Historian: First botanic garden in Penang set up in 1794
IT may come as a surprise to many people that the first botanic garden in Penang was established in the middle of the Air Itam valley in 1794, according to Australian-based historian Marcus Langdon.
He said Irish botanist Christopher Smith set up a small garden on a 10.5ha plot in the valley.
“Smith later set up another garden in Sungai Keluang in Bayan Lepas on a 158ha site,” he said.
He was giving a talk on ‘Christopher Smith & Penang’s First Botanic Garden’ at the tourist pavillion-cum-visitors centre near the Penang Botanic Gardens recently.
Langdon, who specialises in Penang’s early history under the East India Company from 1786-1858, said Smith chose Penang to be the nursery for thousands of nutmeg and clove plants brought in from the Molucca Island (Maluku Islands) in Indonesia over a six-year period.
“The responsibility of breaking the monopoly of the Dutch on the highly valuable nutmegs as well as cloves and delivering a new source of revenue to the East India Company fell almost solely on Christopher Smith,” he said.
According to reports on the Internet, the Maluku Islands, located between Sulawesi and New Guinea, were commonly referred to as Spice Islands and was once the only source of mace and nutmeg.
The Penang Botanic Gardens at Jalan Kebun Bunga were established in 1884 from an old quarry site under the supervision of Charles Curtis, who became its first superintendent.
