John Dallachy (1804–71): from gardener to botanical collector
John Leslie Dowe A C and Sara Maroske B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University, Smithfield, Queensland 4878, Australia.
B Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra, Victoria 3141, Australia.
C Corresponding author. Email: john.dowe@jcu.edu.au
Historical Records of Australian Science 31(2) 87-100 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR19012
Published: 5 February 2020
Abstract
The citation ‘Rockingham Bay, J. Dallachy’ is prominent in late nineteenth-century taxonomic publications associated with the flora of tropical Queensland. John Dallachy (1804–71) was employed as a botanical collector by the Melbourne Botanic Garden under the directorship of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Between 1864 and 1871, Dallachy resided in the Rockingham Bay area where he collected ~3500 botanical specimens of which ~400 were described as new taxa of flowering plants, ferns, fungi and bryophytes, making him Mueller’s most prolific collector of type specimens, apart from Mueller himself. In this, the first of two articles about Dallachy, we outline the origin, and development of this successful botanical collaboration, identifying the experiences and qualities that prompted Dallachy to become a botanical collector, the friendship that formed between Mueller and Dallachy in the face of Dallachy’s reversal of fortunes at the Melbourne Botanic Garden, and the circumstances that led to Dallachy and Mueller’s shared project to investigate the botanical riches of the floristically diverse Wet Tropics Bioregion.
References
AIATSIS (2019) ‘Indigenous Names’, in ‘Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies’, https://aiatsis.gov.au/research/finding-your-family/before-you-start/indigenous-names, accessed August 2019.Andrews, L. (2001) Burnley Gardens, Richmond, Melbourne, Melbourne.
Anonymous, (1842) The monument in memory of the botanist Douglas, The Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement, 8, 289–301.
Anonymous (1848a) Ceylon, Argus, 12 December, 2.
Anonymous (1848b) Shipping intelligence, Argus, 12 December, 2.
Anonymous (1849a) Botanical Gardens, Argus, 12 January, 1.
Anonymous (1849b) Colonial Intelligence, Launceston Examiner, 28 April, 5.
Anonymous (1850a) The Victorian Horticultural Society, Melbourne Daily News, 7 January, 2.
Anonymous (1850b) Local intelligence, Melbourne Daily News, 29 June, 2.
Anonymous (1850c) Horticultural Society, Port Phillip Gazette and Settler’s Journal, 10 January, 2.
Anonymous (1855) Domestic intelligence, Argus, 30 June, 5.
Anonymous (1856a) The Botanical Gardens, Argus, 9 February, 6.
Anonymous (1856b) The Melbourne Botanical Gardens, Argus, 9 February, 8.
Anonymous (1857) Family Notices, Argus, 25 June, 4.
Anonymous (1862a) Shipping intelligence, Courier, 13 December, 2.
Anonymous (1862b) Shipping intelligence, Courier, 19 December, 2.
Anonymous (1862c) Shipping intelligence, Courier, 24 December, 2.
Anonymous (1863) The surveying voyage of HMS Hecate, Courier, 3 December, 2.
Anonymous (1864) Myall Downs Lynd River, Courier, 30 March, 3.
Anonymous (1866a) Rockingham Bay, Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 6 February, 4.
Anonymous (1866b) Miscellaneous, Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 20 September, 3.
Anonymous (1868a) Melbourne, Geelong Advertiser, 10 December, 3.
Anonymous (1868b) News and notes, Ballarat Star, 12 December, 2.
Anonymous (1868c) The news of the day, Age, 1 February, 5.
Anonymous (1869a) The Botanical Gardens, Weekly Times, 4 December, 5.
Anonymous (1869b) The Botanical Gardens, Weekly Times, 20 November, 5.
Anonymous (1869c) Cardwell, Brisbane Courier, 21 September, 3.
Anonymous (1871a) The Botanical Gardens, Argus, 9 December, 6.
Anonymous (1871b) Land Board at Tarrawingee, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 23 November, 3.
Anonymous (1872) The Melbourne Botanical Gardens, South Australian Advertiser, 17 January, 3.
