Hebradendron pictorium (Roxb.) Lindley, 1838

Turner, I. M., 2011, The contribution of Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy (1809 - 1889) to plant taxonomy, Phytotaxa 15, pp. 57-63 : 60-61

Hebradendron pictorium

IPNI attributes this taxon to Royle (1847: 305), but it appears earlier in The Bengal Dispensatory. However Lindley provided the combination before that in his Flora Medica (1838). All these authors base the combination on Garcinia pictoria Roxb. Garcinia pictoria first appeared as a name in the Hortus Bengalensis ( Roxburgh 1814). Note that this must not be confused with Xanthochymus pictorius Roxb. , which was published earlier but refers to another species, and to add to the confusion de Candolle (1824) mistakenly referred to as Xanthochymus tinctorius and set in train further nomenclatural complications.

Garcinia pictoria did not appear with Roxburgh’s description until the posthumous publication of his complete Flora Indica in 1832. However Mabberley (1977) argued that Buchanan-Hamilton had published a description of Garcinia pictoria in his commentaries on the Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius ( Hamilton 1826). Buchanan-Hamilton believed that a tree he knew from gardens in and around Calcutta was the same as the Rumphian ‘ Arbor mundo ’. The English text before the Latin description is somewhat convoluted. Buchanan-Hamilton says he first encountered the plant in a garden at Baruipur near Calcutta in 1799. He reports that Roxburgh referred to this tree as Garcinia pictoria but he has ‘very little doubt’ that the tree is Oxycarpus indica of the ‘Encyclopedie (Sup. iv. 257)’ [ Oxycarpus indica (Thouars) Desr. ≡ Garcinia indica (Thouars) Choisy ex DC. ]. There is no internal evidence that Buchanan-Hamilton was accepting Garcinia pictoria [or Garcinia tinctoria as he referred to it in one place] as the correct name for the ‘ Arbor mundo ’, and there is further external evidence that Oxycarpus indica was the name he accepted for it. There is an unpublished manuscript by Buchanan-Hamilton that lists the plant specimens from Bengal that he donated to the East India Company in 1822. A microfilm copy, in the British Library, includes the entry: 1118 Oxycarpus indica . This cites a long synonymy including: ‘ Garcinia pictoria Hort. Beng. 42 sed subnomine G. cornea a hortulensis ostenditur’ and ‘ Arbor mundo dicta Herb. Amb. i 135’. The specimens that Buchanan-Hamilton gave to the East India Company were included in the vast collection that Wallich sorted, listed and dispersed ( Mabberley 1977). Number 4852 in the catalogue refers to Garcinia cornea Roxb. and lists 4852B as Oxycarpus indica Hb Ham. A second set of Buchanan-Hamilton’s Bengal collections were presented to Edinburgh University and are now to be found in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (E) ( Mabberley 1977). There is a sheet in the collection numbered 1118, which was collected from the Calcutta Botanic Garden on 30 November 1814 and labelled Oxycarpus indica (M. Watson, personal communication). In the Wallich Herbarium at Kew, sheet 4852B is also labelled Oxycarpus indica and bears the same date as the Edinburgh sheet. There seems little doubt that the K-W specimen is a true duplicate of the Edinburgh sheet but it does not bear Buchanan-Hamilton’s number. The specimens, the unpublished specimen list and the published account ( Hamilton 1826) all confirm that Buchanan-Hamilton accepted Oxycarpus indica rather than Garcinia pictoria as the name for the ‘ Arbor mundo ’. Graham (1836) came to same conclusion a decade after Hamilton’s publication.

Garcinia cornea is a Linnean name based on another Rumphian species ‘ Ligneum corneum ’. Roxburgh (1832) referred indirectly to Linnaeus in Flora Indica by citing Willdenow, but his description is based on plants growing in Calcutta probably derived from trees grown in Colonel Robert Kyd’s garden, planting material of which came from the Moluccas. Buchanan-Hamiton’s Oxycarpus indica and Roxburgh’s Garcinia cornea are doubtless the same species/taxon as can be seen from the Wallich and general herbaria at Kew which include specimens originating from Roxburgh and specimens from Calcutta when Wallich was superintendent of the Botanic Garden. The material does not belong to G. cornea , which is a much more robust plant, or Garcinia indica . Buchanan-Hamilton noted that his plant was near G. celebica L., and indeed I include it in that species.