John Lightfoot (biologist)

It was an age for scientists to go on journeys of carefully documented discovery: Banks and Solander accompanied Captain James Cook on a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Ocean.

J. Stewart; the journey led to an acclaimed book by Pennant, and provided most of the materials for Lightfoot's Flora Scotica (2 vols, 1777), which he published at his own expense.

[2][4] Apart from the Flora Scotica, for which he is chiefly remembered, Lightfoot wrote An Account of Some Minute British Shells, Either not Duly Observed, or Totally Unnoticed by Authors (1786), and described a number of species including the reed warbler in 1785.

[4] The Flora Scotica: or, a systematic arrangement, in the Linnaean method, of the native plants of Scotland and the Hebrides, published in London in 1777 as a bulky book of two volumes for a total of 1151 pages, is Lightfoot's greatest work.

As well as flowering plants, the "Cryptogamia", including ferns ("filices"), mosses ("musci"), algae and fungi, are covered,[2] starting on page 643.

Only nine genera of fungi are recognised in the book: Agaricus, Boletus, Hydnum, Phallus, Helvella, Peziza, Clavaria, Lycoperdon, and Mucor (listed on page 645); a tenth fungal genus, Tremella is covered, but included among his algae.

The plant genus Lightfootia, in the Campanulaceae (bellflower family), was named after him by the French botanist Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle.