Black, John McConnell (1855 - 1951)

Summary

John Black was a journalist and botanist who migrated to South Australia with his family in 1877. Before that he worked in the British Linen Co. Bank, Edinburgh, and the Oriental Bank, London. On arriving in South Australia he set up as a wheat farmer at Baroota in the Port Pirie district; this proved a thankless task. From 1882 Black was a journalist and reporter for newspapers in Adelaide and a sometime Hansard reporter for the South Australian parliament. A legacy, following the death of his mother, allowed Black to resign his career as a journalist and concentrate of botany. In 1909 he published The naturalised flora of South Australia, many of the 368 species illustrated with his own drawings. A series of additions was published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia up to 1949. In 1920, at the request of the South Australian Branch of the British Science Guild, Black began to prepare what became the 4-volume Flora of South Australia, published between 1922 and 1929. These were the first in a long series of works issued as the Handbooks of the flora and fauna of South Australia. A skilled linguist, he became interested in Aboriginal languages, his investigations resulting in the publication of three papers between 1915 and 1920. Black was an active member of the Royal Society of South Australia, serving as President of both the Society and its Field naturalists' Section. Black's botanical specimens, formerly in the herbarium of the Department of Botany at the University of Adelaide, are now in the State Hernbarium of South Australia.

Details

Chronology

1877

Life event - Migrated to South Australia

1878 - 1882

Career event - Wheat farmer, Baroota, South Australia

1882 - 1884

Career position - Journalist, South Australian register, Adelaide

1884 - 1902

Career position - Journalist (later senior reporter), The advertiser, Adelaide

1884 - 1929

Career position - Sessional Hansard reporter, South Australian parliament

1906

Career position - President, Field Naturalists' Section, Royal Society of South Australia

1907 - 1945

Career position - Member, Royal Society of South Australia

1926

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus incrassata var. protrusa J.M.Black

1926

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus viminalis var. diversifolia J.M.Black [synonym]

1926

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus baxteri var. pedicella J.M.Black [synonym]

1927

Career position - Honorary lecturer in systematic botany, University of Adelaide

1927 - 1931

Career position - Member of Council, Royal Society of South Australia

1930

Career position - Delegate, International Botanical Congress, Cambridge, United Kingdom

1930

Award - Associate honoris causa, Linnean Society, London

1930

Award - Sir Joseph Verco Medal, Royal Society of South Australia

1932

Award - Mueller Medal, Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science

1933 - 1934

Career position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus obliqua L'Herit. var. megacarpa Blakely. Black was joint collector of the type.

1942

Award - Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)

1942

Career position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1944

Award - Australian Natural History Medallion, Field Naturalist Club of Victoria

1945 - 1951

Award - Honorary fellow, Royal Society of South Australia

1946

Award - Clarke Medal, Royal Society of New South Wales

Related entries

Archival resources

Private hands (Andrew, M.W.)

• John McConnell Black - Records, 1855 - 1951; Private hands (Andrew, M.W.). Details

State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana

• John McConnell Black - Records, 1887 - 1957, PRG 346; State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Black, J. M., The naturalised flora of South Australia (Adelaide: J. M. Black, 1909), 192 pp. Details
• Black, J. M., Flora of South Australia., 4 vols (Adelaide: British Science Guild, South Australian Branch, 1922-1929). Details
• Black, John McConnell, Memoirs of John McConnell Black ([Adelaide]: [Hyde Park Press], 1971), 127 pp. Details
• Eichler, Hansjorg, Supplement to J.M. Black's Flora of South Australia (second edition, 1943-1957) (Adelaide: British Science Guild, South Australian Branch, 1965), 385 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Robertson, Enid, 'Black, John McConnell (1855-1951), botanist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 7: 1891 - 1939 A-Ch, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp. 304-305. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070310b.htm. Details

Edited Books

• Andrew, Marjorie; and Clissold, Shirley eds, The diaries of John McConnell Black (Hawthorndene, S.A.: Investigator Press, 1998-2003). Details

Journal Articles

• Black, J. M., 'Results of the South Australian Museum expedition to Strzelecki and Cooper Creeks: September and October 1916 (b): botany', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 41 (1917), 631-53. Details
• Black, J. M., 'Vocabularies of four South Australian languages - Adelaide, Narrunga, Kukata and Narrinyeri - with special reference to their speech sounds', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 44 (1920), 76-93. Details
• Black, J. M., 'One Hundred Years of Systematic Botany in South Australia.', Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, lx (1936), xxxi-xxxiv. Details
• Eardley, C. M., 'John McConnell Black, M.B.E., A.L.S.', Australasian herbarium news, 10 (1952), 1-5. Details
• Waite, Edgar R. [and others], 'Results of the South Australian Museum expedition to Strzelecki and Cooper Creeks, September and October 1916', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 41 (1917), 405-665, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43114958. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q924556. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/78621052. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/56145971350032331319. Details
• 'Black, J M (18550428-19511202)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-620528. Details

See also

• 'List of genus Eucalyptus published under this authority using author abbreviation search 'J.M.Black' and genus 'Eucalyptus'', Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), Australian National Botanic Gardens, 2012, http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apx?taxon_id=18351. Details
• Fagg, Murray, 'John McConnell Black (1855-1951)', Australian Plant Collectors and Illustrators, Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH), 2010, http://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/black-jm.html. Details
• Hall, Norman, Botanists of the Eucalypts: short biographies of people who have named eucalypts, whose names have been given to species or who have collected type material (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1978), 101 pp. Details