Calcutta Botanic Garden | |
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Type | Public |
Location | Shibpur, Howrah |
Nearest city | Howrah, Kolkata |
Area | 109 hectares (270 acres) |
Created | 1787 |
Designer | Robert Kyd, William Roxburgh |
Operated by | Botanical Survey of India |
Status | Open (5 AM – 7 AM for Morning Walkers 9 AM – 5 PM for Visitors) |
Website | Official website |
The Calcutta Botanic Garden, previously known as Indian Botanic Garden [1] and the Calcutta Botanic Garden, [2] is a botanical garden situated in Shibpur, Howrah near Kolkata. They are commonly known as the Calcutta Botanical Garden and previously as the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta. [3] The gardens exhibit a wide variety of rare plants and a total collection of over 12,000 specimens spread over 109 hectares. It is under Botanical Survey of India (BSI) of Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.
The gardens were founded in 1787 by Colonel Robert Kyd, an army officer of the East India Company, primarily for the purpose of identifying new plants of commercial value, such as teak, and growing spices for trade. [4] In a written proposal to Governor-General John Macpherson to establish the garden, Kyd stated it was "not for the purpose of collecting rare plants as things of mere curiosity, but for establishing a stock for disseminating such articles as may prove beneficial to the inhabitants as well to the natives of Great Britain, and which ultimately may tend to the extension of the national commerce and riches." [5] India was undergoing mass famine in the 18th century as a result of political turmoil, in addition to severe socio-economic crises. Robert Kyd's Garden proposal was motivated by the desire to increase agricultural revenue in an effort to end food scarcity and promote economic growth. [6] Furthermore, Robert Kyd was accustomed to growing various plants (spices) from the East Indies, which were obtained from East India Company's voyages. The East India Company's Court of Directors supported Kyd's ambitions to establish cinnamon, tobacco, dates, Chinese tea, and coffee in the Garden due to its economic benefits. [5] Tea, for example, was a highly commodified plant that was indispensable to the European economy. The indigenous tea plants of India were not able to be produced in mass quantities, leading to the kidnapping of Chinese gardeners and their tea plants. Chinese tea was first transplanted to the Calcutta Garden and larger tea plantations in Ooty and Nilgiris were established by forcing the people of Assam and Ooty to relocate. Additionally, Cacti such as Nopal were imported from Mexico and established in the Garden to produce textile dyes, an industry which Spain dominated. [6]
Joseph Dalton Hooker says of this Botanical Garden that "Amongst its greatest triumphs may be considered the introduction of the tea-plant from China ... the establishment of the tea-trade in the Himalaya and Assam is almost entirely the work of the superintendents of the gardens of Calcutta and Seharunpore (Saharanpur)." [7]
A major change in policy, however, was introduced by the botanist William Roxburgh after he became superintendent of the garden in 1793. [8] Roxburgh brought in plants from all over India and developed an extensive herbarium. [9] This collection of dried plant specimens eventually became the Central National Herbarium of the Botanical Survey of India, which comprises 2,500,000 items. During the early years of the garden Joseph Dalton Hooker writes: [10]
... contributed more useful and ornamental tropical plants to the public and private gardens of the world than any other establishment before or since. ... I here allude to the great Indian herbarium, chiefly formed by the staff of the Botanic Gardens under the direction of Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, and distributed in 1829 to the principal museums of Europe.
The Calcutta Gardens, along with gardens such as Singapore Botanic Gardens, Botanic Gardens St. Vincent and others located in Southeast Asia formed a large network of scientific institutions through which plants were transferred, classified according to the Linnaean system, and used to justify colonial expansion. [6]
Along with the policy change enacted by William Roxburgh, the East India Company was itself undergoing political and historical changes. Pitt's India Act formally brought the Company under British rule, although the Company had governing power and ruled alongside the Nawabs of Bengal from 1786-1787. [5] The development of botanical science in India happened alongside the expansion of the East India Company as it acquired control of the agricultural economy. The Company conducted extensive scientific research in India as it was gaining power and territory in South Asia. A large amount of botanical surveys were collected that provided information on the estimated revenue that could be made from economically valued plants. In addition, the surveys were used as a means to establish credibility that the British government would benefit from the Company's involvement with governing affairs. Although it was a trading company, it had the power to collect revenue as an ordinary government could. Specifically, the revenue collection system was purposely structured in a way that prevented officials and agricultural cultivators from interacting. The collection procedures, which involved local Indian officials as well as British officials, were set in place by the Court of Directors and ensured to be as objective as possible. [6] An increasing number of botanists and scientists were gaining access to new areas in India, leading to an era of acquiring as much scientific data as possible. Other key figures in developing the Calcutta Garden were Nathaniel Wallich, who was superintendent of the Calcutta Garden after William Roxburgh, and William Griffith, who had a well-known reputation at the time. [11]
Over the years attractive display gardens for the public have been developed and many kinds of plants have been cultivated for scientific observation. During the 1970s the garden initiated a program to introduce improved food plants and other varieties of economic benefit to the people of India.
This garden is a No Plastic Zone.
