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Timothy Walker (botanist)

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34-853: Timothy Walker is a British botanist. He was the Horti Praefectus (Director) of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum . After attending Abingdon School from 1971 to 1976 Walker studied for a BA degree in Botany at University College , Oxford from 1977 to 1980. From 1980 to 1982, he was a trainee gardener at the Oxford Botanic Garden . He studied for a National Certificate in Horticulture at Askham Bryan College in North Yorkshire during 1982–83. Then during 1983–84 he

68-532: A talented botanical illustrator. The standard botanical author abbreviation Sibth. is applied to species he described. His herbarium (of three collections; 2,462 'Flora Graeca' specimens, 70 'Flora Oxoniensis' specimens and 444 miscellaneous specimens) is stored within the Fielding-Druce Herbarium of the University of Oxford . The chair of Sibthorpian Professor at the University of Oxford

102-549: Is a classic example of the traditional English herbaceous border. Unlike other areas of the Garden, this border relies entirely on herbaceous perennials. These die back to a rootstock each winter before bursting back into life again in spring and flowering through the summer. The planting is designed to provide interest from April to October. The display begins with tulips in a range of colours, followed by early, mid-season and late flowering perennials. The plants are arranged in layers, with

136-699: Is a collection of cycads which look like palms but are unrelated. Several important teaching collections present include the Acanthaceae including the shrimp plant Justicia brandegeana , the Gesneriaceae , and a large number of Begonia species. Plants in this house come from arid areas of the world and demonstrate ways in which plant forms economize the use of water. Many different species of Cacti and Succulent plants are found here demonstrating all of their various tactics to reduce water loss to their hostile environments. First laid out in 1946, this planting

170-442: Is an aluminium replica of the original 1893 wooden house and grows seasonal flowers such as primulas , abutilons , fuchsias , and achimenes . Various exhibitions which change throughout the year are displayed in the centre area. Plants which cannot grow to their full potential outside are displayed in this house. The displays are changed regularly so that there is always something in flower. A collection of ferns from around

204-501: Is home to a modern medicinal plant collection. Here you will find 8 beds, each growing plants with a connection to medicine used to treat a particular type of disease or illness. There are beds for The plants growing in these beds contain many different natural products and fall into at least one of the following three categories: One bed in the northwest corner of the garden contains a display of bearded irises each May. Examples include Iris 'Eileen' and Iris 'Golden Encore'. Some of

238-616: Is located six miles (9.7 km) south of Oxford. The Danby Gate at the front entrance to the Botanic Garden is one of three entrances designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633. It is one of the earliest structures in Oxford to use classical, indeed early Baroque , style, preceding his new entrance porch for the University Church of St Mary the Virgin of 1637, and contemporary with

272-474: Is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. Today it contains over 5,000 different plant species on 1.8 ha ( 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 acres). It is one of the most diverse yet compact collections of plants in the world and includes representatives from over 90% of

306-607: The Chelsea Flower Show in London . In June 2011, Walker presented Botany – A Blooming History , a series of three television programmes broadcast on BBC Four , covering the history of botany . The series was repeated, again on BBC4, in August 2022. This article about a British botanist is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . University of Oxford Botanic Garden The University of Oxford Botanic Garden

340-541: The Flora Graeca between 1806 and 1828. The seventh appeared in 1830, after Smith's death, and the remaining three were produced by John Lindley between 1833 and 1840. The work's first edition ran to a mere thirty copies and featured 966 colour plates; a supplementary volume depicting wildflowers of Corfu was painted for Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford , and founder of the Ionian Academy , by G. Scola (or Scala),

374-516: The higher plant families. Professor Simon Hiscock became Director of Oxford Botanic Garden in 2015. In 1621, Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby , contributed £5,000 (in excess of £5,000,000 in 2018) to set up a physic garden for "the glorification of the works of God and for the furtherance of learning". He chose a site on the banks of the River Cherwell at the northeast corner of Christ Church Meadow , belonging to Magdalen College . Part of

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408-691: The 1860s by the Oxford mathematics professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( Lewis Carroll ) and the Liddell children, Alice and her sisters. Like many of the places and people of Oxford, it was a source of inspiration for Carroll's stories in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . The Garden's waterlily house can be seen in the background of Sir John Tenniel 's illustration of "The Queen's Croquet-Ground". Another Oxford professor and author, J. R. R. Tolkien , often spent his time at

