Talk:Griffith 4686 (by 1845)
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Evidentiary scope
The label records a broad historical region, a number, an identification and a distribution date, but no collection date, habitat, cultivation status, local name or use. The accession is classified as Other. It does not establish a continuing population, a feral population, a landrace or a living germplasm holding. No conservation priority is assigned.
Georeferencing
East Bengal is a historical regional designation and does not identify a collection point. No province, district or coordinate is asserted. The Naturalis occurrence record codes the country as India and the infobox follows it. The country is provisional: the label does not resolve the site against present-day boundaries, and Griffith's recorded collecting countries include both India and Bangladesh (JSTOR Global Plants).
Editorial treatment
The collection date is left blank. The label's only date is its last line, Distributed at the Royal Gardens, Kew. 1863-4. The year 1863 in the Naturalis occurrence record matches that distribution, not a gathering. William Griffith lived from 1810 to 1845 and his recorded collecting dates run from 1835 to 1845 (JSTOR Global Plants; IPNI author 3387-1), so no sheet from his herbarium can have been gathered in 1863. The Utrecht stamp dated 25 April 1967 records a later accession, not the gathering.
A Paris sheet, MNHN P06884263, is recorded as Cannabis sativa from East Bengal under Griffith, W., with the remark Donné par la Direction du Jardin Royal de Kew. 1863 (GBIF occurrence 731718307). It fits the same distribution, but its record gives no number and its image was not reachable for checking, so it is not treated as a duplicate of 4686.
The page was moved from Griffith 4686 (1863) on 16 September 2026 so that the title no longer presents the distribution year as a collection year. Accession titles take the form Collector Number (Year). Where the gathering year is unknown but has a firm latest limit, the title reads (by YYYY) with that limit, here the year of Griffith's death. A sheet with no such limit would read (s.d.).
The collector is recorded as W. Griffith and the number as Griffith, W. 4686, following the house forms. The label's Herb. Griffith names Griffith's herbarium within the East India Company herbarium, and Griffith was a Company employee (JSTOR Global Plants). The MNHN record above also names Griffith, W.. The label does not say whether Griffith gathered this plant himself or received it from someone working for him, and it does not say whether he assigned the number 4686 or whether it was assigned for the distribution.
These notes were revised when the page was moved. Source citations remain in the article. Éloïse 22:28, 16 September 2026 (+07)