William Baxter was an English gardener who collected in Australia on behalf of English nurserymen and private individuals. He had developed his horticultural reputation as gardener to the Comtesse de Vandes in Bayswater, London, many of the plants he had nurtured being used for illustrations in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. He was the first privately financed plant collector to be sent to Australia, his mission being to collect seeds and roots for the London seedsman F. Henchman.

Baxter's collections were made at Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island is Australia's third-largest island after Tasmania and Melville Island. It is southwest of Adelaide at the entrance of Gulf St Vincent. Its closest point to the mainland is off Cape Jervis, on the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the state of South Australia. The island is long...

 (1822–1823), the southern coast of Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 (1823–1825), at King George Sound

King George Sound

King George Sound is the name of a sound on the south coast of Western Australia. Located at , it is the site of the city of Albany.The sound covers an area of and varies in depth from to ....

, Cape Arid

Cape Arid National Park

Cape Arid National Park is a national park in Western Australia , south east of Perth. The park is situated east of Esperance and lies on shore from the eastern end of the Recherche Archipelago...

 and Lucky Bay

Lucky Bay

Lucky Bay is a bay located at on the south coast of Western Australia.It received its name from Matthew Flinders, who discovered it in January 1802. Flinders had sailed into the hazardous Archipelago of the Recherche, and found his ship surrounded by islands and rocks with nightfall coming on:...

, Twofold Bay

Twofold Bay

Twofold Bay is a bay on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, close to the border with Victoria. The bay has an area of about 30 square kilometres. Close to North Head is a conspicuous islet, Mewstone Rock. About five km south of the islet is Red Point which forms the southern headland of...

, and Wilsons Promontory

Wilsons Promontory

Wilsons Promontory is a peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Australian mainland and is located at . South Point at is the southernmost tip of Wilsons Promontory and hence of mainland Australia...

, Victoria (1826). The final expedition to Western Australia (1828–1829) was arranged by Charles Fraser

Charles Fraser (botanist)

Charles Fraser or Frazer was Colonial Botanist of New South Wales from 1821 to 1831. He collected and catalogued numerous Australian plant species, and participated in a number of exploring expeditions...

. On his return they disagreed about the distribution of the collected material.

Baxter's name is commemorated in epithets, such as species Hakea baxteri R.Br., and the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Baxteria was named in his honour. He is thought to have died about 1836.

The main part of his collections are held at Kew and the British Museum. Material supplied by Baxter's expedition was propagated at the Clapton Nursery

Clapton Nursery

The Clapton Nursery also known as Mackay's Clapton Nursery and later Low's Clapton Nursery was a plant nursery established in the early 19th century by John Bain Mackay in Upper Clapton, London, and noted for its introductions of Australian and South American plants into cultivation.The nursery...

.

See also

• List of gardener-botanist explorers of the Enlightenment
• Banksia dryandroides
  Banksia dryandroides
  Banksia dryandroides, the Dryandra-leaved Banksia, is a species of small shrub in the plant genus Banksia. It occurs in shrubland, coastal heath and woodland on the south coast of Western Australia between Two Peoples Bay and Cheyne Bay. The species is placed alone in series B. ser...
  
  for the history and description of the Banksia species that Baxter collected.