Robert Kyd

Colonel Robert Kyd (1746–27 May, 1793[1]) was a British army officer stationed in India. He founded the botanical garden at Calcutta in 1787.[2]

Kyd was interested in horticulture and owned a private garden in Shalimar near Howrah. He proposed the idea of a botanic garden to the then Governor-General Sir John Macpherson who passed on the idea to the Court of Directors of the East India Company. The pan was approved on July 31 1787.[3] Kyd had proposed that the botanical garden would help in introduction of economically important plants and would help the East India Company outstrip our rivals in every valuable production which nature has confined to this part of the globe.[4][5][6]

Kyd made a dying request that he be buried without any religious ceremony near a favourite avocado tree in the botanical garden that he founded, but was instead interred in South Park Street Cemetery.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ Holmes and Co. (1851). The Bengal Obituary. Calcutta: W Thacker and Co.. p. 99. http://www.archive.org/stream/bengalobituaryo00calgoog#page/n125/mode/1up/. 
  2. ^ Oxford dictionary of national biography
  3. ^ Hastings, RB (1986). "The relationships between the Indian botanic garden, Howrah and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in economic botany" (PDF). Bull. Bot. Surv. India 28 (1-4): 1–12. http://www.kew.org/collections/ecbot/pages/wp-content/media/papers/hastings1986howrah.pdf. 
  4. ^ Sharma, Jayeeta (2006). "British science, Chinese skill and Assam tea: Making empire's garden". Indian Economic Social History Review 43: 429. 
  5. ^ Axelby, Richard (2008). "Calcutta Botanic Garden and the colonial re-ordering of the Indian environment". Archives of natural history 35 (1): 150–163. doi:10.3366/E0260954108000144. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/7618/1/AHN_FINAL_PUBLISHED_ARTICLE.pdf. 
  6. ^ Thomas, A. P. (2006). "The establishment of Calcutta Botanic Garden: plant transfer, science and the East India Company, 1786–1806". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16: 165–177. 
  7. ^ Desmond, Ray (1992). The European Discovery of the Indian Flora.. Oxford University Press, Delhi. 
  8. ^ Blechynden, Kathleen (1905). Calcutta past and present. Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.. pp. 161–165. http://www.archive.org/stream/calcuttapastand00blecgoog#page/n222/mode/2up/.