ClegExhib

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 19^th 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. Hort^l 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, 17^th 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. Int^d. 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 Aug^t 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 Aug^t /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 17^th 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