Plant colours


THE DAPURI DRAWINGS, ALEXANDER GIBSON AND THE BOMBAY BOTANIC GARDENS
H J Noltie . Published by Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad in association with the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh . 2002 . 240 pages


This is a coffee table book with beautiful watercolour drawings, wherein the author has made an effort to reconstruct history through an exhaustive study of ancient records on the East India company.

The book is a collection of Indian botanical drawings owned by the Royal Botanic Garden, at Edinburgh. It is also about Alexander Gibson, the East India Company surgeon and forest conservator, who commissioned an unknown Portuguese-Indian artist to do these watercolours and about the botanic gardens of the Bombay Presidency at Dapuri and Hewra,near Poona, where they were painted around 1850.