James Anderson (botanist)

James Anderson (17 January 1738 to 6 August 1809) was a Scottish physician and botanist who worked in India as an employee of the East India Company. In Madras he helped establish a botanical garden at Mambalam, which grew out of a nopalry, or Opuntia garden, where he tried to introduce the cultivation of cochineal insects. He then tried to introduce other economically valuable plants and examined silk and lac production. He kept up a steady correspondence with a friend from youth, James Anderson LLD (1739 to 1808), who published some of his notes in The Bee, or Literary Weekly Intelligencer; that is why he is distinguished as James Anderson MD or James Anderson of Madras.