William Woolls (30 March 1814 – 14 March 1893) was an Australian

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

, clergyman and schoolmaster. Woolls, the nineteenth child of merchant Edward Woolls, was born at

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

, England and educated at the grammar school,

Bishop's Waltham Bishop's Waltham (or Bishops Waltham) is a medieval market town situated at the source of the River Hamble in Hampshire, England. It has a foot in the South Downs National Park and is located at the midpoint of a long-established route betwe ...

, and at 16 years of age endeavoured unsuccessfully to obtain a cadetship in the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

's service. A year later he emigrated to Australia, landing in Sydney on 16 April 1832, and was soon appointed an assistant-master at

The King's School, Parramatta The King's School is an Education in Australia#Non-government schools, independent Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican, Pre-school education, early learning, primary school, primary and secondary school, secondary day and boarding school, boardi ...

, having met

William Grant Broughton William Grant Broughton (22 May 178820 February 1853) was an Anglican bishop. He was the first (and only) Bishop of Australia of the Church of England. The then Diocese of Australia, has become the Anglican Church of Australia and is divided ...

—then

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

Archdeacon of New South Wales—on the way out. About four years later he went to Sydney and maintained himself by journalism and giving private tuition. He was then for a period classical master at Sydney College, but resigned this to open a private school at Parramatta which he conducted for many years. He married Dinah Catherine Hall in 1838 and she bore a son and a daughter before dying in childbirth in 1844. In 1845, he married Ann Boag. He published two boyish productions in verse, ''The Voyage: A Moral Poem'', in 1832, and ''Australia: A Moral and Descriptive Poem'' in 1833. In 1838 he brought out ''Miscellanies in Prose and Verse'', mainly prose essays. He also published in 1841 ''A Short Account of the Character and Labours of the Rev.

Samuel Marsden Samuel Marsden (25 June 1765 – 12 May 1838) was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society, believed to have introduced Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prom ...

''. His friendship with the Rev. James Walker, headmaster of The King's School between 1843 and 1848, led to Woolls becoming interested in botany, and he subsequently did much work on the

flora of Australia The flora of Australia comprises a vast assemblage of plant species estimated to over 30,000 vascular and 14,000 non-vascular plants, 250,000 species of fungi and over 3,000 lichens. The flora has strong affinities with the flora of Gondwana, ...

. A paper on "Introduced Plants" sent to the

Linnean Society The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

at London led to his being elected a fellow of the society and other work of his brought the degree of PhD from the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, Germany. In 1862 he married his third wife, Sarah Elizabeth Lowe. He gave up his school in 1865 and in 1867 published ''A Contribution to the Flora of Australia'', a collection of his botanical papers. In 1873 Woolls took holy orders in the

, became incumbent of Richmond, and later rural dean. Another collection of his papers, ''Lectures on the Vegetable Kingdom with special reference to the Flora of Australia'', appeared in 1879. According to K. J. Cable, "... Woolls was best known for his promotion of Australian botany and his assistance to other scholars rather than for large-scale systematic work." Woolls retired from the ministry in 1883 and lived at Sydney for the rest of his life. He was much in touch with

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

and assisted him in his botanical work. Woolls's next volume, ''Plants of New South Wales'', was published in 1885, and his ''Plants Indigenous and Naturalized in the Neighbourhood of Sydney'', a revised and enlarged edition of a paper prepared in 1880, came out in 1891. He died of paraplegia in the Sydney suburb of Burwood survived by his third wife.

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