John Clayton (botanist)
John Clayton (* 1694 in Fulham, England; † December 15, 1773 in Gloucester, Virginia), was a British- North American botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " J.Clayton "; earlier was also the abbreviation " Clayt. " in use.
Life
John Clayton was sen in the fall of 1694 as the son of lawyer John Clayton. (1665-1737) and his wife, Ann Page, born in Fulham, Middlesex. His father emigrated on August 11, 1705 from England to Virginia in 1713 and was appointed Attorney General of the colony. After John Jr. had completed his legal training in England, he moved to Virginia about 1715 also. On 20 October 1720, he was appointed Clerk of the County of Gloucester, an office which he held until his death. He lived in the so-called Windsor House in Ware Parish, Gloucester County, Virginia. In addition to his official career, he ran a tobacco plantation of 150 hectares. On January 22, 1723 he married Elizabeth Whiting ( 1700-1771 ). From their marriage eight children were born.
Since the name John is often in the widely ramified Clayton family, it comes in many biographical notes to confusion and thus to false information provided by the birth or death year.
The researcher
In his new home in Clayton worked intensively with the little-known flora of the North American continent. In close contact with like-minded he collects and classifies the plants of Virginia, particularly the area between the James River and the Rappahannock River. He began an extensive correspondence with botanists in Europe. Among his acquaintances include Jane Colden, John Bartram, the London textile merchant Peter Collinson (1694-1768), Pehr Kalm and Carl Linnaeus. Clayton's diligence and willingness to help will be rewarded with the privilege of Benjamin Franklin that his mail, including extensive collections herbarisierter plants, is carried free of charge.
When his friend, the naturalist Mark Catesby, with whom he had made several trips through Virginia, permanently returning to Oxford sends Clayton to him in 1734 and 1735, almost all the plants he has collected in Virginia, to England. Catesby is the collection to Jan Frederik Gronovius in Holland on, because he does not own many of the species. Gronovius, in turn, asks the young Linnaeus for help, who is 1735-1737 as a visiting researcher at George Clifford ( 1685-1760 ) in Hartekamp in Haarlem.
While Clayton is waiting for the results of determination, he is working on a plant directory of Virginia. He sorts the species according to the scheme of John Ray. The manuscript he sent to Catesby with a request to find a publisher in England. Also this manuscript come to Gronovius. This assigns the plants with Linnaeus' support after the system around and published the work in 1739, Flora virginica. Gronovius consists in about Clayton's name creations of time and forgives own name or accepts the proposals for the designation of Linnaeus. In the same way in 1742 is a second volume of the Flora virginica about.
Services
While Clayton's services were largely underestimated during his lifetime, his significance for botanical research is now recognized in professional circles. So based a large part of Linnaeus' knowledge of the North American flora on the plants that Clayton had collected. Many of them are nomenclatural types, that is, there are the specimens, after which Gronovius, and Linnaeus customized the scientific first descriptions. The Flora virginica, which would not have been without Clayton's diligence and care can arise, was one of the fundamental scientific representations of the Flora of North America. It remained the most important standard work on the subject for half a century. Clayton's plan to write a book on the flora of Virginia, he could not realize, that's a fire, the Gloucester County House and be there accommodated Privatherbar destroyed. Only the documents that he had sent to Europe are obtained. They were bought in 1793 by Sir Joseph Banks, and came as the British Museum in London (now the Natural History Museum ), where they again today as a separate collection ( " Clayton Collection" ) are kept.
Honors
Linnaeus praised Clayton, by putting him with the naming of the genus Claytonia (plates herb) a keepsake. Over the following decades, about 20 other plant species were named after Clayton.
The memory of Clayton is maintained by the Arkansas Native Plant Society, which publishes a magazine entitled Claytonia.
Swell
- Edmund Berkeley & Dorothy Smith Berkeley: John Clayton, Pioneer of American Botany. University of North Carolina Press 1963.
- Johann Friedrich Gronovius: Flora virginica. Suffering. I: 1739; II: 1743rd
- Johann Friedrich Gronovius: Flora virginica. 2nd edition, Leiden, 1762nd