Henry John Elwes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry John Elwes (around 1868)
Lilium martagon var. Dalmaticum . Lithograph Walter Hood Fitch in Henry John Elwes, A Monograph of the Genus Lilium , Vol. 20, Plate 23, 1877.
Henry John Elwes with Eremurus robustus 'Elwesianus', photo 1918

Henry John Elwes (born May 16, 1846 in Cheltenham , † November 26, 1922 in Colesbourne , Gloucestershire ) was a British botanist , naturalist and entomologist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Elwes ".

Life

Elwes was the son of a landowner in Gloucestershire, was educated at Eton College and privately in Dresden, Brussels and Paris and was with the Scots Guards for five years . From 1869 he was only a farmer, traveler, big game hunter and naturalist. He undertook collecting trips to India, the Himalayas (also to Tibet), the Altai Mountains and Turkey. He was described as a tall person with a dominant demeanor with a booming voice (a visitor to a garden exhibition compared it to a foghorn), and as a person who was mostly outdoors and a passionate gardener.

He published a very well illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch monograph on lilies (with contributions from important botanists), for which he was considered an expert, and with Augustine Henry (1857-1930) an extensive work on trees in Great Britain.

His collection of 30,000 butterflies came to the Natural History Museum , to which he gave 11,370 specimens of Palearctic butterflies during his lifetime. He was considered an expert on thick-headed butterflies (Hesperiidae). The park of his country estate in Colesbourne is managed by descendants (Sir Henry Elwes (* 1935), politician and Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire) and can be visited.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Honor

His name is immortalized in the Elwes snowdrop ( Galanthus elwesii ), which he collected in Turkey in 1874 and which Joseph Dalton Hooker recognized as new and which was first described in 1875.

Fonts

  • Monograph of the Genus Lilium , Taylor and Francis 1877 to 1880, digitized version (supplements published 1933 to 1962)
  • Henry John Elwes with Augustine Henry: The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland , Edinburgh, 7 volumes, 1907 to 1913 (self-published via subscription)
  • M emoirs of Travel, Sport, and Natural History , London 1930

Web links

Commons : Henry John Elwes  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Michael Salmon, The aurelian legacy, University of California Press 2000, p. 181
  2. ^ Colesbourne Park
  3. ↑ Walter Erhardt among others: The great pikeperch. Encyclopedia of Plant Names . Volume 2, page 1924. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7
personal data
SURNAME Elwes, Henry John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elwes (botanical author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist, naturalist and entomologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Cheltenham
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1922
Place of death Colesbourne