Stephen Troyte Dunn (26 August 1868,

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city i ...

- 18 April, 1938, Sheen, Surrey, England) was a British botanist. He described and systematized a significant number of plants around the world, his input most noticeable in the

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

of the flora of China. Among the plants he first scientifically described was '' Bauhinia blakeana'', the national flower of

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

Biography

Born in Bristol in the family of Rev. James Dunn, of Northern Irish descent, S. T. Dunn was educated at Radley, and at

Merton College Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, ...

, Oxford, where he earned his BA in classics. He was private secretary to liberal politician Thomas Acland in 1897, and the next year (as in 1898 Thomas Acland died) he first joined Kew as private secretary to the director,

W. T. Thiselton-Dyer Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer (28 July 1843 – 23 December 1928) was a leading British botanist, and the third director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Life and career Thiselton-Dyer was born in Westminster, London. He was a son o ...

. He was then assistant for India in the herbarium from 1901 until his departure for Hong Kong in 1903. At Kew prior to this, he worked on compiling the second supplement of

Index Kewensis The 1893 ''Index Kewensis'' (IK), maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is a publication that aims to register all botanical names for seed plants at the rank of species and genera. It later came to include names of taxonomic families a ...

that was issued in 1904-1905. While superintendent at the Department of Botany and Forestry, Hong Kong (1903-1910), Stephen Dunn would go on expeditions and make many collections in Asia, including Taiwan, Guangdong province and Fujian Province, as well as in Korea and Japan. He was especially interested in ferns. After returning to England, he became an official guide at Kew in 1913, but left Britain again in 1915 for America. Returning four years later, he went back to the Kew herbarium, where he remained until his retirement in 1928. Among his published works were many articles on the Chinese flora as well as flora of Britain. He was a regular contributor to Journal of the Linnean Society.

Legacy

(not to be confused with Dunn in zoology, where it refers to herpetologist Emmett Reid Dunn) Colleague William James Tutcher named ''

Amorphophallus ''Amorphophallus'' (from Ancient Greek , "without form, misshapen" + ''phallos'', "penis", referring to the shape of the prominent spadix) is a large genus of some 200 tropical and subtropical tuberous herbaceous plants from the ''Arum'' family ...

dunnii'' after him.

Family

He married firstly Maud, youngest daughter of Rev. W. H. Thornton, rector of North Bovey, Devon on the 17th of April 1901 in St. Barnabas' Church, Pimlico, London.Arnold Wright (editor)
Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China. Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources. Lloyd's (London), 1908.
Page 137. She took keen interest in botany as well. Maudiae was the word used by S. T. Dunn in her honor when naming magnolia ''

Michelia ''Michelia'' is a historical genus of flowering plants belonging to the family (Magnoliaceae). The genus included about 50 species of evergreen trees and shrubs, native to tropical and subtropical south and southeast Asia (Indomalaya), including s ...

maudiae'' Dunn.
He married secondly Eila Foster, daughter of Henry Oldham Foster & His wife Johanna Christina Hermina née Keuchenius in 1901 at London, England.

Works

* Stephen Troyte Dunn, William James Tutcher. Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong (China) being an account of the flowering plants, ferns and fern allies together with keys for their determination preceded by a map and introduction. London: H. M. Stationery off., printed by Darling and son, ltd., 1912
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* Stephen Troyte Dunn. A supplementary list of Chinese flowering plants, 1904-1910. London, 1911
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* Stephen Troyte Dunn. Alien flora of Britain. West, Newman, and Co., 1905 * Stephen Troyte Dunn. Descriptions of New Chinese Plants. 1904. * C.H. Wright, Charles Geekie Matthew, Stephen Troyte Dunn. Flora of the Falkland Islands. London: Linnean Society, 1911. * James Sykes Gamble, Stephen Troyte Dunn, Cecil Ernest Claude Fischer. Flora of the Presidency of Madras. Botanical Survey of India, 1967. * Stephen Troyte Dunn. A Key to the Labiatae of China. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1915. * Chapter "Flora" in Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China. Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources. Lloyd's (London), 1908. *, Page 325 (re Bauhinia × blakeana)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, Stephen Troyte English explorers Fellows of the Linnean Society of London Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society Botanists active in China Hong Kong scientists Botanists active in Kew Gardens 20th-century British botanists Scientists from Bristol Alumni of Merton College, Oxford People educated at Radley College 1868 births 1938 deaths

Biography

Legacy

Family

Works

Further reading

References