Joseph Whittaker (1813 – 2 March 1894) was a British botanist who visited South Australia in 1839. Whittaker has 300 plants from that trip in
Kew Gardens and a large collection of pressed British plants in
Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Derby Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Derby, England. It was established in 1879, along with Derby Central Library, in a new building designed by Richard Knill Freeman and given to Derby by Michael Thomas Bass. The collect ...
.
Biography
Early days
Whittaker's exact birth date is not known. He was christened at
Quarndon
Quarndon is a linear village in the south of the Amber Valley District of Derbyshire, England.
It is spread along four minor upland roads, approximately 1 mile north of the Derby suburb of Allestree, two of which lead towards the city.
Many t ...
near Derby on 8 February 1813. His father, also named Joseph, was a labourer, married to Sarah (born Clarke). The son is sometimes reported as being born in
Breadsall in 1815.
Australian botany
In 1838 Whittaker gave his occupation as "gardener" when he set sail with his new employer
Lt. Col. George Gawler, who had recently been appointed as the second
Governor of South Australia
The governor of South Australia is the representative in South Australia of the Monarch of Australia, currently King Charles III. The governor performs the same constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level as does the governor-gene ...
. Whittaker, seven other employees from Derbyshire, Gawler and his wife and children arrived on the
Pestonjee Bomanjee on 12 October 1838 in
Adelaide. They had made a four-month journey via
Tenerife and
Rio de Janeiro.
When Whittaker and Gawler arrived they found that conditions were poor, so gardening was not the top priority.
[ - ISSN 1833-7538]
He is known for the plants that he collected around
Adelaide in South Australia in 1839–40. During breaks in his employment Whittaker travelled to many places within South Australia where he collected and preserved a wide range of plant specimens. These included
Mount Lofty range
The Mount Lofty Ranges are a range of mountains in the Australian state of South Australia which for a small part of its length borders the east of Adelaide. The part of the range in the vicinity of Adelaide is called the Adelaide Hills and ...
,
Mount Jagged
J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is ''jay'' (pronounced ), with a now-uncommon var ...
,
River Torrens,
River Murray
The Murray River (in South Australia: River Murray) (Ngarrindjeri: ''Millewa'', Yorta Yorta: ''Tongala'') is a river in Southeastern Australia. It is Australia's longest river at extent. Its tributaries include five of the next six longest ...
and the
Hindmarsh River
The Hindmarsh River is a river located in the Fleurieu Peninsula region in the Australian state of South Australia.
Course and features
The Hindmarsh River rises in the Mount Lofty Range below Mount Cone flows generally south by east through th ...
. Whittaker was the first person to seriously collect from the mountainous district of the
Fleurieu Peninsula,
Encounter Bay and
Mount Barker.
Whittaker stayed in South Australia for nineteen months before sailing home on , which set sail from Port Adelaide on 11 April 1840. On the way home his boat stopped four times: at
Kangaroo Island,
Mauritius,
St Helena
Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...
and
Corvo Island in the
Azores. Whittaker collected and pressed further plant specimens whilst the boat was in these harbours.
Derbyshire botany
Whittaker arrived back in England on 23 September 1840 and by 1844 had begun collecting plants again. His activity peaked in 1851 and 52, ceasing sometime after 1867. He collected from many parts of Derbyshire, but he occasionally travelled outside the county including
Bulwell, Nottinghamshire
Bulwell is a market town in the City of Nottingham, in Nottinghamshire, England. It is south-west of Hucknall and to the north-west of Nottingham. The United Kingdom Census 2011 recorded the population of Bulwell at 29,771 which amounted to o ...
,
Rhyl and
Denbigh
Denbigh (; cy, Dinbych; ) is a market town and a community in Denbighshire, Wales. Formerly, the county town, the Welsh name translates to "Little Fortress"; a reference to its historic castle. Denbigh lies near the Clwydian Hills.
History
...
in Wales.
By 1846 he was living at
Breadsall in Derbyshire where he was a schoolmaster at Breadsall Boys School. From here he corresponded with
Sir William J. Hooker Director of the Kew Botanic Gardens in an attempt to exchange some of his Australian and related specimens for a number of books on British botany. Whittaker collected approximately 300 plants that were eventually acquired by Kew.
Whittaker's collections from outside the U.K. and related correspondence are now in
Kew Gardens. This includes specimens of a new species of
sundew, ''
Drosera whittakeri
''Drosera whittakeri'' (scented sundew, Whittaker's sundew) is a sundew that is native to South Australia and Victoria.
Description
Plants are 4 to 8 cm in diameter, with broadly spathulate leaves arranged in a rosette. These may be green, ...
'', which was subsequently named after him.
In February 1847 Whittaker was elected a member of the
Botanical Society of London
The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) is a scientific society for the study of flora, plant distribution and taxonomy relating to Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The society was founded as the Botani ...
and he contributed specimens to its exchange schemes between 1849 and 1853. He subsequently joined the
Botanical Exchange Club and eventually the Botanical Locality Record Club. By 1847 he had amassed enough botanical information to publish "a list of rare plants found in the neighbourhood of Breadsall, Derbyshire".
