Ernest Henry Wilson
Ernest Henry Wilson (born February 15, 1876 in Chipping Campden , Great Britain , † October 15, 1930 in Worcester (Massachusetts) , USA ) was an English-American botanist and plant hunter . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " EHWilson ".
He mainly explored China's flora and brought the pigeon tree ( Davidia involucrata ) to England as well as cherry trees and azaleas from Japan .
biography
Wilson was born in Chipping Campden, a village in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire , and began an apprenticeship as a gardener in Solihull at the age of sixteen , moved to the Birmingham Botanic Garden in Edgbaston and finally came closer to botanical theory at Birmingham Technical College .
The “Queen's Prize for Botany” enabled him to graduate from Kew Gardens , and although he actually wanted to be a teacher, his superior, Thiselton-Dyer, recommended him as a botanist for a China expedition. In China there was a highly developed garden art very early . The client was the nursery Veitch and Sons in Coombe Wood , which had been very successful on their expeditions to date. She had contact with the Scottish amateur botanist Augustine Henry (1857–1930), who was stationed as a medical officer in Ichang and who had started to hunt plants out of boredom. He had discovered over 500 new species, 25 new genera and a new family and sent them to Kew as herbarium specimens. He offered every plant collector to help him on site.
On board the "Pavonia" Wilson sailed to America, took the train to San Francisco and from there continued by ship to the east. From Hanoi in what was then French Indochina , the ship went on to Hong Kong , where he met Henry. But the full-bodied promised help turned out to be scraps of paper, on which a simple map was scribbled, which covered an area of 52,000 square kilometers. At one point a single pigeon tree was drawn. Despite everything, Wilson planned his trip; Finally he found the appropriate spot - there was a newly built wooden house next to the stump of the pigeon tree.
Wilson had traveled 21,000 kilometers in vain and withdrew to Ichang in resignation. He discovered a climber with edible fruits ( Actinidia chinensis , kiwi ), and finally, about a month after the pigeon tree fiasco, a specimen in full bloom. He was able to send many seeds to England, as well as those of other woody plants such as cinnamon maple ( Acer griseum ), Acer oliverianum , Abies fargesii , Betula albosinensis , viburnum species, several clematis that are now popular climbing plants in home gardens, Lonicera tragophylla , Rhododendrons and Camellias .
In 1902 he returned to England and Veitch was so excited that he gave him a gold watch. It became known that the French Paul Guillaume Farges had brought pigeon tree seeds to Paris as early as 1897 and had at least germinated one of them. The promotional label “introduced by ...” had to be withdrawn.
After his marriage to Helen Ganderton, Wilson left for China again in 1903. He set out to locate the yellow poppy poppy Meconopsis integrifolia in Tibet , and went from Kiating (now Leshan ) to the Wa Shan Mountains . He collected around 200 species, traveled on towards Lhasa and one morning came across large fields of yellow Meconopsis flowers. The royal lily ( Lilium regale ), which he discovered on it, became a great sensation in the gardens, and finally also the red poppy Meconopsis henrici , other rhododendrons and Rosa moyesii .
After his return home, he was now suffering from severe exhaustion, his grateful client presented him with a gold, diamond-studded pin in the shape of a poppy flower.
In 1906 he set off again, this time on behalf of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston under Charles Sprague Sargent , who urged him to take a camera with him. His pictures of people and landscape prove to this day that he had a talent for photography. With his tried and tested crew in Ichang, he set out to collect in Jianxi . In a courtyard garden in Chengdu , he found magnificent Lagerstroemia ( Lagerstroemia indica ); Conifers, magnolia species, Acer wilsonii and a dogwood ( Cornus kousa var. chinensis ) were among his other yields . He took the Trans-Siberian Railway home and then moved with his family to Boston to oversee the organization of his herbarium collection at the Arnold Arboretum. He was very respected in Boston society, called "Chinese Wilson", of which he was very proud.
