A Numerical List of Dried Specimens of Plants

A Numerical List of Dried Specimens of Plants (1828-1849) serves as a catalog of botanical specimens collected from India and Southeast Asia during the British East India Company period. The list was compiled by Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich during his tenure as superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden. The work contains entries for over 8,000 plant specimens, with details about their collection locations, taxonomic classifications, and distribution. Wallich created this catalog through direct examination of specimens gathered by himself and other collectors, documenting plants from regions including Nepal, Singapore, and Burma. The volume established a numbering system - known as "Wallich numbers" - that remains significant in botanical research and taxonomy. This system helped standardize plant identification and enabled scientific communication about South Asian flora across institutional boundaries. This catalog stands as a record of both scientific documentation and colonial botanical enterprise, reflecting the intersection of natural history and imperial expansion in the early 19th century.

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A General System of Botany by Claude De Candolle and Alphonse De Candolle. This reference text contains systematic descriptions and classifications of plant specimens with numerical cataloging methods similar to Wallich's system.

Illustrations of Indian Botany by Robert Wight. The book presents a comprehensive catalog of dried plant specimens from the Indian subcontinent with detailed taxonomic classifications.

Flora Indica by William Roxburgh. This botanical catalog documents dried plant specimens from colonial India with numerical references and classification systems.

Species Plantarum by Carl Linnaeus. The work establishes a binomial classification system for plant specimens with numerical references and dried specimen documentation.

The Vegetable System by John Hill. This systematic catalog contains classifications and descriptions of dried plant specimens with numerical indexing methods.

🌿 Nathaniel Wallich was originally named Nathan Wolff and was born in Copenhagen to Jewish parents. He later anglicized his name after moving to India. 🌿 The book catalogs over 9,000 plant specimens collected from India, Nepal, and Southeast Asia between 1822 and 1828. 🌿 Wallich served as the Superintendent of the East India Company's Botanical Garden in Calcutta (now Kolkata) from 1815 to 1846, transforming it into one of the most important botanical institutions in Asia. 🌿 Many plant species were named after Wallich, including Diploprora wallichii (an orchid) and Ulmus wallichiana (a type of elm tree). 🌿 The specimens documented in this book formed the basis for what became known as "The Wallich Catalog," which is still referenced by botanists today and is housed in the Kew Gardens Herbarium in London.