Dallachy, John (1804 - 1871)

Born in Morayshire, Scotland, in 1804; died on 4 June 1871 near Cardwell, Queensland.

He was employed by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller to collect plants as a pioneer resident of Cardwell, Rockingham Bay, Queensland, 1864-71.

Mueller's longest-serving paid botanical collector, Dallachy was also the most prolific collector of types among Mueller's large network of collectors. In part, Dallachy's success can be attributed to his collecting methods and intensive travels around the species-rich Rockingham Bay area.

In part, also, Dallachy was indebted to fellow European pioneers for support (which was acknowledged in the eponymy of new taxa), and to local Indigenous and South Sea Islander people.

Dallachy managed these relationships in a context of frontier war as local Indigenous people resisted being displaced by European colonists. Nevertheless, Dallachy's opportunity to work as a full-time professional botanical collector, and the rapidity with which his new specimens were identified and published was, to a large extent, due to Mueller.

The partnership with Mueller led to Dallachy contributing ~3500 specimens from Rockingham Bay to the Melbourne Herbarium of which ~400 taxa were considered new to Western science.

Mueller may well have wanted his name on taxa for personal vanity, but other circumstances also led to the urgency in publication. In a letter to Bentham, Mueller wrote that he "could not well trust the specimens away on a sea voyage before having worked them up", which appears to be a response to the possible loss of specimens by shipwreck and also the irreparable damage to specimens caused by long distance travel.

Some ambiguities in his citation of locality names were resolved by Blake (1954).

His collections are now in MEL, with duplicates at B, BM, KIEL and W.

Sources: Extracted from:
A.E.Orchard (1999) A History of Systematic Botany in Australia, in Flora of Australia Vol.1, 2nd ed., ABRS.
https://connectsci.au/hr/article/31/2/101/187681/John-Dallachy-1804-71-collecting-botanical
John Leslie Dowe, Sara Maroske (2020) 'John Dallachy (1804-71): collecting botanical specimens at Rockingham Bay'
Hist Rec Aust Sci 31 (2): 101-117.

Collecting localities for 'Dallachy, J.' from AVH (2021)

Data from 8,530 specimens