Henry Fletcher Hance

Henry Fletcher Hance

Henry Fletcher Hance (born August 4, 1827 in London , † June 22, 1886 in Xiamen ) was a British diplomat and botanist . Its botanical author abbreviation is " Hance ".

Life

Henry Fletcher Hance spent much of his youth on the estate of his grandfather Colonel Fletcher in Plymouth , Devonshire, and received his education in both London and Belgium . On September 1, 1844, at the age of 17, he entered the civil service in the new Hong Kong colony following the nomination of Governor John Francis Davis . In April 1851, Hance was sent back to London to recover from recurring fevers, but the ship crashed near Java . Hance was rescued and was able to continue his journey to London, where he married in 1852 before returning to Hong Kong. On May 1, 1854, he was transferred as fourth assistant to the Superintendency of Trade in China and a short time later as senior assistant to the consulate in Guangzhou (Canton) under consul Harry Smith Parkes . After the fire in Guangzhou as a result of the Second Opium War , he went back to Hong Kong in December 1856, but had to return to his old position in Guangzhou in May 1859. On May 26, 1861 he became Vice-Consul in Huangpu (Whampoa). After Brooke Robertson's departure he was consul of Guangzhou from March 1878 to November 1879 and accompanied the same position from August to December 1881 and from July 1884 to May 1885. In May 1886 he became consul in Xiamen (Amoy), but died there on June 22nd and was buried on June 26th in Happy Valley Cemetery in Hong Kong.

Hance spent most of his free time in plant collecting and botanical studies. His herbarium comprised 22,437 documents at his death, which went to the Natural History Museum in London. For his work in the field of botany he received an honorary doctorate from the Ludwig University of Giessen on November 24, 1849 . On February 5, 1877 he was accepted into the Leopoldina and was since February 21, 1878 a member of the Linnean Society of London .

Works

Emil Bretschneider lists 222 publications by Henry Fletcher Hance in his History of European Botanical Discoveries in China . An important work is:

• Florae hongkongensis prosthetic counter, 1872.

Honors

After Hance the plant genera became Hancea Seem. from the family of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae) and Hanceola Kudô from the family of mint named (Lamiaceae).

literature

• Francis Blackwell Forbes : Henry Fletcher Hance . In: James Britten (Ed.): The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign . Vol. 25, No. 289. West, Newman & Co., London January 1887, pp. 1–11 (English, biodiversitylibrary.org ).
• Robert Kennaway Douglas : Hance, Henry Fletcher . In: Leslie Stephen , Sidney Lee (Eds.): Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) . Vol. 24. Smith, Elder & Co., London 1890, pp. 272-273 (English, wikisource.org ).
• Emil Bretschneider : Hance, Dr. Henry Fletcher . In: History of European Botanical Discoveries in China . Vol. 2, 1898, pp. 632-652 (English, biolib.de ).
• Samuel Couling: Hance, Henry Fletcher . In: The Encyclopaedia Sinica . Oxford University Press, London 1917, pp. 222 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Walter Erhardt among others: The great pikeperch. Encyclopedia of Plant Names . Volume 2, page 1945. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7
2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Henry Fletcher Hance at the IPNI
• Henry Fletcher Hance in the database on the official website of Harvard University Herbaria
• Henry Fletcher Hance's membership entry at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on December 19, 2016.