Charles Samuel Pollock Parish

Paphiopedilum parishii (Rchb. f.) Stein, drawn by Charles Parish, painted by Eleanor Parish, from a plant flowering in Moulmein, Myanmar in 1867

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 in Burma. With his wife Eleanor he collected and painted plants, chiefly orchids, 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, near Calcutta, 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, Oxford University in 1841. He was ordained as a deacon on 7 June 1846 and as a priest 30 May 1847. He was promoted to chaplain in 1863 and, on return from his English leave, became a senior chaplain. He and his wife discovered and identified several orchid species new to science. many in conjunction with Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach 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": 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, The type species is P. insignis, the first specimens of which were collected by Parish in the Andaman Islands. Phalaenopsis parishii in 1865, Phalaenopsis hygrochila (as Vanda parishii) in 1868, and Cymbidium parishii, Porpax parishii (as Eria parishii) and Peristylus parishii,

Of the species he collected, Reichenbach described Bulbophyllum lemniscatum as "the greatest glory of all the discoveries of Mr. Parish."

A biography of Parish, by Dudley Clayton, with plates of 168 of the paintings from Kew, was published by The Ray Society in 2017.