John Stanley Beard (15 February 1916 – 17 February 2011) was a British-born forester and

ecologist Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

who resided in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

. Beard studied at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

where he completed his doctoral thesis on tropical forestry. While working with the Forestry Division in

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...

during the 1940s, Beard developed a system of forest classification for Tropical America and described the forests of

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

Tobago Tobago () is an island and ward within the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is located northeast of the larger island of Trinidad and about off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. It also lies to the southeast of Grenada. The offic ...

, and the

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles ( es, link=no, Antillas Menores; french: link=no, Petites Antilles; pap, Antias Menor; nl, Kleine Antillen) are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are part of a long, partially volcanic island arc be ...

; these descriptions remain standard references on the topics. After leaving Trinidad, Beard moved to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

and then to

, where he produced an extensive series of vegetation maps covering much of the country. His extensive surveys of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

set standards for understanding regional floristic zones and biogeographical areas for the whole state. He was the main author of the 1964–1981 explanatory notes to the mapping project of the '' Vegetation Survey of Western Australia'', which involved travelling some 150,000 kilometres. He was also foundation director of the

Kings Park and Botanic Garden Kings Park, (Noongar: ''Kaarta Gar-up'') is a park overlooking Perth Water and the central business district of Perth, Western Australia. The park is a mixture of grassed parkland, botanical gardens and natural bushland on Mount Eliza with ...

between 1961 and 1970.Keighery, B. and G., ‘Beard, John Stanley’, in R. Aitken and M. Looker (eds), ''Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens'', South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 80Dixon, Kingsley W. (2006) ''Celebration of a life in botany.'' Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia vol. 89, pt. 3, (Sept. 2006), p. 93-97 He was subsequently director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (1970–72) before retiring to

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

. During his directorship, many of Western Australia’s unique native plants were brought into cultivation for the first time. Beard edited the ''Descriptive Catalogue of Western Australian Plants'' (1965), which was published by the Society for Growing Australian Plants, to promote understanding of the

horticultural Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

requirements of Western Australia’s native plants. In his retirement, he produced popular accounts of his vegetation studies in ''Plant Life of Western Australia'' (1990), and of his taxonomic and horticultural studies of '' Protea'' spp. in ''Proteas of Tropical Africa'' (1992). Beard received an OAM in 2003. He died in February 2011 at the age of 95.

References

* Beard, J.S. 1990. ''Checklist of the coastal flora of the South-West Botanical Province, Western Australia.'' Kingia, Vol. 1, no. 3 (1990), p. 255-281

Interview

* Interview with Alice Smith in 1986 - Held in Battye Library 3rd Floor Oral History OH1735 A/r 2 sound cassettes.with Transcript (typescript, 22 p.) Director of Kings Park. Talks about establishment of and highlights of his time there 1961-1970. Includes personal background. https://web.archive.org/web/20141129033601/http://henrietta.liswa.wa.gov.au/record=b1794327~S2 .

References

Interview

See also