Abstract
William Brooke O'Shaughnessy deserves recognition for his major contributions to chemistry, medicine and electrical engineering, mostly made while working in India. His contribution to botany was more limited and in terms of taxonomy amounted to a dubiously described species of agar-producing seaweed (Fucus amylaceus) and one new combination for a vascular plant (Scilla pancration). His main work of botanical interest, The Bengal Dispensatory, first published in 1841, also contains two other new combinations which should be ascribed to the authorship of Nathaniel Wallich. These are Abelmoschus longifolius and Pharbitis caerulea. The basionym of the latter, Ipomoea caerulea, is lectotypified to an illustration and an epitype is selected. Hebradendron pictorium, which is listed by O'Shaughnessy, is a combination that was first published by Lindley based on Garcinia pictoria of Roxburgh, a species from southern India which is lectotypified here. Garcinia pictoria was not validly published by Buchanan-Hamilton. He applied the name Oxycarpus indica to a species in cultivation in Calcutta that Roxburgh referred to as Garcinia cornea. This was actually Garcinia celebica.
