George Don (29 April 1798 – 25 February 1856) was a Scottish botanist and plant collector.
Life and career
George Don was born at Doo Hillock, Forfar, Angus, Scotland on 29 April 1798 to Caroline Clementina Stuart and George Don (b.1756), principal gardener of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1802.[1] Don was the elder brother of David Don, also a botanist. He became foreman of the gardens at Chelsea in 1816. In 1821, he was sent to Brazil, the West Indies and Sierra Leone to collect specimens for the Royal Horticultural Society.[1] Most of his discoveries were published by Joseph Sabine, although Don published several new species from Sierra Leone.
Don's main work was his four volume A General System of Gardening and Botany, published between 1832 and 1838 (often referred to as Gen. Hist., an abbreviation of the alternative title: A General History of the Dichlamydeous Plants). He revised the first supplement to Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants, and provided a Linnean arrangement to Loudon's Hortus Britannicus. He also wrote a monograph on the genus Allium (1832) and a review of Combretum. He died at Kensington, London, on 25 February 1856.[1] He is buried in the parish churchyard in the centre of Forfar.
A plant genera authored by George Don is Physochlaina G.Don[3]
He is also honoured in the genus of a plant, Donella,[4] which was published in Hist. Pl. Vol.11 o page 294 in 1891.[5]
The television gardener Monty Don is, according to different sources, either George Don's four-times great-grandson or a great-nephew some generations removed.[6][7]
^Although the Telegraph article identifies Monty Don's "great-great-great-great grandfather George Don", a representative of the Royal Horticultural Society is quoted as saying "we [...] are delighted to work closely with Monty Don who is a descendent of another branch of the Don family tree, one that features many gardeners and botanists"; this implied less-direct relationship to George Don corroborates the following cited source- Presenter: Monty Don (29 November 2015). "The 19th Century". The Secret History of the British Garden. BBC Two.
This is a selected list of the more influential systems. There are many other systems, for instance a review of earlier systems, published by Lindley in his 1853 edition, and Dahlgren (1982). Examples include the works of Scopoli, Ventenat, Batsch and Grisebach.
Prodromus systemati naturalis regni vegetabilis sive enumeratio contracta ordinum, generum specierumque plantarum huc usque cognitarum, juxta methodi naturalis normas digesta