Griffith was instrumental in rearranging the Calcutta Garden in a way that reflected scientific practice at the time, emphasizing the importance of scientific classification in the Garden's appearance. Griffith often criticized the layout of the Botanic Garden under Wallich's control as he believed it did not have the qualities of a traditional European garden. These qualities included "uniformity of design, adaptation of particular parts to particular purposes, including those of science and instruction." [11] The ways in which the Garden was restructured from 1816 to 1846 reflected the demands of a rapidly growing scientific field that fueled European colonial influence. Key features of the 1816 map depict four nurseries, housing for laborers, a farm, and a small Linnaean Garden. The map titled "Plan of the Botanical Gardens December 1845" was developed in 1843 by Griffith and shows key differences compared to the 1816 plan created by Wallich. Major illustrations of natural features such as rivers and trees, which appeared alongside the nurseries, are either not included in the map or depicted using symbols. A large teak plantation replaces the native housing and the landscape is clearly divided into large divisions, indicating that science was used to categorize the natural landscape. An emphasis was placed on labelling plants and categorizing the different areas of the Garden which, according to Griffith, allowed it to be "gardens of science and instruction." [11]
The best-known landmark of the garden is The Great Banyan, an enormous banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) that is reckoned to be the largest tree in the world, at more than 330 metres in circumference. It partially inspired the novel Hothouse by Brian Aldiss. [12] The gardens are also famous for their enormous collections of orchids, bamboos, palms, and plants of the screw pine genus ( Pandanus ).
Animals seen inside the Botanic Garden include the Jackal ( Canis aureus ), Indian mongoose and the Indian Fox (Vulpes bengalensis). Many species of snake are also to be found in the garden.
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For 20 years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.
Sir John McClelland (1805–1883) was a British medical doctor with interests in geology and biology, who worked for the East India Company.
Nathaniel Wolff Wallich was a surgeon and botanist of Danish origin who worked in India, initially in the Danish settlement near Calcutta and later for the Danish East India Company and the British East India Company. He was involved in the early development of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, describing many new plant species and developing a large herbarium collection which was distributed to collections in Europe. Several of the plants that he collected were named after him.
William Roxburgh FRSE FRCPE FLS was a Scottish surgeon and botanist who worked extensively in India, describing species and working on economic botany. He is known as the founding father of Indian botany. He published numerous works on Indian botany, illustrated by careful drawings made by Indian artists and accompanied by taxonomic descriptions of many plant species. Apart from the numerous species that he named, many species were named in his honour by his collaborators.
Plantae Asiaticae Rariores is a horticultural work published in 1830–1832 by the Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich.
Natural history in the Indian subcontinent has a long heritage with a recorded history going back to the Vedic era. Natural history research in early times included the broad fields of palaeontology, zoology and botany. These studies would today be considered under field of ecology but in former times, such research was undertaken mainly by amateurs, often physicians, civil servants and army officers.
Sir George Watt was a Scottish physician and botanist who worked in India as "Reporter" on economic botany and during the course of his career in India he compiled a major multivolume work, TheDictionary of Economic Products of India, the last volume of which was published in 1893. An abridged edition of his work was also published as the single volume Commercial Products of India in 1908. He is honoured in the binomials of several plants named after him.
Sir George King was a Scottish-born British botanist who was appointed superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta in 1871, and became the first Director of the Botanical Survey of India from 1890. He was recognised for his work in the cultivation of cinchona and for setting up a system for the inexpensive distribution of the anti-malarial quinine throughout India through the postal system.
Robert Wight MD FRS FLS was a Scottish surgeon in the East India Company, whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction of American cotton. As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published by William Hooker in Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volume Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, the Illustrations of Indian Botany (1838–50) and Spicilegium Neilgherrense (1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants. The standard author abbreviation Wight is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Thomas Thomson was a British surgeon with the British East India Company before becoming a botanist. He was a friend of Joseph Dalton Hooker and helped write the first volume of Flora Indica.
William Griffith was a British doctor, naturalist, and botanist. Griffith's botanical publications are from India and Burma. After a brief stay in Madras, he was assigned as a Civil Surgeon to Tenasserim, Burma, where he studied local plants and made collecting trips to the Barak River valley in Assam. He explored various parts of Burma, traveling the rivers, including the Irrawadi as far as Rangoon. He visited the highlands of Sikkim, and the region of the Himalayas around Shimla. Subsequently, Griffith was appointed as Civil Surgeon in Malacca, where he died of a parasitic liver disease.
Colonel Robert Kyd was a British army officer stationed in India. He founded the botanical garden at Calcutta in 1787.
Isaac Henry Burkill was an English botanist who worked in India and in the Straits Settlements. He worked primarily in economic botany but published extensively on plant biology, ethno-botany, insect-plant interactions and described several species. He published a two volume compilation on the plants of economic importance in the Malay Peninsula, collating local names and knowledge. He also wrote a detailed history of botany in India. The plant genera Burkillia and Burkillianthus were named in his honour.
Michael Pakenham Edgeworth was an Irish botanist who specialized in seed plants and ferns, and spent most of his life working in India. He was also a pioneer of photography.
Lilium wallichianum is an Asian species of bulbous plants in the lily family native to the Indian Subcontinent and to Myanmar. It is native to India, as well as Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar.
Elaeocarpus lanceifolius is a tree species in the family Elaeocarpaceae. It is found across tropical Asia from Thailand to Yunnan to Nepal to Karnataka, India. It is used for its wood, fruit, and nuts.
Arabella Elizabeth Roupell was an English flower painter, noted for an anonymous set of flower paintings published in 1849 under the title 'Specimens of the flora of South Africa by a Lady.'
Christian Ramsay, Countess of Dalhousie informally Lady Dalhousie, néeBroun; was a Scottish botanist and natural historian. She married George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie and travelled with him when he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, Governor General of Canada and Commander in Chief of the Indian Army. While travelling, she collected and catalogued many species of plants, presented scientific papers to societies and donated many collections to different botanical groups.
Phyllanthus tenellus is a herbaceous plant in the leafflower family, Phyllanthaceae. It is commonly called Mascarene Island leaf flower as it is native to the Mascarene Islands. It is often a weed in flower beds, gardens, roadsides, and other disturbed areas.
Kalipada Biswas was an Indian botanist who specialized in the algae of the Indian region and worked at the Calcutta botanical garden erstwhile Royal Botanic Garden, becoming its first Indian director and heading it from 1937 to 1955.