Nationality Canadian Role Botanist | Name John Davidson Fields Botany | |
Institutions University of British Columbia Alma mater Robert Gordon's College and University of Aberdeen Known for First Provincial Botanist, British Columbia and Founding Director UBC Botanical Garden Died February 10, 1970, Vancouver, Canada Education University of Aberdeen, Robert Gordon's College | ||
John Davidson (1878 – 1970) was a notable Scottish-Canadian botanist.
Biography
He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.
He worked at the University of Aberdeen from 1893 to 1911. He later moved to Canada in the hopes of securing a professorship at the soon to be established University of British Columbia (UBC). Instead, he was appointed the first Provincial Botanist of British Columbia. Davidson established a herbarium on West Pender Street, Vancouver, and a botanical garden near New Westminster, at Coquitlam (at the Colony Farm and Essondale farming and mental hospital complex, which later became Riverview Hospital in the 1950s). This collection was moved to the UBC in 1916 where it became the UBC Botanical Garden. This move is often described as having involved the transfer of 25,000 plants, though this figure is an exaggeration. Even if Davidson and his staff transferred two thousand plants, the feat would still have been extraordinary. As a UBC faculty member in Botany from 1916 to 1948 Davidson was instrumental in developing botany teaching at the University.
He also founded the Vancouver Natural History Society (which has been renamed Nature Vancouver)