17 Facts About John Goodyer

John Goodyer was a botanist who lived in south-east Hampshire, England, all his life.

John Goodyer amassed a large collection of botanical texts which were bequeathed to Magdalen College, Oxford, and translated a number of classical texts into English.

Reginald Goodyear was a local yeoman, and he and his wife had four children, John being the youngest.

When he first started work, John Goodyer lived at nearby Buriton, close to his employer before moving further west to the village of Droxford, in the Meon Valley.

Bilson resided at West Mapledurham Manor House, and John Goodyer initially leased a nearby house from him.

John Goodyer held a position as the agent for two Bishops of Winchester: Thomas Bilson and later, Lancelot Andrewes.

John Goodyer's work involved spending much time in the countryside, and he took an interest in the plants he observed and how they were named.

John Goodyer's notes start from this date, reach a peak of activity by 1621, and are few following 1633.

John Goodyer's findings were mainly published by Thomas Johnson and his contemporaries, rather than by himself, leading to his work being largely forgotten after his death.

John Goodyer is credited with clarifying the identities of the British elms, and for discovering an unusual elm endemic to the Hampshire coast between Lymington and Christchurch named for him as Goodyer's elm; this was believed by the botanist Ronald Melville to be a form of the Cornish elm.

John Goodyer is believed to have introduced the Jerusalem artichoke to English cuisine.

John Goodyer translated a Latin version of Dioscorides's work, De Materia Medica, and Theophrastus' Historia Plantarum.

John Goodyer bequeathed his papers and extensive collection of 239 printed works to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1664, through his connection to the Yaldens.

John Goodyer is mentioned in neither the Dictionary of National Biography nor the first Flora of Hampshire.

Canon John Vaughan is credited with discovering Goodyer and had called him the "forgotten Botanist" in 1909.

White described how John Goodyer contributed to the work of many other botanists and made their work better known: "every writer of the period owned help from John Goodyer in one way or another".

John Goodyer became recognised as one of the earliest amateur British botanists, and in 1922 Gunther at Magdalen College assembled his papers and published an account of his life and work.