Peter Taylor (botanist)

Peter Geoffrey Taylor (born January 16, 1926 in Luton ; † October 20, 2011 ) was a British botanist . His focus was on the water hose family and the orchids . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " P.Taylor ".

Live and act

In 1948 he became an employee of the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) and was assistant to Edgar Milne-Redhead . During this activity he met as a draftsman the plant genus of water hoses ( Utricularia ) from the family of water hose plants (Lentibulariaceae), which from now on should become one of his main areas of work. In 1954 he published his first description ( Utricularia pentadactyla ) and as early as 1955 he published a floristic treatment of the water hose family for the "Flora of Trinidad and Tobago" for the first time . For the herbarium of Kew Gardens, he established an extensive collection of herbarium specimens of the water hoses soaked in alcohol, which grew to over 2,000 specimens by 1989.

Taylor then took part in a ten-month expedition with Milne-Redhead in East Africa. At the end of the 1960s he turned to the flora of America and traveled to the southeast of North America, among other places. In 1972 he became head of the orchid department of the herbarium in Kew, at the same time he began planning a generic monograph on the water hoses. In 1976 he went on an expedition to the orchids and water hoses of Panama and Ecuador. After his resignation as head of the orchid department in Kew, he undertook several expeditions to Australia in 1979 and 1980, where he found and first described several species of water hose. After returning in mid-1980, Taylor was ill for a long time; after his recovery he went on an expedition to Bangalore in India in August 1981 ; here too he was able to describe several new species.

The Royal Botanic Gardens then released Taylor from all other tasks so that he could finish his generic monograph on water hoses until his retirement in 1986. It took Taylor two more years to complete the work. In 1989 he then presented "The Genus Utricularia" ; the work received much attention and positive appreciation.

Taylor has worked for numerous floras on the water hose family, such as the Flora of Trinidad and Tobago (1955), the Flora of Tropical East Africa (1973), the Flora of Ecuador (1975), the Flora of Panama (1976) and the Flora Zambesiaca (1988).

proof

• Peter Taylor: The Genus Utricularia - A Taxonomic Monograph . Pp. IX-XI London 1989. ISBN 0-947643-72-9 .
• Robert Zander : Zander concise dictionary of plant names . Ed .: Fritz Encke , Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold . 13th, revised and expanded edition. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-8001-5042-5 . .

Web links

• Harvard University Herbaria: Index of Botanists
• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Peter Taylor (botanist) at the IPNI