1. Mark Catesby was an English naturalist who studied the flora and fauna of the New World.
15 Facts About Mark Catesby
1. 2.
Between 1729 and 1747, Catesby published his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America.
3.
Mark Catesby's father, John Catesby, was a local politician and gentleman farmer.
4.
An acquaintance with the naturalist John Ray led to Mark Catesby becoming interested in natural history.
5.
Mark Catesby was the wife of Dr William Cocke, who had been a member of the Council and Secretary of State for the Colony of Virginia.
6.
Mark Catesby visited the West Indies in 1714, and returned to Virginia, then home to England in 1719.
7.
Mark Catesby had collected seeds and botanical specimens in Virginia and Jamaica.
8.
Mark Catesby sent the pressed specimens to Dr Samuel Dale of Braintree in Essex, and gave seeds to a Hoxton nurseryman Thomas Fairchild as well as to Dale and to the Bishop of London, Dr Henry Compton.
9.
Plants from Virginia, raised from Mark Catesby's seeds, made his name known to gardeners and scientists in England, and in 1722 he was recommended by William Sherard to undertake a plant-collecting expedition to Carolina on behalf of certain members of the Royal Society.
10.
Mark Catesby sent preserved specimens to Hans Sloane and to William Sherard, and seeds to various contacts including Sherard and Peter Collinson.
11.
Consequently, Mark Catesby was responsible for introducing such plants as Catalpa bignonioides and the eponymous Catesbaea spinosa to cultivation in Europe.
12.
Mark Catesby spent the next twenty years preparing and publishing his Natural History.
13.
The first eight plates had no backgrounds, but from then on Mark Catesby included plants with his animals.
14.
Not all the plates in Natural history are by Mark Catesby: several, including the splendid and famous image of Magnolia grandiflora were by Georg Ehret.
15.
Mark Catesby is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of New World snakes: Dipsas catesbyi and Uromacer catesbyi.