| Dr. Clarke Abel (1780-1826) was Chief Medical Officer and Naturalist to the Embassy of Lord Amherst to the Court of Peking, and in Canton 1816-17. This was Britain's second attempt at establishing relations with the emperor of China. After detailed observation and collection of assorted cultivated and wild plants on the Embassy's way to and back from the capital, in January 1817 Abel visited the famous nursery gardens at Fa tee (Fa ti). These were situated on the southern bank of the river, about three miles from Canton. Embassy quarters were in the village of Ho nan on the opposite side of the river to the British Factory. Abel was appointed to the embassy on the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks. Returning from China in 1818, Abel was subsequently appointed Physician to Lord Amherst in India, where the doctor later died. |
| Narrative of
a Journey in the Interior of China and of a Voyage to and from that Country,
in 1816 and 1817 (1818):
"The Lycopodium, which [Abel]
had seen growing in dry places in the Canton Province, and which might
perhaps be best compared to a fir tree in miniature, he found cultivated
in the Fa ti gardens, but in pots, kept in a tub filled with water."
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1 Bretschneider, Emil History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Leipzig: Zentral-Antiquariat; 1981, reprint of the original 1898 edition), pp. 225, 234, and 235-236, which state that on the 17th of February, the Embassy's ship struck a coral reef in the Gaspar (Banca) Straights and became a total wreck, but all the people were saved. All of Abel's original collections went down with the ship. He then procured a small collection of Chinese plants while at Batavia in the east Indies, and his later written identifications came from specimens courtesy of a benefactor to whom Abel also gave the small collection. |