Robert Marsham (27 January 17084 September 1797) was an English naturalist considered to be the founding father of phenology, the study of the effects of the seasons on plants and animals.

Life

He was admitted to

Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refound ...

in 1728. From a very early age he had shown a passion for the natural world. In later life, he owned a modest sized country estate in

Stratton Strawless Stratton Strawless is a village in the county of Norfolk and district of Broadland. The civil parish covers and has a population of 495, increasing to a population of 580 in the 2011 Census. Located close and to the east of the A140 road and b ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

and became friendly with the naturalist

Gilbert White Gilbert White FRS (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a " parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his ''Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne''. Life White was born on ...

, with whom he carried on a lengthy correspondence and who described him as a 'painful and accurate naturalist' (by "painful" he would have meant "painstaking"). He is best known for his ''Indications of Spring'', the phenology notes in which he recorded 27 signs of spring, starting in 1736 and continuing for over 60 years. Successive generations of his family added to his work until well into the 20th century and this information now provides immensely valuable data to the UK phenology database, giving us a wealth of knowledge about how spring is influenced by prevailing weather conditions, This is now of huge interest in the

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

debate. Marsham was the first to record the effects of nature and seasonal change. Marsham provided insight into the winter of 1739/40, the coldest year on record, when the contents of his

chamber pot A chamber pot is a portable toilet, meant for nocturnal use in the bedroom. It was common in many cultures before the advent of indoor plumbing and flushing toilets. Names and etymology "Chamber" is an older term for bedroom. The chamber pot ...

frequently froze overnight and the

turnip The turnip or white turnip ('' Brassica rapa'' subsp. ''rapa'') is a root vegetable commonly grown in temperate climates worldwide for its white, fleshy taproot. The word ''turnip'' is a compound of ''turn'' as in turned/rounded on a lathe and ...

crop was completely destroyed. Turnips, being a

speciality, feature elsewhere: he regularly recorded turnip flowering dates (needed when turnips were to produce seed). He was amazed at the size a turnip achieved.Sparks,T & Lines,J pp35,61'' Chapters in the life of Robert Marsham (1708-1797)'' Published 2008 Retrieved August 06, 2008 Marsham is still the only person in Norfolk to have recorded the

wallcreeper The wallcreeper (''Tichodroma muraria'') is a small passerine bird found throughout the high mountains of the Palearctic from southern Europe to central China. It is the only extant member of both the genus ''Tichodroma'' and the family Tichodr ...

bird. His interest in trees resulted in his being elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 1780. His ''Indications of Spring'' were published in 'Philosophical Transactions' by the Royal Society in 1789. He married twice. His first wife was Mary Browne of Yaxham, who died in 1752, with whom he had one son, Robert. From his second marriage to Elizabeth Newby of Stratton, he had another son, Thomas who died at the age of 14.

The Great Cedar

In 1747 Marsham planted an example of a ''

Cedrus atlantica ''Cedrus atlantica'', the Atlas cedar, is a species of tree in the pine family Pinaceae, native to the Rif and Atlas Mountains of Morocco (Middle Atlas, High Atlas), and to the Tell Atlas in Algeria.Gaussen, H. (1964). Genre ''Cedrus''. Les ...

'', now known as the 'Great Cedar'. The tree, which is located in Reed-house grove to the east of Stratton Strawless Hall, was last measured in 2000, at which time it had attained a height of and a circumference of .

References

External links

Robert Marsham's Tricentenary Celebrations website
* Woodland Trus
Nature's Calendar page
*
Indications of Spring
' (January 1789) {{DEFAULTSORT:Marsham, Robert 1708 births 1797 deaths People from Broadland (district) British biologists Fellows of the Royal Society

Life

The Great Cedar

References

Further reading

External links