Sir Henry Collett was an English soldier and botanist. He served as an army officer in the East India Company.

Collett was born in Thetford

Thetford

Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland district of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just south of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, covering an area of , has a population of 21,588.-History:...

, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 and studied at Tonbridge School

Tonbridge School

Tonbridge School is a British boys' independent school for both boarding and day pupils in Tonbridge, Kent, founded in 1553 by Sir Andrew Judd . It is a member of the Eton Group, and has close links with the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the oldest London livery companies...

 and at Addiscombe College. He entered the Bengal army in 1855, rising through the ranks to become a lieutenant-colonel in 1879. In the Second Anglo-Afghan War

Second Anglo-Afghan War

The Second Anglo-Afghan War was fought between the United Kingdom and Afghanistan from 1878 to 1880, when the nation was ruled by Sher Ali Khan of the Barakzai dynasty, the son of former Emir Dost Mohammad Khan. This was the second time British India invaded Afghanistan. The war ended in a manner...

 (1878–80) he acted as quartermaster-general on the staff of Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts

Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts

Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, Bt, VC, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, KStJ, PC was a distinguished Indian born British soldier who regarded himself as Anglo-Irish and one of the most successful British commanders of the 19th century.-Early life:Born at Cawnpore, India, on...

. He was promoted colonel in 1884, made KCB in 1891, and from 1892 to 1893 he commanded the Peshawar

Peshawar

Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

 district with the rank of major-general. He retired from the army in 1893.

Collett was keen botanist, collecting plants in Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, the Canaries, Corsica, India, Java, and Spain. He was made a fellow of the Linnean Society

Linnean Society of London

The Linnean Society of London is the world's premier society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history. It publishes a zoological journal, as well as botanical and biological journals...

 in 1879. At his death he was working on a book on the flora of Simla

Shimla

Shimla , formerly known as Simla, is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared the summer capital of the British Raj in India. A popular tourist destination, Shimla is often referred to as the "Queen of Hills," a term coined by the British...

, which was published posthumously as Flora Simlensis (1902).

External links

• Collett, Sir Henry (1836-1901), army officer in the East India Company and botanist by H. M. Vibart rev. James Lunt in Dictionary of National Biography
  Dictionary of National Biography
  The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
  
  
• Flora Simlensis