John Lindley - Career

Career

Lindley went to work at Banks’ house in London. He concentrated on the genera “Rosa” and “Digitalis” and published the monograph “A Botanical History of Roses” which distinguished seventy-six species, describes thirteen new ones and was illustrated by nineteen coloured plates painted by himself. He became acquainted with Joseph Sabine who grew a large assortment of roses and was the Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London. His employment came to an abrupt end with the death of Banks a few months later. One of Banks’ friends, a wealthy merchant called William Cattley, paid Lindley to draw and describe new plants in his garden at Barnet. He also paid for the publication of “Digitalia Monographia”. (Later Lindley honoured him by naming the orchid genus Cattleya after him.) In 1820, at the age of twenty-one, Lindley was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

From 1821 to 1826 he published a folio work with coloured illustrations that he had painted himself, “Collectanea botanica or Figures and botanic Illustrations of rare and curious exotic Plants”. Many of these plants came from the family Orchidaceae with which he had a lifelong fascination.

Lindley was appointed assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society and its new garden at Chiswick in 1822, where he supervised the collection of plants.

Assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society since 1822, in 1829 Lindley was appointed to the chair of botany at University College, London, which he retained until 1860. He also lectured on botany from 1831 at the Royal Institution, and from 1836 at the Chelsea Physic Garden, starting the society's flower show in the late 1830s.

Lindley described the plants collected on Thomas Livingstone Mitchell's expeditions of 1838 and wrote an Appendix to Edwards's Botanical Register of 1839, describing plants collected by James Drummond and Georgiana Molloy of the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. According to John Ryan, Lindley’s 1840 ‘Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony’ provided ‘the most succinct portrait to date of the flora of the Swan River Settlement’, which had been established in 1829. The Sketch, which was published during November 1839 and January 1840 in Edwards’ Botanical Register and separately on its completion, was illustrated by nine hand-coloured lithographs and four wood-cuts. He also played a large part in having Charles Moore appointed as Director of the Sydney Botanical Gardens.

During his professorship, he wrote many scientific and popular works as well as making significant contributions to the Botanical Register, of which he was the editor for many years, and to The Gardeners' Chronicle, where he was in charge of the horticultural department from 1841. He was a fellow of the Royal, Linnean and Geological Societies. He received the Royal Society's royal medal in 1857, and in 1853 became a corresponding member of the Institut de France.