Charles Samuel Pollock Parish (18221897) was an Anglo-Indian clergyman and botanist who served as chaplain to the forces of the

Honourable East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

. With his wife Eleanor he collected and painted plants, chiefly

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Orchids are cosmopolitan plants that are found in almost every habitat on Eart ...

s, identifying and naming a number of species new to science. Several species are named in his honour.

Early life

Parish was born in

Dum Dum Dum Dum is a city and a municipality in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area of North 24 Parganas district in the Indian States and territories of India, state of West Bengal. It is a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Author ...

, near

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

, India on 26 January 1822 as the second son of the Reverend Henry Parish (17911873). He was educated in England from around the age of ten, and graduated from

St Edmund Hall St Edmund Hall (also known as The Hall and Teddy Hall) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. The college claims to be "the oldest surviving academic society to house and educate undergraduates in any university" and was the last ...

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

in 1841. He was ordained as a deacon on 7 June 1846 and as a priest 30 May 1847. From 15 August 1846 he was curate at

West Hatch West Hatch is a hamlet and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated south east of Taunton. It has a population of 306. History The name of the hamlet indicates it lies to the west of Hatch Beauchamp. The parish of West Hatch was part of t ...

, Somerset, and from December 1849 had the same role at nearby Bickenhall and

Orchard Portman Orchard Portman is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated south of Taunton. The village has a population of 150. The parish includes the hamlet of Thurlbear and the nearby Thurlbear Wood and Quarrylands Site of Special Scie ...

Burma

In 1852 Parish was appointed as assistant chaplain to the

in the province of Tenasserim, Burma, based at

Moulmein Mawlamyine (also spelled Mawlamyaing; , ; ; , ), formerly Moulmein, is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar (Burma), ''World Gazetteer'' southeast of Yangon and south of Thaton, at the mouth of Thanlwin (Salween) River. Mawlamyine was an ancien ...

, travelling there via Calcutta and Rangoon. In 1854 he married Eleanor Isabella Sarah Johnson, and subsequently the couple had seven children, all born in Moulmein: four daughters, one of whom died after a year, and three sons. When the East India Company ceased to exist in 1858, Parish continued his duties under

the Crown The Crown is a political concept used in Commonwealth realms. Depending on the context used, it generally refers to the entirety of the State (polity), state (or in federal realms, the relevant level of government in that state), the executive ...

. He spent 25 years in Moulmein, returning to England only once in that time, to settle his family in Somerset, in 1871 or 18721873. He was promoted to chaplain in 1863 and, on return from his English leave, became a senior chaplain. During his service in Burma, he collected many botanical specimens, notably

Orchidaceae Orchids are plants that belong to the family (biology), family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Orchids are cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan plants that ...

, for the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

. He and his wife discovered and identified several orchid species new to science. He also collected plants for a commercial orchid nursery, Messrs Hugh Low & Co. of

Upper Clapton Clapton is a district of east London, England, in the London Borough of Hackney. Clapton is divided into Upper Clapton, in the north, and Lower Clapton to the south. Clapton railway station lies north-east of Charing Cross. Geography and orig ...

, England. Plants were also collected on his behalf by Burmese people. He was involved in the naming of a number of species, many in conjunction with

Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach (Dresden, 3 January 1823 – Hamburg, 6 May 1889) was a botanist and the foremost Germany, German orchidologist of the 19th century. His father Ludwig Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (author of ''Ico ...

who wrote, in an 1874 paper titled "Enumeration of the Orchids Collected by the in the Neighbourhood of Moulmein, with Descriptions of the New Species": The Parishes both painted plants, sometimes collaboratively, including those in their garden at Moulmein. Two bound volumes containing 300 of their orchid paintings are kept at Kew. Parish contributed a catalogue of Orchids to Francis Mason's 1849 work "The natural productions of Burmah: or, notes on the fauna, flora, and minerals of the Tenasserim provinces and the Burman empire". His contribution to the third, 1883, edition (titled "Burma, its people and productions; Notes on the fauna, flora and minerals of Tenasserim, Pegu and Burma") was significantly expanded, and included notes on algae, mosses and ferns.

Later life

On retirement in 1878, Parish settled in

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, England. He was awarded the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr ...

's gold medal in 1885, at an orchid congress in London. He died peacefully at his home, Roughmoor House,

Bishop's Hull Bishop's Hull is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, in the western suburbs of Taunton. It includes the areas of Rumwell, Rumwell Park, Roughmoor and Longaller and is close to the River Tone. The parish, which includes the hamlet o ...

, on 18 October 1897.

Legacy

An obituary to Parish was published in '' The Orchid Review''. The genus '' Parishia'' was named in Parish's honour by

Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For 20 years he served as director of the Ro ...

in 1860. The type species is '' P. insignis'', the first specimens of which were collected by Parish in the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago, made up of 200 islands, in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a mari ...

. The same year, the orchid species ''

Cleisostoma parishii ''Cleisostoma'' is a genus of orchids with approximately 90 accepted species widely distributed through much of the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, China, New Guinea, and some of the islands of the Western Pacific. The orchid abbreviation ...

'' was named for him (initially as ''Sarcanthus parishii''), as were ''

Coelogyne parishii ''Coelogyne parishii'' is a species of orchid. It was named by Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical ...

'' in 1862, '' Dendrobium parishii'' in 1863, '' Phalaenopsis parishii'' in 1865, ''Phalaenopsis hygrochila'' (as ''Vanda parishii'') in 1868, and '' Cymbidium parishii'', '' Porpax parishii'' (as ''Eria parishii'') and '' Peristylus parishii'', each in 1874. Another, '' Paphiopedilum parishii'', was named (as ''Cypripedium parishii'') for him in 1892. '' Chiloschista parishii'' was named as late as 1988. Of the species he collected, Reichenbach described '' Bulbophyllum lemniscatum'' as "the greatest glory of all the discoveries of Mr. Parish." Among the specimens held by Kew are around 45

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wikt:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to ancho ...

s. The

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

holds two manuscripts by Parish, ''A Little Known Volcano'', about Barren Island, which he visited in October 1861, and ''Burmah and the Burmese'', which he signed and dated May 1879. A biography of Parish, by Dudley Clayton, with plates of 168 of the paintings from Kew, was published by The Ray Society in 2017.

Early life

Burma

Later life

Legacy

Notes

References

Further reading