Ernst Bernard Heyne

Ernst Bernhard Heyne (15 September 1825 – 16 October 1881) was a German botanist and horticulturist and a pioneer in the early development of agriculture in Australia.

They contain shrewd observations of the climate, soil, vegetation, water supplies and economy and habits of the colonists and the local indigenous population as well as advice to prospective migrants.

The identification of these tree-ferns, now extinct in South Australia, is authenticated by a specimen in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens: the label written by von Mueller reads: Mount Lofty, S. Austr.

Heyne established a nursery at Hackney, near Adelaide, and opened a shop for seeds and plants in Rundle Street.

He contributed regularly to the South Australian Register and the Observer chiefly on the cultivation of forest trees, forage plants and pasture grasses.

The colonists were then interested in finding the crops best suited to their soil and climate, and those plants and trees likely to prove of economic and industrial importance.

Heyne translated many articles and pamphlets on viticulture from German, French and Spanish, and wrote on the best methods of treating plant diseases, especially dodder in lucerne and oidium in vines.

At a meeting sponsored by the Chamber of Manufactures in 1870 after a lecture by Dr Moritz Schomburgk, Heyne spoke on the importance of growing trees, hedges, hickory, yellow willow, sultana vines, tobacco, sunflowers and mulberries.