Life and Career
Born in Blindburn, Wark on Tyne, Northumberland, England, he received his horticultural training in Northumberland and Durham and was appointed a student gardener at Kew in 1904. His taxonomic and drawing skills were soon noticed and resulted in his being appointed to the Herbarium in 1905. He moved from assistant in the Indian section to assistant for Tropical Africa, returning to Indian botany from 1915-1919, and from then on was in charge of the African section until 1936 when he was appointed Keeper of the Museums of Botany at Kew. He retired in 1948 but continued working on the phylogeny of flowering plants and publishing two parts of The Genera of Flowering Plants.
His profound knowledge of the floral structure of the Phanerogams was probably greater than that of any other living botanist.
John Hutchinson proposed a radical revision of the angiosperm classification system devised by Hooker and by Engler and Prantl that had become widely accepted during the 20th century. At its simplest, his system suggested two main divisions of angiosperms, herbaceous and woody.
Hutchinson made two extended collecting trips to South Africa, which were recounted in great detail in A Botanist in Southern Africa. His first visit was from August 1928 to April 1929, and the second from June 1930 to September 1930 on which occasion the expedition travelled north as far as Lake Tanganyika.
The standard author abbreviation Hutch. is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.Read more about this topic: John Hutchinson (botanist)
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