Species Withania somnifera

For Henry Thomas Maire Witham (1779–1844) (misspelling of Withan), English palaeobotanist, geologist and philanthropist, who applied to plants James Nicol’s (1810–1879) method of examining rocks by slicing thin sections of them, making full use of the microscope. In the 1830s, he published two works of similar content. These publications were Observations on Fossil Vegetables [fossilised wood] Accompanied by Representations of their Internal Structure as Seen through the Microscope (1831) and The Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables Found in the Carboniferous and Oolitic Deposits of Great Britain (1833). In the same year, he discovered palaeozoic spores in thin petrological sections of coals from Lancashire. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of London.