Talk:William Morrison (gardener)

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This is everything Erickson (1969): 43 has to say about Morrison:

"William Morrison made little mark in the colony except that his name survives in the beautiful Verticordia nitens, popularly called 'Morrison flower'. There is a story that Captain Meares could not remember its botanical name and as he depended on Morrison to locate it for him, it thus received this title. Morrison, an obscure Scottish gardener, was formerly the manager of a sugar plantation at Barbados, where he acquired a taste for rum. As Meares remarked to Mangles, 'He is not a member of the Temperance Society and has a hydrophobic fear of water and is afflicted even with a raging thirst.'On leaving the West Indies to return to England he took with him a large collection of seeds, plants and dried specimens. Thus launched on a collecting career he was sent to Western Australia on behalf of some English botanists, and collected for Lt. Grey to the north of Perth late in 1838. At the same time he was building up a herbarium of native plants for Surveyor-General Roe, who was gathering together at his home in Perth an important private museum, which later in the century became the nucleus of the present State Museum."

Hesperian 12:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)