William Hudson (botanist)
William Hudson
Life and work
Hudson was born between 1730 and 1732 at the White Lion Inn, Kendal, which was kept by his father. He was educated at Kendal grammar school,
Hudson was subsequently apprenticed to an apothecary in London. He obtained the prize for botany given by the Apothecaries' Company which was a copy of
In 1761 Hudson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year the first edition of his Flora Anglica appeared, which, according to Pulteney and J. E. Smith, "marks the establishment of Linnean principles of botany in England." Smith writes that the work was "composed under the auspices and advice of Benjamin Stillingfleet". Hudson, at the time of its publication, was practising as an apothecary in Panton Street, Haymarket, and from 1765 to 1771 acted as 'praefectus horti' to the Apothecaries' Company at the Chelsea Physic Garden. He communicated with Linnaeus and sent plants to him.[6]
A considerably enlarged edition of the Flora appeared in 1778 and he planned a Fauna Britannica. However, in 1783 his house in Panton Street caught fire, his collections of insects and many of his plants were destroyed, and the people narrowly escaped with their lives. Hudson retired to Jermyn Street.
In 1791 he joined the newly established
He bequeathed the remains of his herbarium to the Apothecaries' Company and some have subsequently been transferred to the herbaria at the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Natural History Museum in London.
Linnaeus gave the name Hudsonia to a North American genus of Cistaceae.
Selected works
- Flora Anglica (1762) –1798 printing
See also
Notes
- ^ Davey, F Hamilton (1909). Flora of Cornwall. Penryn: F Chegwidden. pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.
- ^ "AnimalBase :: Trochus terrestris speciestaxon homepage". www.animalbase.uni-goettingen.de. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
- ^ Stewart, Charles (1802). Elements of Natural History. T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies. p. 394. Retrieved 18 June 2016.
hudson trochus terrestris.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. Almost all of this article is copied from this source. .
- ^ Flora Britanica: sive, Synopsis methodica stirpium Britanicarum […] primum ad celeberrimi Caroli Linnæi methodum disposita.
- ISBN 9781873124833.
- ^ Gorton, John (1851). A General Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 2. London: Henry G. Bohn.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Huds.
References
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Hudson, William (1730?-1793)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Further reading
- Rees' Cyclopaedia article by Sir J. E. Smith
- Cornelius Nicholson's Annals of Kendal, p. 345
- Gentleman's Magazine1793, i. 485
- Henry Field and Robert Hunter Semple, Memoirs of the Botanic Garden at Chelsea (1878), p. 88.
- Trimen and Dyer's Flora of Middlesex, p. 392
- Pulteney's Sketches of the Progress of Botany, ii. 351
- Bromley's Catalogue of Portraits.