Frederick Conyers Cotton

Major General Frederick Conyers Cotton CSI (30 July 1807 – 12 October 1901) was a British army officer who was posted in the Madras Presidency.

On sick leave he went to the Cape of Good Hope and travelled around southern Africa in Kuruman where he met Robert Moffatt.

He served in China during the First Opium War 1841–42 and was made a brevet major on the recommendation of his commanding officer Sir Hugh Gough.

[2][3] Cotton also examined wild plants and an orchid that he collected and sent to Robert Wight was named after him as Cottonia peduncularis.

He became a vice chairman at the Royal Society of Art and in 1878 he was involved in organizing a congress on the water resources in England.