Francis Masson

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Francis Masson (born August 1741 in Aberdeen , Scotland , † December 23, 1805 in Montreal ) was a Scottish botanist and plant hunter . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Masson ".

Live and act

Francis Masson came to London looking for a job as a gardener and met Joseph Banks and William Aiton in the Botanical Gardens in Kew . Banks sent him on a journey as the first plant collector on behalf of the British Crown.

Masson set out from Plymouth on July 13, 1772 on board James Cook's Resolution for the Cape of Good Hope , where he arrived in Cape Town on October 30, 1772 . On December 10, 1772, he started a two-month expedition to the Stellenbosch area and the Hottentots Holland Mountains on an eight-horse ox cart together with Franz Pehr Oldenburg and a local . The second trip (September 11, 1773 to January 29, 1774) and the third trip (September 26, 1774 to December 28, 1774) he undertook together with Carl Peter Thunberg . In 1776 a detailed description of these journeys appears in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . The best-known evidence of these trips include the introduction of the bird of paradise ( Strelitzia reginae ) and the oldest specimen of a container plant still cultivated today, Encephalartos altensteinii , which he sent to Kew in 1773.

On December 26, 1775, Masson wrote a letter to Carl von Linné , in which he asked him to personally honor a newly discovered plant genus with the genus name Massonia , which his travel companion Thunberg had suggested. However, it did not come to that, as Linnaeus died two years later, and Linnaeus's son published the first description in 1782 .

On May 19, 1776 he left England again, this time to explore the Azores ( São Miguel ), the Canary Islands , Madeira and the West Indies (especially St. Christopher ). In 1781 he returned to England.

In 1783 he traveled to Portugal , Spain , Tangier and again Madeira. In 1786 he returned to the Cape of Good Hope for ten years. His travel records about this time have been lost.

In 1796, Masson began publishing Stapelia novae . In this work he described numerous new species of the genus Stapelia . With one exception, he drew the associated 41 color plates himself in the natural locations. Among the first descriptions was Stapelia gordonii (now Hoodia gordonii ). In the same year he became a member of the Linnaeus Society .

At the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks , President of the Royal Society since 1778 , he sailed for North America in September 1797 and arrived in New York in December . Towards the end of May 1798 he traveled to Oswego and collected plants along the shores of Lake Ontario . In early July 1778, he reached the on the Niagara Peninsula nearby locations Newark and finally Queenston (Ontario) . From here he made his way via York in Upper Canada to Montreal , where he arrived on October 16, 1798. From here he explored the areas along the Ottawa River and Lake Superior in 1799 .

Masson died shortly before Christmas 1805 in Montreal before his planned return home in the spring of 1806. He was buried there in the Scotch Presbyterian Church cemetery.

Masson discovered hundreds of new plant species on his travels. The plants newly described by him come almost exclusively from the Asclepiadaceae plant family .

Honor taxon

Carl Peter Thunberg named the genus Massonia from the hyacinth family (Hyacinthaceae) in his honor .

Fonts (selection)

  • An Account of Three Journeys from the Cape Town into the Southern Parts of Africa; Undertaken for the Discovery of New Plants, towards the Improvement of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . Volume 66, pp. 268-317, 1776
  • An Account of the Island of St. Miguel . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . Volume 68, pp. 601-610, 1778
  • Stapelia novae: or A collection of several new species of that genus . London, 1796–1797 - 4 parts

literature

  • Alexander Chalmers: The General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time . London, 1812-1817. - 32 volumes
  • Umberto Quattrocchi: CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names: Common Names, Scientific Names, Eponyms, Synonyms, and Etymology . CRC Press Inc., 2000, p. 1627. ISBN 0849326761
  • Francis Masson . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to Robert Zander : Zander hand dictionary of plant names. Edited by Fritz Encke , Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold . 14th, revised and expanded edition. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-8001-5063-8 .
  2. ↑ Masson as Kew's first plant collector
  3. ↑ James H. Wandersee, Renee M. Clary: The World's Oldest Potted Plant [1]
  4. ↑ Maarten Willem Houttuyn : Natuurlijke Historie of Uitvoerige Beschrijving der Dieren, Planten en Mineraalen, Volgens het Samenstel van den Heer Linnaeus . Amsterdam, Volume 12, pp. 424, 1780

Further literature

  • Frank R. Bradlow: Francis Masson's account of three journeys at the Cape of Good Hope 1772-1775 . Tablecloth Press, Cape Town 1994, ISBN 0-620-18571-6 .
  • Karsten Maria Carolina: Francis Masson: a gardener-botanist who collected at the Cape . M. Karsten, Mbabane 1958-1961.
  • Francis Masson: Stapeliae Novae . Facsim. Reprint, 1998, ISBN 88-7166-427-2
  • LC Rookmaaker: The Zoological Exploration of Southern Africa 1650-1790 . Rotterdam, 1989 ,. ISBN 9061918677 .
  • Anna C. Saltmarsh: Francis Masson: Collecting Plants for King and Country . In: Curtis's Botanical Magazine , Vol. 20, No. 4, 2003, pp. 225-244.

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Masson, Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish botanist and plant collector
DATE OF BIRTH August 1741
PLACE OF BIRTH Aberdeen , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1805
Place of death Montreal