Biographical entry
| Home | Browse | Search | Previous | Next |
|
|
Bright Sparcs
Biographical entry
|
|
|
Drummond, James (c. 1786 - 1863) |
|||
|
|||
| Botanist and Naturalist | |||
| Born: c. 1786 Inverarity, Scotland. Died: 27 March 1863 Toodyay, Western Australia, Australia. | |||
| James Drummond was born in late 1786 or early 1787 and was an avid botanist and plant collector. He was curator at Ireland’s Cork Botanical Gardens from 1808, before migrating to Australia in 1829. Drummond worked as the Western Australian Government’s naturalist. He was also appointed superintendent of the government gardens. He went on numerous expeditions across Western Australia where he collected thousands of seed and plant for export to England. Today his plant specimens are found in herbaria across the world. He named several of Western Australia’s native species and 119 specimens have been names after him. His father Thomas Drummond, was a gardener on the Fotheringham estate at Inverarity. |
Career Highlights | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Prior to arriving in Australia, James Drummond was curator of the Cork Botanical Gardens, an associate of the Linnean Society and had published several papers on Irish plants. In 1829 he, together with his wife and six children, accompanied Captain Stirling to Western Australia on the ship Parmelia. Drummond was appointed Government Naturalist, but worked more in the role of botanist. The position was without pay. He was also appointed superintendent of the government gardens, and received a salary of £100. From 1835, Drummond began collection plant specimens and seeds to export to England. Hundreds of new species were named from his collections. These expeditions lead him to travel much of Western Australia’s southern lands. Together with his sons, especially Johnston, and other botanists (including Jogn Gilbert) he collected over 3500 specimens. Drummond also discovered that some local plants were in fact poisonous to livestock resulting in large stock losses. In July 1845 Drummond’s son Johnston was killed during an expedition at Moore River. This caused James Drummond to give up collecting. However 15 months later he was awarded an honorarium from the Queen’s Bounty for his services to botany. This inspired Drummond to begin collecting again until 1855 when he was too old to continue. post-ADB contributions made by Mr Charles Nelson Chronology
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Collaborator
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top of Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||
|
Published by The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre on ASAPWeb, 1994 - 2007 Originally published 1994-1999 by Australian Science Archives Project, 1999-2006 by the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre Disclaimer, Copyright and Privacy Policy Submit any comments, questions, corrections and additions Prepared by: Acknowledgements Updated: 26 February 2007 http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P000373b.htm |