Biography

Benjamin Heyne, Scottish missionary, surgeon and naturalist, arrived at the Tranquebar Moravian Mission on the east coast of Madras in 1792. Another member of the mission was the botanist Johann Gerhard Koenig (1728-1785), who tutored Heyne in the subject.

His services as a physician proving superfluous at Tranquebar, however, Heyne was instead recommended as a successor to William Roxburgh, who had been in charge of the experimental gardens at Samalcottah (Samalkota). Heyne thus passed into the service of the British East India Company in 1793 and was assigned to the Madras Presidency as Botanist at Samalcottah in 1796. Four years later, he was put in charge of the Lalbagh botanical garden at Bangalore, after it was appropriated by the East India Company following the fall of Mysore. He was charged with making collections, giving special regard to economically useful plants and those that could be used medicinally. The Company was particularly keen to find plant-based treatments for malaria. During his time at Lalbagh, Heyne made significant collections at Coimbatore and around Bangalore, forwarding a great deal to London.

In 1812 Heyne left Lalbagh to assist Francis Buchanan on his Mysore Survey, and in 1813 took leave, travelling to London to work on his collections with Joseph Banks. He had collected some 350 different species of plant in the Western Ghats and named more than 200 of them. As well as leaving specimens in London, in 1816 he gave a large consignment to the German botanist Albrecht Wilhelm Roth, who based much of his Novae plantarum species praesertim Indiae orientalis on Heyne's collections. Heyne's publication Tracts, historical and statistical, on India, appeared in 1814, describing several of his journeys in the country plus an account of Sumatra. The genus Heynea Roxb. was named in his honour.

Sources:
N.L. Bor, 1954, "Notes on Asiatic Grasses: XX. Indian Grasses in Roth's Herbarium", Kew Bulletin, 9(4): 545
R.R. Stewart, 1982, "Missionaries and Clergymen as Botanists in India and Pakistan", Taxon, 31(1): 58.

Biography

Benjamin Heyne, Scottish missionary, surgeon and naturalist, arrived at the Tranquebar Moravian Mission on the east coast of Madras in 1792. Another member of the mission was the botanist Johann Gerhard Koenig (1728-1785), who tutored Heyne in the subject.

His services as a physician proving superfluous at Tranquebar, however, Heyne was instead recommended as a successor to William Roxburgh, who had been in charge of the experimental gardens at Samalcottah (Samalkota). Heyne thus passed into the service of the British East India Company in 1793 and was assigned to the Madras Presidency as Botanist at Samalcottah in 1796. Four years later, he was put in charge of the Lalbagh botanical garden at Bangalore, after it was appropriated by the East India Company following the fall of Mysore. He was charged with making collections, giving special regard to economically useful plants and those that could be used medicinally. The Company was particularly keen to find plant-based treatments for malaria. During his time at Lalbagh, Heyne made significant collections at Coimbatore and around Bangalore, forwarding a great deal to London.

In 1812 Heyne left Lalbagh to assist Francis Buchanan on his Mysore Survey, and in 1813 took leave, travelling to London to work on his collections with Joseph Banks. He had collected some 350 different species of plant in the Western Ghats and named more than 200 of them. As well as leaving specimens in London, in 1816 he gave a large consignment to the German botanist Albrecht Wilhelm Roth, who based much of his Novae plantarum species praesertim Indiae orientalis on Heyne's collections. Heyne's publication Tracts, historical and statistical, on India, appeared in 1814, describing several of his journeys in the country plus an account of Sumatra. The genus Heynea Roxb. was named in his honour.

Sources:
N.L. Bor, 1954, "Notes on Asiatic Grasses: XX. Indian Grasses in Roth's Herbarium", Kew Bulletin, 9(4): 545
R.R. Stewart, 1982, "Missionaries and Clergymen as Botanists in India and Pakistan", Taxon, 31(1): 58.