John Buchanan 1819-1898. John Buchanan was born 13 October 1819 in Scotland, educated at the local parish school and mechanics' institute and initially apprenticed as a pattern designer at a calico print works. Moving to Busby, Glasgow, he devoted his leisure to botany. He never married. In July 1851 he emigrated to New Zealand on the barque Columbus, arriving at Port Chalmers in February 1852. After a brief sojourn on the Victorian gold fields, Buchanan returned to New Zealand to farm his 2.54 hectare section in North East Valley, near Dunedin. During his journeys Buchanan collected plants to send home to his friend Dr John Ross, a medical practitioner and amateur botanist in Busby. Ross recommended Buchanan to Joseph Dalton Hooker as a knowledgeable botanist to serve on James Hector's forthcoming geological survey of Otago. In the spring of 1862 Hector engaged Buchanan first privately and then officially as botanist and draughtsman for both his expeditions of 1863, when they explored the West Coast of the South Island. Hector, appointed director of the newly constituted Geological Survey and Colonial Museum in Wellington in 1865, secured appointments for all his Dunedin staff in their former capacities. Buchanan came to live in Wellington for the next 20 years and played a significant role in the establishment of the Wellington Botanic Garden, where close associates called him 'Buckie' with 'his' garden often referred to as the 'Buchanical Garden'. Buchanan constantly roamed New Zealand, collecting and observing colour in growing plants. A picture paints a thousand words, and his were drawing skills honed by years of designing floral patterns for printed calico in Scotland. This study of flowers led to a hunger for botanical knowledge satisfied by classes at the Glasgow Mechanics’ Institute taught by renowned botanist Roger Hennedy. Buchanan was documenting the glorious variety of New Zealand flora from a time before rabbits. He painstakingly illustrated what Hooker at Kew could only imagine. Mr. Buchanan's contributions to New Zealand botany include forty separate papers, stretching through twenty volumes of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. His most important work, published in 1880, is the "Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand," a folio volume of nearly two hundred pages, illustrated with sixty-four lithographic plates. It contains descriptions of the whole of the species then known to inhabit New Zealand, together with notes on their economic value, distribution, etc. Adams said of him "John Buchanan belonged to a highly competent group of men, who, although largely untrained, had the intelligence and ability to respond to the stimulus provided by the leaders of the small scientific community that existed in the mid nineteenth century". Sir Joseph Hooker noted that Buchanan "sent home to Kew the best collection of plants that were received from Australasia" His last communication appeared in 1887, after which persistent ill health compelled him to give up botanical work. His death took place in 1898. His earlier collections were mostly forwarded to Kew, but in later years he formed an extensive herbarium for the Colonial Museum. His private collections, drawings and analyses, manuscript notes, etc., were bequeathed to the Otago University Museum.