Thomas Edmondston
Encyclopedia
Thomas Edmondston was a British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

-born botanist.

The family of Edmondston (also spelt Edmonston) was prominent in 19th century Shetland. Thomas Edmondston's uncle, also Thomas Edmondston, was laird
Laird
A Laird is a member of the gentry and is a heritable title in Scotland. In the non-peerage table of precedence, a Laird ranks below a Baron and above an Esquire.-Etymology:...

 of the Buness estate on Unst
Unst
Unst is one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands, Scotland. It is the northernmost of the inhabited British Isles and is the third largest island in Shetland after the Mainland and Yell. It has an area of .Unst is largely grassland, with coastal cliffs...

 and host to many scientific visitors to Shetland. Another uncle, Dr Arthur Edmondston, had written A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands in 1809. His father, Laurence Edmondston
Laurence Edmondston
Dr. Laurence Edmondston was a British-born naturalist and doctor who lived in Shetland, Scotland, United Kingdom.Although his family originally lived on the island of Hascosay in Shetland, Laurence lived with his brother Thomas on Unst...

, was also an accomplished naturalist.

Edmondston the botanist compiled the first known list of Shetland plants at the age of 11 and which he showed to the visiting Sir Joseph Hooker
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, MD, FRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend...

, an eminent botanist of the time. He discovered several rare plants growing on the serpentine rocks on Unst, including the endemic Shetland Mouse-ear
Shetland Mouse-ear
Cerastium nigrescens, commonly known as the Shetland Mouse-ear, Shetland Mouse-eared Chickweed or Edmondston's Chickweed, is an endemic plant found in Shetland, Scotland....

 Cerastium nigrescens, known as Edmondston's Chickweed on the island. In 1845, he produced his Flora of Shetland, which, despite a few shortcomings, was a considerable achievement given his age and it is still an important reference for Shetland botany. Less well-known is his fauna, mainly a list of birds, published in the journal The Zoologist
The Zoologist
The Zoologist was a monthly natural history journal founded in 1843 by the publisher Edward Newman, published in London. Newman acted as editor until his death in 1876, when he was succeeded by James Edmund Harting and William Lucas Distant .Originating from an enlargement of The Entomologist...

in 1844. This is less reliable and much of it was obviously derived much from the work of his father, Laurence, and his uncle, Arthur.

Thomas Edmondston was appointed Professor of Botany at Anderson's University in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 (now University of Strathclyde
University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...

), at the age of just 20. A few months later, he was offered the position of naturalist on board HMS Herald
HMS Herald (1822)
HMS Herald was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate corvette of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1821 as HMS Termagant, commissioned in 1824 as Herald and converted to a survey ship in 1845...

, on a journey retracing the voyage of HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...

, and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

became a frequent correspondent with requests for further observations. While disembarking from a boat on the coast of South America, however, Edmondston was killed by an accidentally discharged gun, cutting short a career of great promise.

Confusingly, after his death, his parents named another newborn son Thomas.
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