David Arnot (plant collector)
David Arnot (born June 26, 1821 in Uitenhage , † June 6, 1894 in Cape Town ) was a South African general agent, diamond prospector and plant collector .
Life
Arnot was the son of David Arnot senior and Kaatje van der Jeugd. His father, a blacksmith from Cupar in the Scottish region of Fife , came to the Cape Colony in 1817 on a trek from British settlers led by Benjamin Moodie . After studying in Uitenhage and at the South African College in Cape Town from 1837 to 1838, David Arnot settled in Colesberg in 1845 as a general agent, where between 1856 and 1871 he met the Griqua leader Nikolaas Waterboer in a legal dispute with the Oranje Free State represented by lands. About this case he published in 1875 with Francis Henry Samuel Orpen the book The Land Question of Griqualand West: An Inquiry Into the Various Claims to Land in That Territory; Together With a Brief History of the Griqua Nation .
In 1859, Arnot sent live plants to William Jackson Hooker of the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) . These included eleven species of aloes , six species of milkweed , six stapel species, three thick leaf species, five mesembryanthemum species and four cotyledon species.
In 1875 Arnot became a member of the Linnean Society of London and the Geological Society of London . In 1877 he became a corresponding member of the South African Philosophical Society .
In 1845 Arnot married Anne Grimmer. From this marriage there were twelve children.
Dedication names
Nicholas Edward Brown named Stapelia arnotii , Joseph Dalton Hooker named Talinum arnottii and John Gilbert Baker named the species Brachystelma arnottii , Haemanthus arnottii and Hypoxis arnottii after David Arnot. William Henry Benson described the snail species Microkerkus arnotti in 1864 . Henry Baker Tristram honored Arnot in 1869 in the kind of epithet of the Arnot wheatear ( Myrmecocichla arnotti ).
literature
- Mary Gunn, LEW Codd: Botanical Exploration Southern Africa: An Illustrated History of Early Botanical Literature on the Cape Flora AA Balkema Publishers, 1981, ISBN 978-0-869-61129-6 , p. 82
Web links
- Short biography at the Biographical Database of Southern African Science
- A Brief History of Colesberg with reference to the Arnots and their family home, now The Barracks
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Arnot, David |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | South African general agent, diamond prospector and plant collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 26, 1821 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Uitenhage |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 6, 1894 |
| Place of death | Cape Town |