Career

Collecting localities

Collections

Literature

Biographical data

 

Oxley, Thomas

 

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 1: Cyclopaedia of collectors)

 

Died: 1886, Southampton, England.

 

career:

Surgeon in the Straits Settlements, in the employ of the English E.I.C.; in 1831 stationed in the isle of Penang (= Prince of Wales’ Isl.), from 1845-57 in Singapore. He paid a visit to the Banda Islands (Moluccas).2

He was especially interested in entomology and in economic plants.1 He lend a helping hand to Thomas Lobb on the latter’s travels.

Some plants were named after him.

 

Collecting localities:

There are no data as to collecting localities in the Malay Peninsula; he climbed Mt Ophir (NW. Johore) twice (Jan. 1840 and Apr. 1848).3

 

collections:

He sent plants from Malacca to Voigt in Bengal, at the moment when the East India Company had ordered the construction of a new herbarium in the Calcutta Botanic Garden, evidently to replace what Wallich had just dispersed. He was said to possess a herbarium of 1000-1200 specimens in 1845 (cf. Burkill in Gard. Bull. Str. Settlem. 4, 1927, nos 4-5). In Herb. Kew [K] (pres. 1848-52), also with Herb. Sir W.J. Hooker.

He sent living material to Hort. Calcutta (c. 1843) and to Hort. Bog. He introduced the so-called ‘flamboyant’ (Poincinia regia Bojer) in Java (1848).

 

literature:

(1) Author of ‘Botany of Singapore’ (Logan Journ. Ind. Arch. 4, 1850, p. 436-440); also some other papers, chiefly dealing with economic plants, in the same periodical.

(2) cf. T. Oxley: ‘The Banda Nutmeg Plantations’ (Hook. Journ. Bot. & Kew Gard. Misc. 9, 1857, p. 1-6).

(3) On the 1st ascent cf. Logan Journ. Ind. Arch. 6, 1852, p. 636-642 (reprinted from Singapore Free Press 1840, without mentioning the author).

 

biographical data:

Biogr. Index Britten & Boulger, 2nd ed. by Rendle, 1931; Backer, Verkl. Woordenb., 1936.