'Historiae naturalis fautor indefessus'. Colquhounia coccinea, Scarlet-flowered Colquhounia, and an Ant, Lasius niger, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's a colorful eponymous plant name if ever there was one: Colquhounia! It's for Sir Robert Colquhoun (1786-1838), that untiring patron of natural history - 'historiae naturalis fautor indefessus' - as Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) calls his 'most esteemed friend' in his naming of our plant. His description is all in Latin; hence my photo's title.
Colquhoun was actually mainly a military man and a colonial adminsitrator. During the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1816) he established the famed Gurkha Regiment in the Kumaon of Uttarkhand, south of Tibet in northern India. But he had very wide-ranging interests - perhaps because fighting wasn't a daily thing and life must often have been slow in those mountainous stations - and he sent many natural specimens, mainly plants, from Kumaon to the Calcutta Botanical Garden of which he later became a patron. There they were gratefully received by Wallich a Dano-Anglo-Indian in charge of that garden, before his settling in England (1846) for reasons of poor health.
Wallich himself first collected this plant in the mountains of Nepal and he described it as Colquhounia in 1822.
The chilly Sun today might just have 'loosened' some nectar. Something in this magnificent Orange has in any case attracted the attention of little Black Ants, I think probably Lasius niger.
'Historiae naturalis fautor indefessus'. Colquhounia coccinea, Scarlet-flowered Colquhounia, and an Ant, Lasius niger, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's a colorful eponymous plant name if ever there was one: Colquhounia! It's for Sir Robert Colquhoun (1786-1838), that untiring patron of natural history - 'historiae naturalis fautor indefessus' - as Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) calls his 'most esteemed friend' in his naming of our plant. His description is all in Latin; hence my photo's title.
Colquhoun was actually mainly a military man and a colonial adminsitrator. During the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1816) he established the famed Gurkha Regiment in the Kumaon of Uttarkhand, south of Tibet in northern India. But he had very wide-ranging interests - perhaps because fighting wasn't a daily thing and life must often have been slow in those mountainous stations - and he sent many natural specimens, mainly plants, from Kumaon to the Calcutta Botanical Garden of which he later became a patron. There they were gratefully received by Wallich a Dano-Anglo-Indian in charge of that garden, before his settling in England (1846) for reasons of poor health.
Wallich himself first collected this plant in the mountains of Nepal and he described it as Colquhounia in 1822.
The chilly Sun today might just have 'loosened' some nectar. Something in this magnificent Orange has in any case attracted the attention of little Black Ants, I think probably Lasius niger.