This contained a mixture of both rare and relatively abundant species, and gives a good indication of the botanical diversity of the area at that time. In 1857 he was the schoolmaster of ninety children at
Breadsall in Derbyshire, a village whose inhabitants included the naturalists
Rev. Henry Harpur Crewe and
Francis Darwin
Sir Francis "Frank" Darwin (16 August 1848 – 19 September 1925) was a British botanist. He was the third son of the naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin.
Biography
Francis Darwin was born in Down House, Downe, Kent in 1848. He was the ...
. The school was funded by the Harpur-Crewe family.
Whittaker lived in the small village of
Morley near Derby at Ferriby Brook (the name of his house) with his wife Mary in the late 1850s. He continued to teach here, taking up to twelve scholars into his classes, usually after they had left the local school, and were between eight and eighteen years of age.
He eventually established a large collection of living plants. Local horticultural groups reported he was growing over 1,300 different species. In 1864 he was publishing works noting the local extinction of the lady's slipper orchid, ''
Cypripedium calceolus
''Cypripedium calceolus'' is a lady's-slipper orchid, and the type species of the genus ''Cypripedium''. It is native to Europe and Asia.
Taxonomy
''Cypripedium'' comes from the Greek Κυπρισ πεδιον (''Kupris pedion''), meaning Venus' ...
'', with the Rev. Henry Harpur Crewe.
By 1871 he was no longer a schoolmaster, and is then listed as a "seedsman and florist". By 1881 these returns described him as a "nurseryman and farmer", with two servants living in his house, plus twenty-year-old William Whitehead. Whitehead was to eventually become a partner in their market gardening venture. Whittaker was elected an 'Associate' of the
Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and remained on its membership listings from at least 1881 until 1891.
Whittaker's plant collecting activities began to decline around 1863, around the time his botanical partner,
Henry Harpur Crewe
Henry Harpur-Crewe (1828–1883) was an English clergyman and naturalist. From 1856 to 1860 he was the Curate of Drinkstone and Creeting St Peter, both in Suffolk, but in 1860 he was appointed Rector of Drayton Beauchamp, a living he occupied ...
, moved away to become the Rector of
Drayton Beauchamp
Drayton Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham') is a village and civil parish within Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the east of the county bordering Hertfordshire, about six miles from Aylesbury and two miles from Tring.
...
in Buckinghamshire. In the following year they cooperated in the production of a manuscript list of the principal flowering plants and ferns of Derbyshire.
His partnership with Crewe lasted for at least eighteen years and was very productive. The
Harpur Crewe's family seat were based at nearby
Calke Abbey and they had funded the school at Breadsall.
In the late 1880s Joseph Whittaker gave valuable assistance, and supplied a range of plant specimens, to
Rev W. H.Painter who was preparing to publish a book on the
Flora of Derbyshire
Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Sometimes ba ...
. Many of Whittaker's specimens and records were also used by
William Richardson Linton
Rev. William Richardson Linton (2 April 1850 in Diddington, Huntingdonshire – 7 April 1908 in Ashbourne, Derbyshire), Corpus Christi College, M.A., was an English botanist and vicar of the parish of Shirley, Derbyshire. He was regarded as o ...
, vicar of
Shirley in a further Flora of Derbyshire in 1903.
Whittaker died on 2 March 1894 and a memorial lectern and engraved brass plaque were erected by popular subscription for St Matthew's Church,
Morley (Church of England), where he was a church warden and where he was buried.
Legacy
Whittaker's collection of herbarium specimens at Kew Gardens is from his trip to Australia and from ports of call on his return journey home. On his death a large collection of pressed British plants in 79 volumes, mostly from Derbyshire, were passed to
Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Derby Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Derby, England. It was established in 1879, along with Derby Central Library, in a new building designed by Richard Knill Freeman and given to Derby by Michael Thomas Bass. The collect ...
, and these are now incorporated in their
herbarium
A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...
.
They provide important voucher specimens for local studies on the Flora of Derbyshire. Because of his participation in botanical exchanges clubs, there are now Whittaker specimens in many UK museum collections, including those at
Bolton,
Birmingham,
Gloucester and
Manchester. The
Wisbech and Fenland Museum also has a small collection.
The carnivorous sundew species ''
Drosera whittakeri
''Drosera whittakeri'' (scented sundew, Whittaker's sundew) is a sundew that is native to South Australia and Victoria.
Description
Plants are 4 to 8 cm in diameter, with broadly spathulate leaves arranged in a rosette. These may be green, ...
'' was scientifically described by the French botanist
Jules Émile Planchon in 1848.
This is commonly known as the scented sundew or Whittaker's sundew.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whittaker, Joseph
1813 births
1894 deaths
British botanists
History of Adelaide
Collections of Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Date of birth unknown
People from Breadsall
People from the Borough of Erewash