Anonymous (1873) Cardwell, Queenslander, 25 October, 10.
Anonymous (1876) Correspondence, Leader, 18 March, 7.
Anonymous, (1878a) The Late M. Thozet, Gardeners’ Chronicle, 245, 309.
Anonymous (1878b) Telegraphic, Brisbane Courier, 1 June, 5.
Anonymous (1889a) Probate pickings, Telegraph, 28 January, 4.
Anonymous (1889b) Family notices, Brisbane Courier, 29 March, 4.
Anonymous (1900) Wangaratta Police Court, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 11 August, 4.
Anonymous (1901) Advertising, Argus, 11 May, 9.
Anonymous (1906) Official notifications, Telegraph, 20 September, 2.
Anonymous (1911) An accident, Cairns Post, 22 March, 4.
Anonymous (1918a) The late William Dallachy of Cardwell, Townsville Daily Bulletin, 28 December, 2.
Anonymous (1918b) Town & Country, Cairns Post, 9 December, 6.
Anonymous, (1934) Exhibits, Victorian Naturalist, 50, 262.
APC (2019) ‘Australian Plant Census’, in ‘IBIS database, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria’, http://www.chah.gov.au/apc/index.html, accessed May 2019.
APNI (2019) ‘Australian Plant Name Index’, in ‘IBIS database, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Australian Government, Canberra’, http://www.cpbr.gov.au/cgi-bin/apni, accessed May 2019.
Arthur, R. (1846) Garden memoranda. Haddo House, the seat of the Right Hon. the Earl of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, no. 34, 22 August, 567.
AVH (2019) ‘The Australasian Virtual Herbarium’, in ‘Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria’, http://avh.chah.org.au, accessed April 2019.
Bean, A. R. (2018) The life and botany of Edward Macarthur Bowman (1826–1872), Historical Records of Australian Science, 30, 12–18.
| The life and botany of Edward Macarthur Bowman (1826–1872)Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |
Bebber, D. P., Carine, M. A., Davidse, G., Harris, D. J., Haston, E. M., Penn, M. G., Cafferty, S., Wood, J. R. I., and Scotland, R. W. (2012) Big hitting collectors make massive and disproportionate contribution to the discovery of plant species, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1736), 2269–2274.
BHL (2019) ‘Biodiversity Heritage Library’, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/, accessed May 2019.
Bird, J. T. S. (1904) The Early History of Rockhampton, Dealing Chiefly with Events up Till 1870, Rockhampton.
Bowen, G. F. (1865) On the new settlement in Rockingham Bay, and advance of colonization over north-eastern Australia; including Mr. J. E. Dalrymple’s report on his journey from Rockingham Bay to the Valley of Lagoons, Journal of the Geographical Society of London, 3, 191–212.
Carrière, E.-A. (1878) Nécrologie–M. Thozet, Revue Horticole, 339–340.
Cohn, H. M. (2003) 150 years: The National Herbarium of Victoria, 1853–2003, Muelleria, 17, 3–14.
Cohn, H. M., and Maroske, S. (1996) Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne: A select bibliography, The Victorian Historical Magazine, 67, 167–174.
Collinson, J. W. (1949) Cardwell, a gateway to the west, The Historical Society of Queensland Journal, 4, 182–189.
Crowther, L., and McMaster, N. (2002) ‘Dallachy, John (c. 1803–1871)’, in The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, eds. R. Aitken and M. Looker, Melbourne, pp. 173–174.
Curry, S., Maslin, B., and Maslin, J. (2002) Allan Cunningham: Australian Collecting Localities, Canberra.
Darragh, T. A. (2004) Ferdinand Mueller and Charles La Trobe, La Trobeana, 2, 1–5.
Davison, F. (2019) The Hidden Horticulturists: the Untold Story of the Men who Shaped Britain’s Gardens, London.
Dowe, J. L. (2015) I saw a good deal of the country much more than any other collector: An assessment of the botanical collections of Eugene Fitzalan (1830–1911), Cunninghamia, 15, 87–133.
