John Carne Bidwill
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John Carne Bidwill (1815-1853) was an English botanist who documented plant life in New Zealand. He is attributed with the discovery of several Australian plant species.[1]
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[edit] Life in England
John Bidwill was the eldest son of James G. Bidwill, a merchant of Exeter, England, and he was born at Exeter in 1815. He was educated for a commercial life but developed an interest in science, and in particular, botany.
[edit] Migration
He arrived at Sydney, Australia in September 1838, intending to take up land, though he had also some connection with a firm of Sydney merchants. Finding there would be delay in obtaining land, he went in a schooner to New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands on 5 February 1839. During the next two months he made a long journey into the interior of the North Island collecting botanical and other scientific specimens. An account of this journey, Rambles in New Zealand, was published in London in 1841. He tells us that "these rambles were abruptly put an end to by the increasing business of the mercantile firm at Sydney with which I am connected", but he returned to New Zealand in 1840 and spent some time at Port Nicholson and its neighbourhood. About the year 1842 he met Joseph Dalton Hooker who, in his Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania, mentions that Bidwill accompanied him "in my excursions round Port Jackson and impressed me deeply with the extent of his knowledge and fertile talents".
[edit] Public service
On 1 September 1847 he became temporary government botanist and inaugural Director of Sydney's botanic gardens. The gardens had been established in 1816 and until that time been supervised by colonial botanists and superintendents. Bidwill was succeeded by the permanent Director Charles Moore, who arrived in Australia and took up his duties in January 1848.
Following his time as interim Director of the botanic gardens, Bidwill was appointed commissioner of crown lands and chairman of the bench of magistrates for the district of Wide Bay in what is now Queensland.
[edit] Plant discoveries
Bidwill brought a live specimen to London where it was studied and named Araucaria bidwillii after him by English botanist William Jackson Hooker in the 1843 London Journal of Botany[1][2] Bidwill also is credited with discovery of Agathis robusta (the Dammara or Queensland kauri pine) and the Nymphaea gigantea.
[edit] Death
In 1851, while marking out a new road to the Moreton Bay district, he became separated from his companions and was lost without food for eight days. He eventually succeeded in cutting a way through the scrub with a pocket hook, but never properly recovered from his privations, and died on 16 March 1853 at Tinana, Queensland, at the age of 38.
[edit] Legacy
In addition to Araucaria bidwillii, scientific name for the Bunya Bunya tree, Bidwill is remembered in the name of the City of Blacktown suburb, Bidwill, New South Wales.[2][3] In Queensland, a parish and a creek also bear his name, in recognition of his term as Commissioner for Crown Lands, Wide Bay.[4][5]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Serle,Percival (1949). Bidwill, John Carne (1815-1853). Dictionary of Australian Biography. Angus and Roberston. Retrieved on January 15, 2007.
- ^ a b Nomenclatural Data Base retrieval. Missouri Botanical Garden. Retrieved on January 15, 2007.
- ^ Bidwill. Geographical Names Board of New South Wales. Retrieved on January 5, 2007.
- ^ Bidwill. Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water. Retrieved on January 17, 2007.
- ^ Bidwill Creek. Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water. Retrieved on January 17, 2007.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.
