Clarke Abel

Clarke Abel (5 September 1780 – 24 November 1826) was a British surgeon and naturalist. The standard author abbreviation C. Abel is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

He accompanied Lord Amherst on his mission to China in 1816-17 as the embassy's chief medical officer and naturalist, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks. En route, Abel landed twice in the Cape, where he devoted a chapter to the region's geology, and became notes a pioneer in South African Geology.This mission to China was Britain's second unsuccessful attempt to establish diplomatic relations with China and involved travelling to the Beijing and the famous botanical gardens of Fa Tee (Huadi) near Canton (Fangcun District). While in China, Abel collected specimens and seeds of the plant that carries his name, Abelia chinensis, described by Banks' botanical secretary Robert Brown, "with friendly partiality". However a shipwreck and an attack by pirates on the way back to his home in Britain caused him to lose all of his specimens. Abel's Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, 1818, gives a detailed account of the collection's misfortunes. However, he had left some specimens with Sir George Staunton at Canton, who was kind enough to return them to him; living specimens of the Chinese Abelia that we know today were introduced by Robert Fortune in 1844.