Genus Notonia

For Benjamin Noton (1784–1869), English assay master of the East India Company’s Mint at Bombay and plant collector, largely in South India, especially in the Nilgiri Hills. Little is known about him. Robert Wight and Walker-Arnott in Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indiae Orientalis (1834), write: ‘In 1928, Dr Wallich […] superintendent of the Botanical Gardens, arrived in England with an enormous number of specimens of plants […] collected by himself (and many others including) Noton in the (O.E. Neelgherries = Nilgiri Hills).’ These specimens were distributed to various authorities. ‘Professor De Candolle […] named for us the greater part of the Compositae.’ Noton also published the earliest record of tidal observations made at Bombay (1832), which appeared in Rushton’s Gazetteer (1842).