Peter Taylor (botanist)

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

Life and work

In 1948, he joined the staff of the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens ( Kew ) and became assistant to Edgar Milne - Redhead. During this activity he encountered as a draftsman of the plant genus of the water hoses ( Utricularia ) from the family of water hose plants ( Lentibulariaceae ) that should be on one of his main areas of work for now. In 1954 he published his first first description ( Utricularia pentadactyla ) and in 1955 he published the first time a floristic treatment of the water hose plants for the " Flora of Trinidad and Tobago ". For the herbarium of Kew Gardens, he founded during this work, an extensive collection of pickled in alcohol Herbarexemplaren the water hoses, which grew to more than 2,000 copies until 1989.

Following Taylor took part in a ten -month expedition to Milne - Redhead in East Africa. In the late 1960s he turned to the world of plants and toured America, among others, the southeast of North America. He became head of the department of the orchid herbarium at Kew in 1972, at the same time he began planning for a class monograph on the water hoses. In 1976 he undertook an expedition to the orchids and water hoses Panama and Ecuador. After his resignation as head of the Department of orchids at Kew he undertook in 1979 and 1980, several expeditions to Australia, where he found several water hose types and erstbeschrieb. After his return in mid 1980 Taylor was a long time sick; after his recovery he undertook in August 1981, an expedition to Bangalore in India; even here he could then describe several new species.

The Royal Botanic Gardens featured Taylor followed by all other tasks freely, so that he could finish his monograph on the genus water hoses until his retirement in 1986. Taylor took two more years beyond that to complete the work. In 1989, he put then " The Genus Utricularia " before; the work of many hand learned attention and positive appraisal.

Taylor has worked for numerous floras on the water hose plants, so for 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).

Evidence

• Peter Taylor: The Genus Utricularia - A Taxonomic Monograph. Pp. IX -XI London 1989 ISBN. 0-947643-72-9.
• Robert Zander, Fritz Encke, Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold (eds.): Handbook of Plant Names. 13th edition. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-8001-5042-5.