Griffith's high attainments were appreciated by the distinguished circle of English botanists of his time with whom he corresponded. Mr Solby, to whom he always sent home his papers for submission to the Linnean Society; Robert Brown, to whose work he constantly recurs with admiration, and whose judgment he trusted absolutely; Lindley; Sir William Hooker, who looked forward to his being settled permanently in charge of the Calcutta gardens, and Dr Wight may be named.
I may quote from a letter addressed to Griffith by von Martius of Munich, since it couples his own opinion and that of Robert Brown. "He (Brown) agrees with me in appreciating your spirited and enlightened investigations, and I now more than ever look forward to you as his successor--as the standard English botanist."
Only an outline of the nature of Griffith's scientific work with some details on selected subjects can be attempted here. His published works in the _Transactions_ of the Linnean Society and elsewhere, important as they are, represent only a small fraction of his observations. But the wisdom and liberality of the East India Company has put us in possession of his unpublished notes and drawings (bequeathed with his collections to the Company) in the posthumously published volumes of _Notulae ad plantas Asiaticas_ with the accompanying sets of plates. Though his papers were not ready or intended for publication in this form and suffer from having had to be arranged by another hand, they afford, together with his published work, a particularly good picture of how the problems of morphology and classification presented themselves to a keen investigator at this time.
Of his purely systematic work I shall not speak at length. In addition to smaller papers the most important contribution was his illustrated monograph on the Palms of British East India. In the _Notulae_ numerous species are described and figured nearly always with reference to the morphology and physiology of the parts concerned. It is his investigations made with direct reference to morphology and reproduction that claim our attention most. In dealing with them it is convenient to treat of the main questions to which he directed his attention rather than of the separate papers. I shall call attention first to his work on _the flower and on fertilisation_ in a number of plants, then to his _observations on Cycas_, and lastly to _his work on the Cryptogams_.