The death of Tipu Sultan ended a glorious era of resistance in south India to the rise of the British Empire. With Tipu out of the way, a vast tract of the peninsula became available for exploration to British geographers, geologists, surveyors, mapmakers, botanists and others. Several pioneering scientific projects, including the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India, began as early as 1800, when a pilot for the GTS was carried out in Bangalore by Lt Col William Lambton. Another project that was immediately undertaken was the study of the flora in Tipu’s beloved Lalbagh, where, 80 years later, the chow chow was first acclimatised.

Bangalore’s darshinis are justifiably famous for their chow-chow bhath, a dish that features a little mound of khara bhath alongside a little mound of kesari bhath, each held together by tuppa (ghee) and love. But the chow chow in the title of this column has nothing to do with bhath; it refers to the “Bangalore Brinjal” or the seemebadanekaayi, whose mild taste lends it a versatility happily exploited in the Karnataka kitchen.

How did the Jamaican chocho or chayote, introduced to the Old World via the so-called Columbian Exchange (a mega-swap of grains, vegetables, culture, ideas, and human beings between West Africa, the Americas and the rest of the world, following Christopher Columbus’s path-breaking voyage of discovery and domination in 1492 CE), morph into the Bangalore Brinjal? Thereby hangs a tale of some remarkable 19th- and 20th-century botanists and horticulturists.

It was Scottish physician and naturalist Francis Buchanan who opened the floodgates. Retained by the governor-general of India, Lord Wellesley, to survey south India, following the tragic fall of Tipu Sultan in 1799, Buchanan set to his task with alacrity, recording in his report on the sultan’s beloved Lalbagh, already bursting with species from across the world – “I think there can be little doubt, but that in this country (of Mysore) all the valuable plants of the Levant would succeed.”

Following Buchanan’s report, Lord Wellesley ordered that Lalbagh be appropriated for a botanical garden, a place to cultivate “useful plants” (over pretty ones, thus confirming that the British were a nation of shopkeepers) from different parts of the country, under the stewardship of Benjamin Heyne, a Scottish botanist. Heyne introduced such species into the gardens as coffee, durian, rambutan, mangosteen, potatoes, and even grapes (for winemaking, what else?).

Over the next three decades, Lalbagh passed back and forth between the East India Company, private British owners and the maharajas of Mysore. In 1831, the Company wrested control of Mysore back from the king, and Lalbagh passed into the care of the chief commissioner of Mysore, the much-admired Sir Mark Cubbon (yup, he whom the other park is named after).

An ‘Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Bangalore’, set up by a few keen Europeans, managed the space for a few years, enthusiastically growing wheat, barley, oats and even sugarcane. Finally, in 1856, on the recommendation of Hugh Cleghorn, conservator of forests in the Madras Presidency, Lalbagh officially became the Government Botanical Gardens, and began its long and fruitful association with its more celebrated counterpart, the Royal Kew Gardens in London.

Beginning with botanist William New, who took over as superintendent of Lalbagh in 1858, every superintendent – John Cameron, Gustav Krumbiegel, HC Javaraya, and MH Mari Gowda – either came from Kew or was trained at Kew. Between them, they planted, studied, fussed over and “acclimatised” hundreds of non-native plant and tree species to Indian conditions, before despatching them to the far corners of the country to be cultivated for commercial purposes.

On Herr Krumbiegel’s watch, some of those trees – the prettiest ones – left the Lalbagh experimental nursery to line Bangalore’s avenues. His masterstroke – the idea of “serial blossoming” – has ensured that there are always trees in bloom on the streets of Bangalore, whatever the season.

And what of the chow chow? That was John Cameron. Having received samples of the light green pear-shaped vegetable from Sri Lanka, he proceeded to plant them in Lalbagh, and was so taken with the vegetable’s possibilities that he brought in all his powers of persuasion to ensure that Bangalore’s reluctant farmers cultivated it.

Et voilà! The Bangalore Brinjal was born!

John Cameron also introduced apple cultivation to Bangalore in 1887, importing 17 varieties to see which ones would take. Only one did – the Rome Beauty. Seeds were distributed free to farmers, and cultivation began in right earnest. In 1910, there were close to 1,000 acres of land under apple cultivation in Bangalore alone! By 1920, however, the dream had died – air pollution from the rising number of motor vehicles on the city’s streets had put paid to the apple crop. Yup, even a century ago, Bangalore traffic had a bad rap.

Excerpted with permission from Becoming Bangalore: Stories That Shaped a Hometown, Roopa Pai, Hachette India.