Sikkim, India’s smaller state after Goa, on the border to Nepal, is an ecological hotspot, famous for its flora which ranges from tropical to alpine and tundra. The Sikkim eco-region was the destination of renowned British botanist, Joseph Dalton Hooker, who travelled there in 1847-9. His botanical treks produced the Flora Indica and eventually Flora of British India (1872-1897) and the Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-51).
Joseph Hooker Botanical Trek
Fascinated by the voyages of Captain Cook and absorbed by his father’s botany lectures since the age of 7, Joseph Hooker (1817-1911), set out on his travels in the 1830s, keen to follow on Charles Darwin’s footsteps. After his adventures in Antarctica and his appointment as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Hooker turned his eyes to India.
Hooker’s India adventure trip started on November 1847. His destination was Sikkim, then a Himalayan kingdom, recommended by his friends as “being ground unseen by traveller or naturalist”. During his botanical trek, Hooker was amazed at the contrast between the alpine and tropical vegetations and of how “silver-fir was contrasting with the tropical luxuriance around”. The variety of flora was astounding: oaks, laurels, maple and birch; acacia, hibiscus, magnolia, wild cherry trees, climbers and rhododendrons.
Joseph Dalton Hooker reached Darjeeling in April 1848. Thereafter his India adventure trip and Himalayan botanical trek proved perilous and he even spent some time in prison but Hooker managed to collect some 7,000 species of plants adding new species of rhododendrons to the ones already known. Hooker recorded his observations meticulously in his notebooks and later published his famous Himalayan Journals (1854).
India Adventure Trip to Sikkim
Hooker’s botanical trail is offered today by specialist travel agents and includes a trek from Gangtok to Lachung (“the most picturesque village in Sikkim”, according to Hooker) and to Kalapathar and the Chopta Valley, a stunning ecoregion at a 13,200 ft altitude with rich alpine vegetation, orchids and rhododendrons.
Hooker and the Rhododendron Craze
The stunning blossoms of the rhododendron cover Sikkim's forests in April and May for miles on end and is not surprising that the rhododendron is Sikkim’s national tree. Joseph Dalton Hooker introduced in Britain over 40 species of the rhododendron in 1849 and was responsible for starting a rhododendron craze with gardeners keen to introduce the new stunning species.
Hooker inserted many sketches and drawings in his journals, in pencil or watercolour. Some of these were later built upon by the artist Walter Hood Fitch who produced monumental hand-coloured lithographs of rhododendrons. The lithographs were published in Hooker’s Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-51). Hooker's and Fitch's botanical art is held in Kew Gardens, London.
Sacrococca Hookeriana
Among the plants Hooker collected in Sikkim is the Sarcococca hookeriana in the form of S.hookeriana var. Hookeriana, commonly known as Christmas box plant which was named after him. In the Indian landscape exhibited in the British Museum, London, in association with Kew (until October 11, 2009), Hooker’s rhododendrons and sweet box feature among the various plants of the Indian subcontinent.
Sources
The Joseph Dalton Hooker website
Review of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveller and Plant Collector, The Antique Collector’s Club with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , 1999 by Cynthia Postan at rosebay.com
Joseph Dalton Hooker, Himalayan Journals: Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas..., vol. 2, 1854.
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
