Charles Curtis (botanist)
[2] On completing his education, Curtis joined James Veitch & Sons' Royal Exotic Nursery at Chelsea, London in 1874, where he received his botanical training in the "New Plant Department".
Veitch instructed him to collect specimens of Nepenthes northiana, which had been discovered by Marianne North in Borneo, although the precise locality where the plant grew was unknown.
He was successful in locating the plant, but again, owing to a mishap with the boat, a month's collections and all his clothes and instruments were lost, and he narrowly escaped with his life.
Curtis was not meticulous in recording where he located individual plants – although it was originally believed that he collected N. curtisii in Borneo, Charles Clarke points out that he also visited Sulawesi on the same trip, and N. maxima is common there.
According to the account in Hortus Veitchii, Curtis had been commissioned to go in search of Nepenthes northiana, and "after long and unsuccessful effort, Curtis gave up hope, under the impression that Miss North had been wrongly informed, but fortunately before leaving the district it occurred to him to look over a steep escarpment in the hill-side, accomplished by lying prostrate on the ground, when to his great joy he discovered the long-looked-for plant some distance below.
He succeeded in gathering ripe capsules, and lost no time in transmitting them to Chelsea, where the seed soon germinated",[9] and was introduced in the James Veitch & Sons catalogue in 1883.
Curtis was presented with a tropical valley, including a nutmeg plantation with associated structures, and a prominent location on the trail to and at the foot of the "Great Waterfall".
[24] Curtis' immediate actions were to develop a plant nursery and undertake a programme of works to create a pleasurable recreational and botanical garden in the valley.
This included proposals to extend and develop the existing "Waterfall Gardens", the construction of road circuits, the erection of plant-houses for the propagation and cultivation of various species, and the provision of recreational venues.
The circular road circuits he had constructed carefully weave through the valley opening up views, framing vantage points, and providing surprises to the visitor.
[24] Curtis' design was motivated by his objective to take advantage of and exploit the natural landscape in the first instance, and then locate plantings in functional or species family associations.
Returning in December 1891, Curtis spent another five months at the quarters "during which the health of myself and family suffered severely from fever"[25] forcing him to vacate the house and rent accommodation elsewhere.
[1] Two years later he published "An Extensive Catalogue of Flowering Plants and Ferns Found Growing Wild in the island of Penang" in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: containing 1,971 species of 793 genera and 129 natural orders, it is a significant record of Malaysian flora.
