Talk:George Watt

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Page scope

George Watt is a biography of a specimen collector and author. Its specimen table lists the accession records whose collector field resolves to this page through the redirect G. Watt. Watt 13958 (1890) carries a Watt herbarium number but is recorded under its collector, Dr Cooke.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, label readings and unresolved identifications here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Source conflicts on career dates

The Calcutta chair. Buckland (1906) and Stebbing (1930) list Watt as professor of botany at Calcutta University from 1873, and Taxonomic Literature (1988) gives 1873–1884; Stebbing dates the appointment to 1872. Burkill's two obituaries (Kew, 1930; Linnean Society, 1931) state that he never taught in Calcutta and was sent to the college at Hughli. The article follows Burkill and cites Watt's own byline of 1880, "Professor of Botany, Bengal Educational Service".
Burma–Manipur commission. The Kew note gives 1881; Buckland, Stebbing and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh give 1882. The article gives no year.
The Chamba and Lahaul journey. Burkill dates it to 1879. Watt's paper, read on 4 November 1880, gives no year of travel. Watt 410 (1878) was collected on the road to Pathankot on 20 May 1878. The article gives no year.
Knighthood. The Kew note places it at the opening of the Delhi exhibition "on January 2nd, 1902". Buckland ("K.B., 1903") and Stebbing give 1903, and the article follows them. The London Gazette notice was not located.
Retirement and Lockerbie. Taxonomic Literature and Stebbing give 1906 for retirement; Stebbing dates the move to Lockerbie to 1910. The article gives no year for the move.
Author of the Kew note. The note is signed "I. H. B." Taxonomic Literature lists it under "Balfour, I.H.", but I. B. Balfour died in 1922; the note agrees closely with Burkill's signed obituary in the Linnean Society's Proceedings.

Specimens

RBGE sheet E00248804 (Suni, Sutlej, 3,000 ft) has no accession record yet. It carries Watt's stamp for the flora of the North-Western Himalaya and a red-ink note, "Growing in a field very poor crop. Plants not more than 2 feet in height." Its locality and altitude match Watt 13958 (1890), collected by Dr Cooke in November 1890. Whether the two sheets are one gathering is unresolved.
In September 2026 GBIF listed seven RBGE cannabis sheets under "Watt, George", including E00248818, which the label credits to Dr Cooke.

The Dictionary article and the Kulu label

A full-term sweep of the 1889 article (pp. 103–126) and of the 1908 section (pp. 249–263) found no account of the practice recorded on the label of Watt 9644 (1888), and no mention of Watt's own cannabis specimens or tours. Both texts describe the removal of male plants for Bengal ganja (1889, pp. 104, 106 and 110; 1908, p. 260). The 1889 article also quotes Duthie and Fuller on the north-western Himalayan fibre crop, where the males are cut before the females (p. 112).

Commission chapter

The commission discusses Watt's habitat paragraph and his letter on races in vol. I, ch. II ("The Hemp Plant"), paras. 19–22. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission article cites ch. III for the same discussion of wild growth; the reference there may need correcting. Notes compiled when the page was created, 16 September 2026.