Thomas Walter (c. 1740 – January 17, 1789) was a British-born American
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 ...
best known for his boo
''Flora Caroliniana''(1788), the first flora set in North America to utilize the
Linnaean system of classification.
[Rembert (1980)]
Life and career
Walter was born in Hampshire, England, around 1740. Little is known of his family background or early life. He evidently received a good education but no details are available. Sometime before 1769 he arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked as a merchant. He later acquired a rice plantation on the
Santee River
}
The Santee River is a river in South Carolina in the United States, and is long. The Santee and its tributaries provide the principal drainage for the coastal areas of southeastern South Carolina and navigation for the central coastal plain ...
where he lived for the rest of his life.
[Sterling (1997)]
He became interested in botany and undertook a detailed plant survey within a fifty-mile radius of his home, collecting seeds for his garden and building an extensive
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 (calle ...
.
Based on this effort, Walter completed a manuscript in 1787 containing a summary of all the flowering plant species found in the region. It was the first comprehensive regional flora set in eastern North America and the first to use Linnaeus' binomial naming conventions. Walter gave the manuscript to fellow-botanist
John Fraser who took it to England and arranged for its publication in 1788. ''Flora Caroliniana'' provided brief Latin descriptions for over 1,000 plant species in 435 genera.
Walter is credited with the discovery of some 200 new species and four new genera. Today, 88 of these species and one genus (''
Amsonia'') still bear the valid names provided by Walter in his ''Flora''.
Walter died on January 17, 1789, shortly after the publication of his flora. His herbarium was taken to England by Fraser and eventually purchased by the
British Museum of Natural History where it still exists. Since his death, eight plant species have been named in his honor.
Notes
References
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18th-century American botanists
1740 births
1789 deaths
Botanists active in North America
South Carolina colonial people
Natural history of South Carolina
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