George Edward Massee

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George Edward Massee (born December 20, 1845 in Scampston , Yorkshire , † February 16, 1917 ) was a British botanist and mycologist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Massee ".

Life

Massee was interested in natural history as a teenager and accompanied the botanist Richard Spruce , who was an acquaintance of the family, on an expedition to Panama and Ecuador. He also volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to fight on the French side in the Franco-German War, but was only used briefly. He attended the York School of Arts and studied briefly at Cambridge (Downing College) without a degree. His preoccupation with mushrooms, which he recorded in drawings, attracted the attention of Mordecai Cooke , who encouraged him. Massee moved to London, lectured on mycology and briefly worked for the Natural History Museum and was curator (principal assistant) for mycology at the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) in 1893 until his retirement in 1915, succeeding Cooke. His assistant there was from 1904 the algologist Arthur Disbrowe Cotton (1879-1962) and from 1910 Elsie Wakefield , who was his successor in Kew.

He described many new types of mushrooms, but since he often kept no type specimens and described incompletely, many of them were classified as nomen dubium . Most of his herbarium came to Kew, part of which was sold to the New York Botanical Garden in 1907. A number of species of mushrooms have been named in his honor and the genus Masseea . Although he was considered an expert with great knowledge, he was also careless, so that he sometimes made some gross mistakes.

He was one of the founders of the British Mycological Society in 1896 and its first president. From 1899 to 1903 he was president of the Quekett Microscopical Club . From Cooke he took over the publication of his magazine for cryptogams Grevillea in 1892 , which only survived 2 years.

Fonts

  • A monograph of the Mycogastres. London: Methuen 1892
  • The British fungus flora, 4 volumes, London: George Bell 1892 to 1895, Volume 1, Archives
  • European fungus flora: Agaricaceae London: Duckworth 1902, Project Gutenberg
  • with C. Crossland: The fungus flora of Yorkshire. London: A. Brown 1905
  • Diseases of cultivated plants and trees London: Macmillan 1910
  • with Ivy Massee: Mildews, rusts, and smuts London: Dulau & Co 1913
  • British fungi with a chapter on lichens, undated (around 1911)

literature

  • John Ramsbottom , Obituary in Journal of Botany 1917
  • John Ramsbottom: George Edward Massee (1850-1917), Transactions of the British Mycological Society 5, 1917, pp. 469-473
  • GC Ainsworth: Brief biographies of British mycologists. Stourbridge: British Mycological Society 1996
  • Mary P. English: Mordecai Cubitt Cooke, Victorian Naturalist, Mycologist, Teacher & Eccentric, Biopress, Bristol 1987

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Cooke biography by Mary English and obituary by John Ramsbottom 1917.
personal data
SURNAME Massee, George Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist and mycologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Scampston , Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1917