James Jacobus Dickson

James (Jacobus) J. Dickson (1738–1822)

Scottish nurseryman, plant collector, botanist and mycologist. The plant genus Dicksonia is named after him - dedicated to him by L'Héritier.

• Born at Kirke House, Traquair, Peeblesshire, of poor parents
• Began life in the gardens of the Earl of Traquair.
• Went to Jeffery's nursery-garden at Brompton whilst still young
• In 1772 started in business for himself in Covent Garden.

Dickson made several tours in the Scottish Highlands in search of plants between 1785 and 1791, that of 1789 being in company with Mungo Park, whose sister (Margaret) became his second wife.

Dickson in 1788 became one of the original members of the Linnean Society, and in 1804 was one of the eight original members and a vice-president of the Horticultural Society.

He died at Broad Green, Croydon, Surrey, on 14 August 1822. His wife, a son, and two daughters survived him.

Publications

• Between 1785 and 1801 he published his Fasciculus plantarum cryptogamicarum Britanniae, a four-volume work in which he published over 400 species of algae and fungi that occur in the British Isles
• between 1789 and 1799, A Collection of Dried Plants, named on the authority of the Linnæan Herbarium, in seventeen folio fascicles, each containing twenty-five species;
• in 1795, a Catalogus Plantarum Cryptogamicarum Britanniæ;
• between 1793 and 1802, his Hortus Siccus Britannicus, in nineteen folio fascicles.

References and Sources

• https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dickson,_James_(DNB00)