Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn (9 August 1820 – 16 May 1895) was a Madras-born Scottish physician, botanist, forester and land owner. Sometimes known as the father of scientific forestry in India, he was the first Conservator of Forests for the Madras Presidency, and twice acted as Inspector General of Forests for India. After a career spent in India Cleghorn returned to Scotland in 1868, where he was involved in the first ever International Forestry Exhibition, advised the India Office on the training of forest officers, and contributed to the establishment of lectureships in botany at the University of St Andrews and in forestry at the University of Edinburgh. The plant genus Cleghornia was named after him by Robert Wight.
Early life
Cleghorn was born in Madras on 9 August 1820, where his father, Peter (also known as Patrick) (1783 – 1863) was Registrar and Prothonotary in the Madras Supreme Court. His mother Isabella (née Allan) died in Madras (1 June 1824) when Cleghorn was three and a half years old. In 1824 Cleghorn and his younger brother were sent home to Stravithie, near St Andrews, Fife, to the care of his grandfather, Hugh Cleghorn (1752–1837), who had been Professor of Civil History at St Andrews University and was later the first British colonial secretary of Ceylon. Cleghorn received his early education at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Following an illness Cleghorn then attended the newly founded Madras College in St Andrews and in 1834 he entered the arts faculty of the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard of St Andrews University. While at Stravithie, under the influence of his grandfather, an improving laird, the young Hugh acquired an interest in estate management (including forestry) and botany. In 1837 he went to study medicine at Edinburgh, during which period he was apprenticed to the surgeon James Syme and studied botany under Robert Graham. He graduated MD from the University of Edinburgh in 1841 and the following year was appointed to the East India Company as an Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Presidency.
India
Cleghorn's first post was in the Madras General Hospital and, after various military postings, was appointed to the Mysore Commission in 1845. For the next two years he was based at Shimoga and pursued his interest in botany, encouraged by Sir William Jackson Hooker who had suggested that he "study one plant a day for a quarter of an hour". It was here that Cleghorn began to commission botanical drawings, took a special interest in economic botany and noticed a decline in teak forests that had occurred since a visit by Francis Buchanan(-Hamilton) in 1801.
In 1848, suffering from ‘Mysore fever', he returned on sick leave to Britain. He took an active part in scientific organisations, such as the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, to which he read several papers including one on hedge plants. He read the same paper at the annual meeting of the British Association held in Edinburgh in 1850, which won him a ‘medium gold medal' of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1851. At the same meeting, under the chairmanship of Sir David Brewster, Cleghorn was commissioned to write a report on the effects of tropical deforestation. A summary of this was read at the Association's Ipswich meeting on 7 July 1851, and subsequently published in full. He was requested by John Forbes Royle to assist in cataloguing the Indian botanical exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cleghorn returned to India in 1852 and was appointed acting Professor of Botany and Materia Medica at Madras Medical College by Sir Henry Pottinger, a post confirmed two years later. During this period he became an active member of the Madras Literary Society and the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society. In 1853 he published Hortus Madraspatensis, a catalogue of the plants in the latter Society's Garden. Cleghorn was consulted by the Madras Government on various economic-botanical subjects, resulting in papers such as one on the sand-binding plants of the Madras beach, read to the Madras Literary Society in 1856. Cleghorn also played a major role in the Madras Exhibitions of 1855 and 1857.
Madras Forest Department
In 1855, on the advice of the civil servant Walter Elliot, Cleghorn was asked by the Governor of Madras, Lord Harris, to organise a Forest Department for Madras and to start systematic forest conservancy, such has had earlier been established in Bombay under Alexander Gibson. He was appointed Conservator of Forests on 19 December 1856, which he held until 10 October 1867, most actively so until 1860.