Biography

Scottish botanist known as the founding father of Indian botany. Roxburgh was head of the Calcutta Royal Botanic Gardens for 20 years, during which time he produced the work Flora Indica.

William Roxburgh was born in Underwood, Ayrshire, and studied botany at the University of Edinburgh under Prof. John Hope. After graduation, Hope helped Roxburgh to gain a position as a surgeon's mate with the East India Company and Roxburgh thus set sail in May 1766. He went on to complete several voyages to India and trained further in medicine in Edinburgh, so that he could be appointed assistant surgeon with the E.I.C. in Madras. He arrived there in 1776 and was based at the general hospital for two years. He was made a full surgeon in 1780.

Roxburgh maintained his interest in botany and collected plants in the Madras region alongside the naturalist Johann Gerhard König, who had been a pupil of Linnaeus and no doubt encouraged Roxburgh to continue his botanical studies. Cultivation of black pepper became Roxburgh's next interest while he was stationed in Samalkot, 200 miles north of Madras. Deciding that conditions there lent themselves to the commercial production of this spice, he was permitted to grow plants in an experimental garden. His stock grew from 4,000 plants in 1787 to more than ten times that number two years later, but they did not fruit. He was apparently more successful with his plantings of coffee, sugar, mulberry and breadfruit, and continued to collect wild plants, which he employed Indian artists to draw.

When the post of naturalist to the Madras presidency became vacant, Roxburgh was invited to take it up. The appointment was approved by the East India Company in 1790 and in September that year Roxburgh sent a consignment of the drawings he had commissioned to Sir Joseph Banks in London. He included descriptive notes with the pictures, mentioning how the plants were used in India, too. By 1794 he had sent around 500 drawings to Banks, who decided that some of the most economically important would be good subjects for engraving and publishing. Sponsored by the E.I.C., Plants of the Coast of Coromandel appeared in twelve folio parts between 1795 and 1820, featuring 300 drawings with accompanying notes.

Roxburgh was appointed the first salaried superintendent of the Calcutta Royal Botanic Garden in 1793 after the death of its founder, Colonel Robert Kyd. Roxburgh continued the gardens' work by distributing seedlings of viable crops across the Indian subcontinent for trial cultivation. The gardens were enlarged in 1805 and grew under Roxburgh's leadership to become the centre for acclimatising plants ready for introduction to Indian agriculture. Indeed, its collections had grown from 300 species at the beginning of his tenure to 3,500 at his retirement. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1799.

Roxburgh spent two periods of ill health in Britain, in 1798-1799 and from 1805-1807, and by 1813 his infirmity was such that he was forced to retire. Leaving India once and for all, he left the manuscript of his Hortus Bengalensis (describing 1,510 species cultivated in the Calcutta garden) and a copy of his Flora Indica with William Carey at the Baptist mission in Serampore. In due course, Carey used his printing press (for Bibles) to publish A catalogue of plants described by Dr Roxburgh in his MSS Flora Indica, but not yet introduced into the botanical garden, which was bound with Hortus Bengalensis for distribution in 1814.

When Roxburgh died in 1815, Robert Brown was still revising the manuscript of Flora Indica which Roxburgh had entrusted to him. Carey decided not to wait for Brown and published the first volume of the tome with help from Nathaniel Wallich, then incumbent at the Calcutta gardens, in 1820. The second part appeared in 1824, including descriptions of plants collected by Wallich in Nepal in the intervening years. The third volume did not come out until 1832, at the behest of Roxburgh's sons, who financed the publishing of the full three volumes. C.B. Clarke later issued a single-volume edition including cryptogams edited by William Griffith.

Roxburgh's private life was a fruitful one. He fathered 12 children by three wives. One of his sons, also called William, worked as an assistant at the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, and collected plants in Rajmahal, Chittagong, Penang and Indonesia. He went on to manage a spice plantation in Sumatra. Another son, called John and not mothered by one of Roxburgh's wives, also collected plants for his father.

Roxburgh died in Edinburgh and was given a memorial in the Calcutta botanic gardens. The genus Roxburghia was dedicated to him by Jonas Dryander.

Sources:
R. Desmond, 1992, The European Discovery of the Indian Flora
R. Desmond, 2004, "Roxburgh, William (1751-1815)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edn:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24233, accessed 10 February 2011
I.C. Hedge, 1987, "Edinburgh's Indian botanical connections and collections", Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India, 29: 272-285
T. Robinson, 2008, William Roxburgh: the founding father of Indian botany
J. R. Sealy, 1975, "William Roxburgh's collection of paintings of Indian plants", Endeavour, 34: 84-9.