Talk:Nathaniel Wallich

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Page scope

Nathaniel Wallich is a biography of a specimen collector, botanist and cataloguer. Its specimen table lists the accession pages whose collector field resolves to this page through the redirect N. Wallich. Wallich 4665E (by 1832) and Wallich 4665F (by 1832) are lots of his catalogue that came from other herbaria; their collector field is blank, so the table does not list them.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Source conflicts on dates

Birth year. The Linnean Society's obituary (1854), the Dictionary of National Biography (1899), Banglapedia and Harvard's Index of Botanists give 1786; IPNI gives 1786–1854. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography heading gives 1785, and K. Karttunen's Persons of Indian Studies gives 28 January 1786 with "1785?". The article gives 1786 and states the ODNB year. Only the ODNB heading was read; its entry text was not.
Entry into the Company's service. The Dictionary of National Biography says Serampore fell to the East India Company in 1813. The Linnean obituary says he received a commission in the Company's medical service about a year after returning from Mauritius (1812). The Gentleman's Magazine (1854) gives no year. The article gives no year.
The superintendence. Linnean obituary: temporary charge early in 1815 on Buchanan-Hamilton's departure, later confirmed. Dictionary of National Biography and Gentleman's Magazine: appointed superintendent in 1815. Banglapedia: temporary from 1815, permanent from August 1817. Noltie and Watson (2021): formally from 1817, acting at times from 1815, until 1846. Watson (2013) dates the appointment to 1815. The article gives temporary charge in 1815 and the permanent appointment in 1817.
Resignation. Flora Malesiana's cyclopaedia of collectors: resigned 1846. Dictionary of National Biography: resigned 1850, succeeded by John Scott. Neither the Linnean obituary nor the Gentleman's Magazine gives a year. All agree that he reached England in 1847. The article states both resignation years.
Nepal. Linnean obituary: from 1820 until the beginning of 1822. Flora Malesiana: 1820–22. Watson (2019): a year, 1820–21. Lot G of entry 4665 is dated 1821. The article follows the obituary.
London. Watson (2019): in London 1827–1832. Noltie and Watson (2021): July 1828 to October 1832. Linnean obituary: arrived in England in 1828, returned to India in 1833. The article follows Noltie and Watson for London and the obituary for the return.
Assam. Banglapedia dates the tea mission to 1835, Watson (2019) to 1836 and Flora Malesiana to about 1833. The Linnean obituary places it soon after his return in 1833. The article gives no year.
The Cape. Watson (2019): mid-1842 to 1844. Linnean obituary: 1843. The article gives 1843 for his departure and no dates for the stay.
Medical degrees. Dictionary of National Biography: MD at Copenhagen, and MD of Marischal College and University of Aberdeen in 1819. Banglapedia: diploma of the Royal Academy of Surgeons at Copenhagen. Karttunen: MD Aberdeen 1819, honorary doctorate Copenhagen 1821. The Linnean obituary styles him Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy. The article states only the Aberdeen degree.
Parents. Banglapedia names his mother as Sophia Colling. Karttunen names his mother as Hanne Jacobson and gives Sophia Collings as his second wife. The article does not name his parents.
The printed list. The Wallich Catalogue Online counts 306 printed pages. The Gentleman's Magazine obituary, reprinted from the Gardeners' Chronicle, describes a folio of 265 pages. The online catalogue's figure is used. The online catalogue's home page dates the distribution 1829 to 1847; Watson (2013) dates the main distribution December 1828 to summer 1832 and the cataloguing 1828 to 1849.

Lots G and H of entry 4665

The printed lots read Napaliae 1821 and Toong Dong 1826, with no collector's name. The Wallich Catalogue Online records Wallich as collector of both. Watson (2019) states that material Wallich collected before 1827 entered the catalogue without the collector's name, which fits both lots. Lot G (Kew K001039639) shares a sheet with lot H and has no accession page yet. The location of Tong Dong and the reading of the date on the lot H slip are discussed on Talk:Wallich 4665 H (1826).

GBIF records

GBIF lists six Cannabis sativa sheets for a search on "Wallich" (October 2026): the two Kew lots G and H, two undated sheets at Meise (BR0000023200388, numbered 4665, and BR0000023200395), a Prague sheet (PRC 454268, "Wallich,N. 4665 b", 1831) and a Paris sheet (P06884290, recorded under Gaudichaud and annotated "Pl. données par M. Wallich. 1837"). The Prague year falls within the distribution of 1828–1832, and its lot b is the Roxburgh lot from Bareilly, so 1831 is not a date of collection by Wallich. The Paris year is the year of the gift. The article reports these as sheets under his name and makes no collecting claim for them. The two Edinburgh sheets of lots E and F are recorded in GBIF without a collector.

Cannabis in Wallich's own writings

No passage by Wallich on hemp, ganja, bhang or charas was found. The OCR texts of Tentamen Florae Napalensis Illustratae, of the Missouri Botanical Garden copy of the Numerical List and of both Plantae Asiaticae Rariores volumes on Wikimedia Commons were searched for these terms. The handwritten list is poorly served by OCR, so the search says nothing about page 166. Royle's Illustrations of the Botany … of the Himalayan Mountains (1839, vol. 1, pp. 333–335) discusses hemp without naming Wallich.

W. B. O'Shaughnessy's On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah (Calcutta, 1839) names a Wallich twice. On p. 4 the drawing that illustrates the paper "has been copied by my accomplished friend Dr. George Wallich, from Roxburgh's unpublished plate". On p. 17 an extract on the medicinal use of hemp in Europe, from a recent work by Nees von Esenbeck, was "kindly supplied by Dr. Wallich", with no first name. Wallich's son George Charles Wallich graduated MD at Edinburgh in 1836 and entered the Indian medical service in 1838 (Dictionary of National Biography). The pamphlet does not say which Wallich supplied the extract, and the article attributes neither passage to Nathaniel.

Unconsulted works

Martin Krieger, Nathaniel Wallich: Ein Botaniker zwischen Kopenhagen und Kalkutta (Wachholtz Murmann, 2017), the scholarly biography.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry text (doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28564).
The Gardeners' Chronicle obituary of 1854 (p. 284), the source of the Gentleman's Magazine notice.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report (1893–94) and Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (1889), not searched for Wallich.
JSTOR Global Plants' page for Wallich.
McPartland and Small (2020), supplementary file 1, p. 78, which describes the lot H sheet; cited on Wallich 4665 H (1826) and not re-read for this page.

Portrait

The lead image is the Kew sheet of lots G and H. Wikimedia Commons holds two Wellcome Collection prints: a mezzotint of 1833 after John Lucas, licensed CC BY 4.0, and a lithograph by T. H. Maguire of 1849, whose licence tags disagree (CC BY 2.0 in the metadata, CC BY 4.0 in the credit line). The Linnean Society's oil portrait by John Lucas (1832) has no licence record that could be found.

Notes compiled when the page was created, 8 October 2026.