George Campbell Munro (10 May 1866 – 4 December 1963) was a

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

born pioneer of Hawaiian botany and ornithology. He settled on a ranch in Lanai and wrote one of the first books on the birds of Hawaii, many species of which are now extinct. The plant genus ''

Munroidendron ''Polyscias racemosa'', or false 'ohe, is a species of flowering plant in the family Araliaceae. As ''Munroidendron racemosum'', the species was until recently considered to be the only species in the monotypic genus ''Munroidendron''. With the c ...

'' and the extinct Lanai finch '' Dysmorodrepanis munroi'' are named after him. Munro was born in New Zealand, but little is known of his early life other than that he was a gumdigger collecting kauri tree resin for the varnish industry. He had also trained in taxidermy. He arrived in

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

on December 13, 1890 to assist Henry C. Palmer to collect bird specimens for the collection of Lord

Walter Rothschild Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was present ...

. He then worked on

Kauai Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...

and

Molokai Molokai , or Molokai (), is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its greatest length an ...

managing a ranch until 1906 collaborating also with R.C.L. Perkins to study local fauna. After a brief visit to New Zealand in 1911 he returned to manage Dole Company’s

Lana‘i Lanai ( haw, Lānai, , , also ,) is the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands and the smallest publicly accessible inhabited island in the chain. It is colloquially known as the Pineapple Island because of its past as an island-wide pineapple pl ...

cattle ranch. He was involved in the founding of the Honolulu Audubon Society in 1939. From 1937 he was involved in bird ringing. He founded the Nalau Arboretum in 1950 while also maintaining endemic plants in Ke Kuaaina. He introduced Cook Island pine trees after noting that they condensed fog and dripped them onto the land. Munro published numerous notes in the journal ''Elepaio'' and wrote the ''Birds of Hawaii'' (1944, with a second edition in 1960) while a posthumous publication of his notes was included in ''The Story of Lanai'' (2007).

References

External links

Biography with portrait
{{DEFAULTSORT:Munro, George Campbell 1886 births 1963 deaths New Zealand ornithologists