57. Bergenia stracheyi (J.D. Hooker & Thomson) Engler SAXIFRAGACEAE
This species is a more distinguished relative of the rather coarse, but more commonly grown, Bergenia purpurascens. It is an alpine species, which occurs in the western Himalaya from Afghanistan to Uttarakhand, and is named after Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey (1817–1908), an army engineer best known for his irrigation work in northern India, but who undertook important works as a geologist, pioneering meteorologist and plant collector in the North-West Himalaya and Tibet. Strachey also worked on the 1851 Cleghorn Report on tropical deforestation and is the father of the Bloomsbury Group biographer Lytton Strachey.
Hand coloured lithograph of Bergenia stracheyi from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine t. 5967