442-420: The Botanic Garden. They are an example of sustainable horticultural development, with minimal impact on the environment in the long term. The plants have been selected for their ability to withstand drought conditions and originate from seasonally dry grassland communities in three regions of the world: The species list comprises more than 100 species of plants. The Garden was the site of frequent visits in

476-509: The Canterbury Quad at St John's College by others. In this highly ornate arch, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style then in fashion, which had been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones , and drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio 's book of archways. The gateway consists of three bays, each with a pediment . The largest and central bay, containing

510-461: The Conservation of Plants and Gardens (NCCPG) chose Oxford Botanic Garden to cultivate the national collection of euphorbia . One of the rarest plants in the collection is Euphorbia stygiana , with only ten plants left existing in the wild. The Garden is propagating the species as quickly as possible to reduce the possibility of it becoming extinct. The South West corner of the Botanic Garden

544-535: The Sherardian chair. Leaving his professional duties to a deputy, he left England for Göttingen and Vienna , in preparation for a botanical tour of Greece (1786) and Cyprus (1787). Returning to England at the end of the following year, he took part in the foundation of the Linnean Society of London in 1788, and set to work on a Flora of Oxfordshire , which was published in 1794 as Flora Oxoniensis . He

578-559: The Sibthorpian Professorship of Plant Science). He directed that his endowment should first be applied to the publication of his Flora Graeca and Florae Graecae Prodromus , for which, however, he had done little beyond collecting some three thousand species and providing the plates. The task of preparing the works was undertaken by Sir J.E. Smith , who issued the two volumes of the Prodromus in 1806 and 1813, and six volumes of

612-567: The central pediment contains a segmented niche containing a bust of the Earl of Danby. It is a Grade I listed structure (ref. 1485/423). The gate was shot at during the English Civil War . It previously held a statue of Charles I and one other (probably the Queen) as Charles II was only three years old when the gateway was built. The restoration dates from around 1653 and portrays both the late Charles I and

646-465: The different worlds that the two protagonists, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry , inhabit. In the last chapter of the trilogy, both promise to sit on the bench for an hour at noon on Midsummer 's day every year so that perhaps they may feel each other's presence next to one another in their own worlds. Now a place of pilgrimage for Pullman's fans, the bench is recognizable due to graffiti such as "Lyra + Will" or "L + W" left by its visitors and, since 2019,

680-563: The garden reposing under his favourite tree, Pinus nigra . The enormous Austrian pine was much like the Ents of his The Lord of the Rings story, the walking, talking tree-people of Middle-earth . However, the tree was removed in 2014 after two limbs fell, posing a security risk for the visitors. In the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited , Lord Sebastian Flyte takes Charles Ryder "to see

714-533: The hybrid Nymphaea × daubenyana named in honour of Professor Daubeny in 1874. Also growing in the house are economic plants including bananas, sugar cane , and rice, and the papyrus reed, Cyperus papyrus , a native of river banks in the Middle East. Flowering high in the glasshouse is the yellow-flowered Allamanda cathartica . This house grows a collection of Carnivorous plants . Carnivory has evolved several times in plants and this collection displays many of

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748-453: The ivy" soon after they first meet. As he says, "Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There's a beautiful arch there and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don't know where I should be without the Botanical gardens" (Chapter One). In Philip Pullman 's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials , a bench in the back of the garden is one of the locations that stand parallel in

782-619: The land had been a Jewish cemetery until the Jews were expelled from Oxford (and the rest of England) in 1290. Four thousand cartloads of "mucke and dunge" were needed to raise the land above the flood-plain of the River Cherwell . The first head gardener was the Botanist Jacob Bobart who in 1648 published a catalogue of sixteen hundred plants under his care (' Catalogus plantarum horti medici Oxoniensis, scil. Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus ') with their Latin and English names; this

816-559: The mechanisms required to trap insect prey. Some traps are passive, such as the sticky flypaper of the genus Pinguicula whereas others like the Venus flytrap , Dionaea muscipula , actually move and are triggered by the unlucky insect walking across the surface. The largest glasshouse in the Garden, this house grows palms and a large number of economic plants including citrus fruits , pepper , sweet potato , pawpaw , olive , coffee, ginger , coconut , cocoa , cotton, and oil palm . There

850-465: The northeast border includes Kniphofia caulescens . Other wall borders contain plants from Biodiversity hotspots including Japan and New Zealand. Such areas hold high numbers of Endemic plant species, yet face substantial threat to their natural vegetation. Over 50% of the world's plant species are contained within these hotspots which collectively cover only 2.3% of the Earth's land surface. The house

