Posts Tagged ‘English botanists’
From a Duke’s Gardens to Botanical Immortality: Thomas Hoy’s Legacy
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. May 1, 1822 On this day, the horticultural world bid farewell to Thomas Hoy, an English gardener, horticulturist, and botanist of considerable repute. Hoy’s life was a testament to the dedication and passion…
Read MoreSaving the Sakura: Cherry Ingram’s Journey to Preserve Japan’s Blossoms
by Naoko Abe There, in a garden of a house near the Osakabe Hotel (“sah-KAH-bay”), towering above a tall wooden fence, stood a tree with narrow leaves and bunched clusters of double mauve-pink blossoms with close to 100 petals. Ingram’s immediate reaction was to work out how to spirit cuttings of the tree to England.…
Read MoreFrederick Orpen Bower: Pioneer of Botanical Morphology and Evolutionary Plant Science
The Man Honored by the Bower Building November 4, 1855 Today is the birthday of the English botanist and Primitive Plant Expert Frederick Orpen Bower. Bower served as the Regius chair of botany at the University of Glasgow “Glahs-go.” When he arrived in 1885, the department was housed in two rooms, and the herbarium was…
Read MoreMary Somerset: The Duchess of Beaufort and Patron of Botanical Collections
Duchess of Beaufort Today is the anniversary of the death of Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (“BOH-fert”). She was an avid gardener and botanist. She survived two husbands and had eight children. After she was widowed a second time, she focused all of her discretionary effort on gardening. The best horticultural minds of her time…
Read MoreDavid Douglas: Honored at the Site of His Tragic Death in Hawaii
Doctor’s Pit On this day in 2014, the botanist David Douglas was memorialized with a plaque at his death site. The occasion marked the 100th anniversary of Douglas’s death. The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission created the plaque because Douglas was the first scientist to visit the Oregon territory. Douglas scientifically identified hundreds of plants during…
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