John Macoun (17 April 1831 – 18 June 1920) was an Ireland-born Canadians natural history.
Early life
dedicated to John Macoun]]Macoun was born in
Magheralin,
County Down,
Ireland in 1831, the third child of James Macoun and Anne Jane Nevin. In 1850, the worsening economic situation in Ireland led his family to
Emigration to
Canada, where he settled in Seymour Township,
Ontario and began
farming. Unsatisfied as a farmer, he became a school teacher in 1856. It was during this time that he developed a nearly obsessive interest in
botany. Although his formal education was slight, his knowledge and dedication to field work became sufficiently advanced that he gained the notice and respect of several professional botanists. By 1860 he was teaching school in Belleville, and had established correspondence with botanists such as
Asa Gray,
Sir William Jackson Hooker, George Lawson, and Louis-Ovide Brunet. This allowed him in 1868 to secure a faculty position as a
Professor of Botany and
Geology at Albert College in Belleville. His marriage on 1 January 1862 to Ellen Terrill of Brighton, Ontario was to lead to two sons and three daughters. His elder son James Melville Macoun was his lifelong assistant.
His younger son William Terrill Macoun, became the Dominion Horticulturist for Canada.
[
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Western explorations
In 1872, Macoun was recruited to the exploratory party of Sandford Fleming, then chief engineer for the proposed Canadian Pacific Railway. With Fleming's exploratory party, Macoun began his exploration at Port Arthur.
Later career
Macoun's reports from west attracted the notice of Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn, director of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), and in 1879, the Government of Canada took the unusual step of officially appointing him "Explorer of the Northwest territories". In 1881, after the mission of the GSC had been expanded to include natural history, he moved his family to Ottawa and joined the GSC as "Botanist to the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada". He remained with the GSC for 31 years and became an Assistant Director in 1887. In 1882 he became one of the charter members of the Royal Society of Canada. Every summer was dedicated to fieldwork, and for the remainder of his life Macoun was a prolific collector and cataloguer of Canadian flora and fauna, even after suffering a debilitating stroke in 1912. Macoun issued a number of exsiccata and exsiccata-like series, among them Canadian Musci (1889-1893) and Canadian Lichens (? 1900).[Triebel, D. & Scholz, P. 2001–2025 IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae. Botanische Staatssammlung München: http://indexs.botanischestaatssammlung.de. – München, Germany.] To this day, over 100,000 samples from his collection of plants are housed in the National Herbarium of Canada, Canadian Museum of Nature, in Ottawa.
Macoun died 18 July 1920 in Sidney, British Columbia, and is interred in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa. Macoun marsh, on the cemetery's property, is named for him. Mount Macoun, south of the Rogers Pass is named for him as well.
In 1896, N.L.Britton & A.Brown published Macounastrum (in the family Polygonaceae) in Macoun's honour, this is now a synonym of Koenigia
In 1974 botanist Robert Root Ireland, published Neomacounia nitida, or Macoun's shining moss, which is a moss, that was found only in a small area of Ontario, and the sole species in the genus Neomacounia. This species is the only known endemism Canadian plant to become extinct since the 16th century.[ Extinct organisms on the Species at Risk Act accessed October 16, 2006]
Bibliography
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Macoun, John (1878): .
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Macoun, John, George Monro Grant, Alexander Begg, John Campbell McLagan (1882): . Guelph, Ontario: The World Publishing Company.
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Macoun, John (1883-1902): .
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Macoun, John, Macoun, James M. (1915): .
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Macoun, John (1979): . Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club.
Further reading
External links