In 1910 he went on his fourth trip; this time conifers and king lilies were particularly popular (the harvest from the second trip had arrived in England heavily moldy). In northern China he found Syringa julianae , in the Mintal huge fields of blooming royal lilies. During the “harvest” of the stocks, which was sometimes referred to as a huge pillage or raid, he devastated the valley and brought over 6000 onions to Europe. He was hit by falling rocks on a narrow mountain path and fell off a rock, shattering his leg; he was out of action for several months and sent his team off without him. The injury never fully healed and he hobbled the rest of his life; he spoke of his "lily limp". The expedition brought, among other things, the Min fir ( Abies recurvata ), the scalloped fir ( Abies squamata ), a maple ( Acer maximowiczii ) and a bamboo ( Sinarundinaria murielae , named after Wilson's daughter Muriel).
The identification of the herbarium evidence showed that he had discovered four new genera, 382 new species and 323 varieties. He worked again for Singer in Boston and wrote a book about his travels, A Naturalist in Western China (1913).
Wilson's next trip was to Japan ; he wanted to collect cherry trees and conifers - this time his wife and daughter also accompanied him, who had obviously grown tired of the many separations: Helen was the first wife of an English plant collector to accompany her husband on an expedition . Since Wilson was not drafted for military service in the First World War after his return due to his injury, he was able to continue working and writing books.
The Wilson family set out on the sixth and final journey in January 1917, again to Japan and on to Korea. Maple and lilac species , the Korean camellia Stewartia koreana , the Korean arborvitae ( Thuja koraiensis ) and other ornamental trees were collected . In Kurume he visited an azalea gardening and was overwhelmed in the face of 250 varieties. The Kurume Azaleas Wilson's greatest hit when it comes to popularity in the public gardens. Wilson's Fifty, actually a collection of 51 varieties, also became famous in Great Britain.
In 1927, Wilson succeeded Sargent as director of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston . In 1929 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Muriel married in 1930; Helen and Ernst Henry were killed in a car accident on the way home from the wedding.
Honors
In 1906 the Veitch Memorial Trust honored him with the Veitch Memorial Medal . According to EHWilson, the plant genus Sinowilsonia is Hemsl. named from the witch hazel family (Hamamelidaceae). The plant genus Rehsonia Stritch from the legume family (Fabaceae) honors him and Alfred Rehder . He honored his wife, Helen Wilson, with the plant name Rosa helenae ; his daughter Muriel through Sinarundinaria murielae (today Fargesia murielae ).
Works
- with Charles Sprague Sargent: A naturalist in western China, with vasculum, camera, and gun; Being some account of eleven years' travel, exploration, and observation in the more remote parts of the Flowery kingdom . London 1913 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.12039 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.39883
- Plantae Wilsonianae: an enumeration of the woody plants collected in western China for the Arnold arboretum of Harvard university during the years 1907, 1908, and 1910 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1913-1917 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.191 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.20285 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.33536
- The conifers and taxads of Japan . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1916, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.17457
- Aristocrats of the garden . Doubleday, Page & company, Garden City 1917 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.54966 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.31058 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.40609
- The romance of our trees . Garden City 1920, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.55462 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.25560
- with Alfred Rehder : A monograph of azaleas. Rhododendron subgenus Anthodendron . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1921 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.25818 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.51369 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.55595
- The lilies of Eastern Asia . 1925.
- Plant hunting . 1927.
- China, mother of gardens . 1929
literature
- Will Musgrave: Plant collector and discoverer . Christian, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-88472-377-4
- Roy W. Briggs: Chinese Wilson: A Life of Ernest H. Wilson 1876-1930 . The Great Plant Collectors. The Stationery Office Books, London 1993, 176 pp., ISBN 0-11-250017-X
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
- ↑ Walter Erhardt among others: The great pikeperch. Encyclopedia of Plant Names . Volume 2, page 2084. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7
Web links
- Author entry and list of the described plant names for Ernest Henry Wilson at the IPNI
- Literature by and about Ernest Henry Wilson in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wilson, Ernest Henry |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English-American botanist and plant hunter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 15, 1876 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chipping Campden , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 15, 1930 |
| Place of death | Worcester, Massachusetts , USA |