He introduced apples to Bangalore

The Lalbagh is perhaps the most famous landmark of Bangalore and it is one of the finest botanical gardens in the world. There are many people whose association with the Lalbagh is still recalled with respect and awe.

If Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan are credited with having started the garden and also developed it into the charbagh style, the British subsequently took pains to not only maintain the garden but also develop it.

The names of botanists and Superintendents of Lalbagh like James Cameroon, Krumbeigal, Mari Gowda and others quickly come to the fore but there are a few others whose contribution is as great as that of these men.

One such person is Benjamin Heyne (1770-1819), a surgeon, botanist and naturalist. Heyne nurtured Lalbagh during the early 1800s and it was he who gave the botanical garden its present shape. What is more it is this man who introduced apples into Bangalore along with several other fruits and vegetables.

It was in 1793 that a young Heyne joined the service of the British East India Company. In 1796, he was assigned to the Madras Presidency as Botanist to Samalkot (Samalkot today is s small mandal in Andhra Pradesh and it is about 64 kilometres from Rajamundhry. Samalkot then had a botanical garden and it was part of the Northern Circars that the British ruled).

In 1799, the British alliance defeated Tipu Sultan in the fourth and final Anglo-Mysore war. The British returned the Mysore Kingdom to the Wodeyars and appropriated the Lalbagh Botanical garden in Bangalore.

The British decided to transform Lalbagh as a “depository for useful plants sent from different parts of the country.” They then ordered Dr. Benjamin Heyne, the Company’s botanist at Madras, to take charge of  Lalbagh.

The order to preserve and protect Lalbagh came from the Governor-General of India, Richard Wellesley. The British asked Heyne to accompany the Surveyor, with the following instructions:

“A decided superiority must be given to useful plants over those which are merely recommended by their rarity or their beauty,... to collect with care all that is connected with the arts and manufacturers of this country, or that promises to be useful in our own; to give due attention to the timber employed in the various provinces of his route,... and to collect with particular diligence the valuable plants connected with his own immediate profession, i.e. medicine.”

Heyne was in charge of Lalbagh till 1812. He set about the task he had been assigned with diligence and he collected a lot of plants, shrubs and plants from Bangalore, Mysore, Coimbatore and even the Western Ghats.

A large collection of plant specimens which were forwarded to London. He collected more than 350 species from the Western Ghats and more than 200 species were named by him. He also sent many of his Indian botanical specimens to the German botanist Albreht Roth, whose work “Novae plantarum” ) is largely based on these botanical specimen.

Coming back to the Survey work he had been entrusted with,  Heyne was assistant to Francis Buchanan. Both took up and completed the epoch making Mysore Survey.

Benjamin Heyne died at Madras in 1819 but not before he had been appointed to superintend in 1803 the cultivation of potatoes and other culinary vegetables such as turnip in the Company's garden in Mysore State. The garden, of course, was in Bangalore.

He was also tasked with the job of introducing bread fruit in Mysore State. Bread fruit belongs to the mulberry family, Moraceae. In Karnataka, it is locally called divi Halasu.

It is to him the credit must go of commissioning botanical illustrations though none of them survive today. In the eighteenth century, botanical illustrations had become important and botanists depended on them to identify, classify and publish botanical nomenclature. Heyne was keen to train ‘native' artists in identifying and illustrating characteristics of plants and shrubs that he had collected and planted in Lalbagh.

In 1803, William Bentinck wanted Heyne to  apply his “mineralogical knowledge to the subject of gold sand, collected in the vicinity of Bangalore, and the mode of extracting it from the stones in which it is embedded”.

Roman beauty of Bangalore

An apple a day keeps the doctor away has been  a very popular saying. However, buying apples in Bangalore is expensive as they cost upwards of Rs. 120 per kilogram.

Bangaloreans are a fortunate lot as they can taste apples from Himachal Pradesh, China, Washington an even Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, these apples do not come cheap as they have to be imported into the city.

This is an ironical situation as Bangalore in the early years of the 20^th century was known for its apples. Yes, apples grew here and they were plenty.

Apart from Whitefield and surrounding areas, many old time bungalows in Bangalore, particularly in Cantonment had apple trees.

Horticulturists and old-timers recall that a vary particular variety of apple was grown in Cox Town called Rome Beauty. These were sturdy varieties of apples but they fell prey to the growing urbanization of Bangalore and the changing climatic condition. These trees almost disappeared from the City’s landscape in the 1960s.

Now, you can see this apple only in Lalbagh. The officials of the Horticulture Department, which looks after Lalbagh and Cubbon Park, have planted ten apple trees of Rome Beauty near the Fern Garden in Lalbagh.

These trees require a cold climate to grow. They grow very well if the temperature is less than 13 degree Celsius. They need hundreds of hours of chill to mature.

Well, coming back to apples: Bangalore had several well-known orchards where apples were a prized tree. Most  of these apple gardens vanished around 1925.

The credit for making Bangalore an apple growing centre goes to the British. While the Cantonment catered to the military and civil needs of the British, many Anglo-Indians and British constructed houses in Whitefield where they planted several trees and plants native to England.

Since apples play a major part in an Englishman’s daily routine, the British wanted to introduce apples in Bangalore. James Cameroon, the Curator of Lalbagh, took the first tentative steps in 1887 to introduce apples.

Cameroon imported 17 varieties of apples to Bangalore from England and had them tested in Lalbagh. Out of the 17 varieties, only the Rome Beauty was found to be resilient and adaptive to Bangalore.

Cameroon then decided to introduce Rome Beauty to Bangalore. He ensured that a large number of seeds of this variety of apples were procured from England. These seed were then distributed to farmers and owners of estates in Bangalore and Whitefield.               

Cameroon was keen to ensure that Bangalore became a major apple growing centre and, therefore, distributed the apple seeds free of cost.

Local farmers and British plantation owners took to apple growing in a big way and by the turn of  the century (1900) and the early years of the 20^th century, more than 1,000 acres of  land were exclusively growing apples.

The apple orchards came up around Palace Grounds called Upper and Lower Palace Orchards, Vasanthnagar, Whitefield and the soggy area between Konankunte and Kanakapura Road.

Initially, the apples were being grown for the Europeans who lives in and around Bangalore, Slowly, Indians too began to like the local variety of apple as against the apples imported from Jammu Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

The popularity of Bangalore apples grew as they were locally available and much cheaper.        
In those days, the apples had many takers because the ones from Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh would take several days to reach the south.

The apple orchards met a slow death for several reasons. The chill of Bangalore that attracted the British to Bangalore slowly began to disappear. Other varieties of crops made their entry into Bangalore displacing apples. Growing urbanization of the city and its hunger for land meant disappearance of orchards. The water bodies too vanished, depriving apples of a vital component. By the time India became Independent, the apples had practically vanished.

Today, apples are not grown in Bangalore. The only ones growing are in Lalbagh and at Hesarghatta.