Good, Peter ( ? - 1803)
Place and date of birth unknown, died off Sydney, New South Wales, on 11
June 1803.
A gardener at Kew from at least 1796 until 1801.
Visited India in 1796
to bring back to Kew a collection of plants formed by Christopher
Smith.
Appointed in 1801 to join Flinders' Investigator voyage as assistant
to Robert Brown and to collect seeds and live plants.
He contracted dysentery
at Timor, and died off Sydney, 11 June 1803.
From his journal, on reaching South Australia, he wrote:
"... towards noon
the heat became extensive the Thermometer In
shade of a Rock on shore rose to 100°[F] laid down
in the Sun it rose to the top of the Tube which was
130°[F], a species of Grass about knee high
annoyed us much, it runs into our legs as sharp
as needles – we met with little variety here every
thing was parched up..."
[Triodia irritans]
In addition to his journal
Good also listed seeds which he collected and
sent back to Banks. The seed lists are in two
formats – one alphabetical and the other
according to locality with some detail of habitat
and soils as well as the name applied at the time
by Brown.
Brown's letter to Banks despatched by
the same ship as Good's boxes of seed and dated 30 May 1802 states:
"..
I have sent a very small box of seeds... the list
which accompanies the seeds and is enclosed
in the box, is partly composed of nicknames given
at the moment the plants were collected and not
allowed since some of them may mislead, and
the greater part I am aware are rather barbarous
especially where I have terminated specific
names in -oides, which I have done when
uncertain whether the plant was distinct from a
species already known, but upon the whole
inclined to think so. "
His pressed plant collections were incorporated
(unacknowledged) in Brown's own. A small number of specimens collected
at Kew by William McNab, from plants raised from seed collected by Good
during Flinders' voyage, are now in DBN.
Source:Extracted from:
A.E.Orchard (1999) A History of Systematic
Botany in Australia, in Flora of Australia Vol.1, 2nd ed.,
ABRS.
Enid Robertson - Botany in:
C. R. Twidale, M. J. Tyler
and M. Davies (eds) 'Ideas and Endeavours -
The Natural Sciences
in South Australia', Royal Society of South Australia, (1986)
Portrait Photo: none known