Dowe, J. L. (2016) Charles Weldon (de Burgh) Birch (Count Zelling), an unassuming botanical and zoological collector in central and north-eastern Queensland, North Queensland Naturalist, 46, 16–46.
Fensham, R. J., Bean, A. R., Dowe, J. L., and Dunlop, C. R. (2006) This disastrous event staggered me: Reconstructing the botany of Ludwig Leichhardt on the expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, 1844–45, Cunninghamia, 9, 451–506.
George, A. S. (2009) Australian Botanists’s Companion, Kardinya.
Gilbert, L. (1997) From Joseph Banks to Joseph Maiden: Towards a scientific botanic garden, Historical Records of Australian Science, 11, 283–300.
| From Joseph Banks to Joseph Maiden: Towards a scientific botanic gardenCrossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |
Gillbank, L. (1992) Alpine botanical expeditions of Ferdinand Mueller, Muelleria, 7, 473–489.
Ginn, H. (1852) Report on the Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, Melbourne.
Government Gazette (1864) Supplement to the Queensland Government Gazette, vol. 5, no. 61, 9 July.
Hagan, R. (2015) ‘Traditional Australian Aboriginal naming processes’, in ‘Proof of Birth’, pp. 87–101, http://www.futureleaders.com.au/book_chapters/pdf/Proof-of-Birth/Proof-of-Birth-Chapter7.pdf, accessed August 2019.
Home, R. W., Lucas, A. M., Maroske, S., Sinkora, D. M., and Voigt, J. H. (eds) (1998) Regardfully Yours: Selected Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, vol. 1, 1840–1859, Bern, p. 23.
Hubinger, S. (2010) The Calophyllum Shore: a Cardwell Memoir, Cardwell.
Jeffries, S. (1997) Alexander Humboldt and Ferdinand von Mueller’s argument for the scientific botanic garden, Historical Records of Australian Science, 11, 301–310.
| Alexander Humboldt and Ferdinand von Mueller’s argument for the scientific botanic gardenCrossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |
Jones, D. (1961) Cardwell Shire Story, Brisbane.
JSTOR (2019) ‘JSTOR Global Plants’, https://plants.jstor.org/, accessed September 2019.
Lavarack, P. S. (2019) John Dallachy plant collector, and the establishment of Cardwell, Queensland History Journal, 23, 871–885.
Leichhardt, F. W. L. (1847) Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a Distance of Upwards of 3000 miles, During the Year 1844–1845, London.
Leurssin, C. (1873–74) Zur flora von Queensland. Veizeichniss der von Frau Amalie Dietrich in den Jahren 1863 bis 1873 an der Nordostküste von Neuholland gesammelten Pflanzen, nebst allgemeinen Notizen dazu, Journal des Museum Godeffroy, 3, 1–22.
Lloyd-Pritchard, M. F. (1983) John Dallachy, Scot who became Australia’s best botanical collector, Scottish Genealogist: the Quarterly Journal of the Scottish Genealogy Society, 30, 146–147.
Loudon, J. C. (1826) Self-education of gardeners, Gardener’s Magazine, 1, 225–226.
Lubbock, B. (1933) The Opium Clippers, Glasgow.
Lucas, A. M. (2018) ‘Evolving contexts of collecting: the Australian experience’, in Naturalists in the Field, ed. A. MacGregor, Leiden and Boston, pp. 806–862.
Maiden, J. H. (1908) Records of Victorian botanists, Victorian Naturalist, 25, 101–117.
Maroske, S., and Cohn, H. M. (1992) ‘Such ingenious birds’: Ferdinand Mueller and William Swainson in Victoria, Muelleria, 7, 529–553.
McDonald, L. (1979) The Rockhampton delusion: A brief history of the Canoona Rush, Queensland Heritage, 3, 28–35.
McEwen, R. (2013) The northern lads: The migration of Scottish gardeners with especial reference to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Sibbaldia, 11, 109–123.
