James Bruce Irwin (17 November 1921 – 4 January 2012) was a New Zealand botanist.

Biography

Bruce Irwin was born in 1921 in

Whanganui Whanganui (; ), also spelled Wanganui, is a city in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand. The city is located on the west coast of the North Island at the mouth of the Whanganui River, New Zealand's longest navigable waterway. Whangan ...

. He fell in love with orchids in

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 ...

, and attended Whanganui Technical College there. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

began, he was 17 years old and was working at the survey department in

New Plymouth New Plymouth ( mi, Ngāmotu) is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, Devon from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. ...

. He and his friend Sid Gibson used to collect and draw orchids in nearby Egmont National Park. Despite his military service and a year spent in occupied

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, he carried out a great deal of work with Sid's son Owen Gibson on Mount Taranaki and executed a number of orchid watercolors during the war and in the immediate postwar period. Irwin later worked for the Cartographic Branch of the Department of Lands and Survey, where his paintings came to the attention of the botanist Lucy Moore. He quit the Cartographic Branch in 1962 and went to live at his camp in Marlborough Sounds. A collaboration with Moore began, which resulted in his illustrating ''Volume II of the Flora of New Zealand'' (1970) and ''The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants'' (1978). By the 1970s, he had taken a part-time job in the Art Department of

Otago Medical School The Dunedin School of Medicine is the name of the School of Medicine that is based on the Dunedin campus of the University of Otago. All University of Otago medical students who gain entry after the competitive Health Sciences First Year prog ...

. He largely abandoned watercolors for large-scale pencil drawings, which he felt better illustrated botanical points. After 11.5 years of work on illustrations for ''The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants'', he retired from his job to pursue orchid cultivation in Tauranga. In 1986 he did some illustrations for ''Clarkson's Vegetation of Egmont National Park'' and in 2007, Brian Tyler published a book of his drawings. During the last years of his life, he cultivated orchids at the Te Puna Quarry Park. He received a number of botanical awards, and a species of '' Pterostylis'' was named after him, '' Pterostylis irwinii''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irwin, James Bruce 1921 births 2012 deaths 20th-century New Zealand botanists New Zealand military personnel of World War II New Zealand expatriates in Japan