| AdminHistory | Charles Baron Clarke (17 June 1832 - 25 August 1906) was a British botanist. He was born at Andover, the eldest son of Turner Poulter Clarke. His uncles (both Fellows of the Linnean Society) were Mr Benjamin Clarke of Hampstead and Mr Joshua Clarke of Saffron Walden). He was educated at King's College School, London, and at Trinity and Queens' Colleges, Cambridge. His contemporaries included Henry Fawcett, Leslie Stephen, John Rigby and Edward Turner. In 1857 he became Fellow of Queen's College and for nearly 10 years remained at Cambridge as College Tutor in Mathematics. In 1858 he was called to the Bar in Lincoln's Court but never practiced in the courts.
In 1866 he went to India and joined the Education Department at Presidency College and then, later, as Inspector of Schools. From 1869-1871 he was Acting Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden at Shibpur, near Calcutta. He retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1887. He then settled in Kew with his brother, Poulter Clarke, and worked in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, until his death in 1906. Clarke had collected plants from an early age from England, Scotland, Switzerland, Madeira and India and he presented his entire collection to Kew Gardens (in 2 parts) in 1877 and 1888.
He was president of the Linnean Society from 1894 to 1896, and served on the Council almost continuously from 1880-1906 and Vice-President from 1881-1905. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1882 and of the Geological Society in 1868.
He died on 25 August 1906, following an operation.
See Proceedings of the Linnean Society, vol. 119, p. 38 for a full obituary of Clarke. |
Botanist Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) was the Superintendent of Calcutta Botanic Garden from 1817 to 1846 and during this time he was an avid plant collector. His specimens are to be found in many herbaria, including those of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum, London. Wallich made plant collections during his many excursions in Asia, including his stay in Nepal in 1820–1821, travels to Penang and Singapore to recuperate from illness, and a particularly productive tour to Burma in the late 1820s.
Wallich employed botanical illustrators during his expeditions and many of the drawings made during these trips were comparable, sometimes identical, to his herbarium specimens. The specimens were brought to England by Wallich in 1828 during a two-year extension of leave from Calcutta and during this time he named the collections and distributed specimens. He also produced a catalogue for the collection listing and naming every specimen. This Numerical List of the Specimens of the East India Company Herbarium, together with the matching herbarium specimens, forms an extremely important resource for understanding the taxonomy and delimitation of many Asian species.
Wallich distributed his specimens to important museums and herbaria but his personal set of specimens is kept in a separate herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Usually referred to as the Wallich Herbarium, this is more appropriately termed the East India Company Herbarium. This holds over 8,000 species which, in addition to Wallich’s collections, include many important specimens added from other botanist’s herbaria such as that of William Roxburgh, the ‘father' of Indian botany.
In 1832, the East India Company Herbarium was transferred to the Linnean Society where it was rearranged into the order of Wallich’s Numerical List. By 1913 a shortage of space meant a new home was needed for the herbarium so it was transferred back to Kew and placed at the end of Wing B of the Herbarium where it remains to this day.
Wallich was a Fellow of the Linnean Society from 1818 onwards and on his return to London in 1846, he became Vice-President of the Linnean Society. |