Mueller, F. (1853) First General Report of the Government Botanist on the Vegetation of the Colony, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1854) Second General Report of the Government Botanist on the Vegetation of the Colony, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1855a) Annual Report from the Government Botanist for the Year 1854, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1855b) Australian medicinal plants, The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 15, 114–116.
Mueller, F. (1857) Report on the Botanic Garden, Melbourne, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1858) Annual Report of the Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Garden, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1859–60) Annual Report of the Government Botanist and Director of the Botanical and Zoological Garden, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1860) Essay on the plants collected by Mr Eugene Fitzalan during Lieut. Smith’s Expedition to the Estuary of the Burdekin, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1863a) Leguminosae, Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, 4, 3–10.
Mueller, F. (1863b) Brexiaceae, Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, 4, 33.
Mueller, F. (1869) Report of the Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Garden, Melbourne.
Mueller, F. (1883) Excerpts from Professor Hugo Schulz’s treatise on Eucalyptus oil, Sydney.
Mueller, F. (1860–61) Annual Report of the Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic and Zoological Garden, Melbourne.
Norton, J. (1901) Presidential address, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 25, 763–796.
| Presidential addressCrossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |
Orchard, K. (1997) Regional botany in mid-nineteenth-century Australia: Mueller’s Murray River collecting network, Historical Records of Australian Science, 11, 389–405.
| Regional botany in mid-nineteenth-century Australia: Mueller’s Murray River collecting networkCrossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |
Orchard, A. E. (1999) A history of systematic botany in Australia, Flora of Australia, 1, 11–103.
Pearson, L. (2007) Henry Stone: a Pioneer with Dalrymple, Brinsmead.
Pedley, H. (2014) Streets by the Sea: a Cardwell Chronicle, Cardwell.
Pescott, R. T. M. (1982) The Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne: A History, 1845–1970, Melbourne.
Powell, J. M. (1979) A Baron under siege: von Mueller and the press in the 1870’s, The Victorian Historical Journal, 50, 18–35.
Registrar-General’s Office (1859) Statistics of the Colony of Victoria for the year 1858, Melbourne.
Sumner, R. (1993) A Woman in the Wilderness: the Story of Amalie Dietrich in Australia, Kensington.
Thozet, A. (1866) Notes on Some of the Roots, Tubers, Bulbs, and Fruits, Used as Vegetable Food by the Aboriginals of Northern Queensland, Rockhampton.
Thozet, A. (1869) The coco-nut in Australia, Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, 7, 213–214.
Thozet, A. (1872a) Notes sur l’habitat, l’utilité et la culture de quelques plants subtropicales de l’Australie, L’Horticulture Francais de mil huit cent cinquante et un, année 1872, , 183–192.
Thozet, A. (1872b) Notes sur l’habitat, l’utilité et la culture de quelques plants subtropicales de l’Australie, Bulletin de la Société d’Acclimatation, 9, 364–373.
Thozet, A. (1873) Notice sur quelques raciness, tubercules, bulbes et fruits employés comme aliments par les indigènes du nord du Queensland (Australie), Bulletin de la Société d’Acclimatation, 10, 82–93.
Trove (2019) ‘Digitised Newspapers and More’, in ‘National Library of Australia’, https://trove.nla.gov.au, accessed September 2019.
Vallance, T. G., Moore, D. T., and Groves, E. W. (eds) (2001) Nature’s Investigator: the Diary of Robert Brown in Australia, 1801–1805, Canberra.
Victoria, Legislative Assembly (1852) Catalogue of Plants, Cultivated in the Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, in the Year 1852, to Accompany the Honorary Secretary’s Report of 26th July 1852, Melbourne.
Willes, M. (2014) The Gardens of the British Working Class, New Haven and London.
Willis, J. H. (1949) Botanical pioneers in Victoria—1, Victorian Naturalist, 66, 83–89.
Wimalaratne, K. D. G. (2019) ‘Gongale Goda Banda (1809–1849): The leader of the 1848 rebellion’, http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/gongalegoda.htm, accessed July 2019.
Zacharin, R. F. (1978) Emigrant Eucalypts: Gum Trees as Exotics, Carlton South.