884-436: The sculpture by Julian Warren installed behind it. John Sibthorp John Sibthorp FRS (28 October 1758 – 8 February 1796) was an English botanist . Sibthorp graduated from the University of Oxford in 1777 where he was an undergraduate student at Lincoln College, Oxford . He subsequently studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and University of Montpellier . In 1784, he succeeded his father to

918-447: The segmented arch is recessed, causing its larger pediment to be partially hidden by the flanking smaller pediments of the projecting lateral bays. The stone work is heavily decorated being bands of alternating vermiculated rustication and plain dressed stone. The pediments of the lateral bays are seemingly supported by circular columns which frame niches containing statues of Charles I and Charles II in classical pose. The tympanum of

952-465: The smaller plants positioned at the front of the border and the taller plants toward the back. Occasionally we allow a few of the larger plants to make their way to the front to break up the formality. Designed in collaboration with Professor James Hitchmough from the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. At 955m these borders form the largest single cultivated area in

986-1270: The then current king, Charles II. It was sculpted by William Bird of Oxford . The core collection of hardy plants are grouped in long, narrow, oblong beds by botanical family and ordered according to the classification system devised by nineteenth century botanists , Bentham and Hooker . The families represented in the Walled Garden include: Acanthaceae , Amaranthaceae , Amaryllidaceae , Apocynaceae , Araceae , Aristolochiaceae , Berberidaceae , Boraginaceae , Campanulaceae , Caryophyllaceae , Chenopodiaceae , Cistaceae , Commelinaceae , Compositae , Convolvulaceae , Crassulaceae , Cruciferae , Cyperaceae , Dioscoreaceae , Dipsacaceae , Euphorbiaceae , Gentianaceae , Geraniaceae , Gramineae , Hypericaceae , Iridaceae , Juncaceae , Labiatae , Leguminosae , Liliaceae , Linaceae , Loasaceae , Lythraceae , Malvaceae , Onagraceae , Paeoniaceae , Papaveraceae , Phytolaccaceae , Plantaginaceae , Plumbaginaceae , Polemoniaceae , Polygonaceae , Portulacaceae , Primulaceae , Ranunculaceae , Rosaceae , Rubiaceae , Rutaceae , Saxifragaceae , Solanaceae , Umbelliferae , Urticaceae , Verbenaceae , Violaceae . In 1983, The National Council for

1020-456: The varieties grown in the Garden are not grown anywhere else. The borders along the foot of the wall contain collections that thrive in the microclimate , many of these plant collections are grouped by their geographical origin. The Mediterranean collection at the north border includes Euphorbia myrsinites . The South American collection at the north border includes Feijoa sellowiana (syn. Acca sellowiana ). The South African collection at

1054-416: The world are housed here including Platycerium bifurcatum ( stag's horn fern ), Lygodium japonicum (a climbing fern ), and Trichomanes speciosum (a filmy fern native to western Britain). The tank in the lily house built in 1851 by Professor Charles Daubeny , Keeper of the Garden at the time, is the oldest existing part of the glasshouses. Tropical water lilies grow in boxes in the tank, including

Timothy Walker (botanist) - Misplaced Pages Continue

1088-757: Was a trainee gardener at the Savill Garden in Windsor Great Park . He was a diploma student at Kew Gardens during 1984–85. From 1986 to 1988 he was General Foreman at the Oxford Botanic Garden then from 1988 to 2014 he was Horti Praefectus of the Garden. He also holds a lectureship in Plant Conservation at Somerville College, Oxford and is a lecturer in biology at the Department of Biology, University of Oxford . He has won four gold medals at

1122-647: Was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in Mar 1788. He made a second journey to Greece, but developed consumption on the way home and died in Bath on 8 February 1796. He was buried at Bath Abbey , with a monument carved by John Flaxman which includes a garland of Sibthorpia europaea . His will bequeathed his books on natural history and agriculture to the University of Oxford, and also founded Oxford's Sibthorpian Professorship of Rural Economy (subsequently titled

1156-593: Was revised in 1658 in conjunction with his son, Jacob Bobart the Younger , Dr Philip Stephens, and William Brown. Humphry Sibthorp began the catalogue of the plants of the garden, Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Oxoniensis . His youngest son was the botanist John Sibthorp (1758–1796), who continued the Catalogus Plantarum . The Garden comprises three sections: A satellite site, the Harcourt Arboretum ,

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