on the 10th of April in the following year, in the 57th year of his age, leaving behind him a reputation of no ordinary character for ability, and for a laudable ambition to confer benefits on mankind, by adding to their comforts and conveniences; which objects he effected to no inconsiderable extent by many original and ingenious suggestions.
REFERENCE : http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/roxburgh_william.htm
MORE READING: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Roxburgh
Tanay
Gurcharan Singh
Retired Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007
Res: 932 Anand Kunj, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018.
Phone: 011-25518297 Mob: 9810359089
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45/
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Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Retired Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007
Res: 932 Anand Kunj, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018.
Phone: 011-25518297 Mob: 9810359089
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45/
Satish Phadke
A new dimension to the databank and information highway of Efloraindia.
We would like to learn them serially as you are posting it around three per day so that it is easy to digest.
Dr Phadke
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