Felix Reader
Felix Maximilian Reader (1850–1911) was a German-born Australian chemist and amateur botanist.
Born in Berlin, he trained as a chemist before emigrating to New Zealand, then shortly afterwards, in the 1880s, to Australia. In the 1890s he settled at Dimboola, Victoria, where he had a chemist's shop until the early 1900s. He was an enthusiastic botanist, publishing many papers in the Victorian Naturalist, establishing himself as an expert on the grasses of the southern Wimmera, and collecting the type specimen of Acacia glandulicarpa. He also amassed a large private herbarium, which he sold to the National Herbarium of Victoria in 1906. Brachycome readeri and Pottia readeri are named in his honour.[1][2] In 1908, he edited the exsiccata work Plantae Victoriae Australiae exsiccatae.[3]
Over 3,000 specimens collected by Reader are cared for at the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL), Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.[4] A smaller collection of specimens are deposited at Te Papa in Aotearoa New Zealand.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ Short, P. S. (1990). "Politics and the purchase of private herbaria by the National Herbarium of Victoria". In Short, P. S. (ed.). History of systematic botany in Australia. Australian Systematic Botany Society. pp. 5–6. ISBN 0-7316-8463-X.
- ^ Hall, Norman (1984). Botanists of Australian Acacias. Melbourne: CSIRO Australia. ISBN 0-643-03734-9.
- ^ "Plantae Victoriae Australiae exsiccatae: IndExs ExsiccataID=1874878975". IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae. Botanische Staatssammlung München. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
- ^ a b "Specimens deposited at". Bionomia. Retrieved 15 November 2024.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Reader.
Further reading
[edit]- Willis, J. H. (1949). "Botanical pioneers in Victoria: III". Victorian Naturalist. 66: 123–128.
.svg){kind=small}   | This article about an Australian botanist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This article about a German botanist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |