Zone d'identification
Cote
Titre
Date(s)
- 1892 - 1960 (Production)
Niveau de description
Collection
Étendue matérielle et support
5 Maps
Misc. personal papers
Zone du contexte
Nom du producteur
Notice biographique
Born Kincardineshire 1892; died Edinburgh 1960
Educated at Gordons College Aberdeen and Edinburgh University graduating MA with honours botany, John Macqueen Cowan completed his training in forestry at Oxford before being appointed to the Indian Forest Service in 1914. During ten years with the Indian Service he studied and classified vegetation and made considerable plant collections in Sikkim, Bengal and Burma, travelling with his wife, also a botanist. He was attached to the Indian Army during the First World War and served in Egypt and Palestine. On his return to India he officiated as Director of the Botanical Survey then as Superintendent of Royal Botanic Garden Calcutta from 1926, retiring in 1928. In that year he gained a temporary appointment as a botanist in the herbarium at Kew and in 1929 undertook botanical expeditions to Iraq and Persia principally to collect tulip bulbs but returning with 2,500 plant and herbarium specimens. In 1930 Cowan became assistant to the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a post he was to hold for 24 years. Using the Garden’s extensive collections he became an authority on Rhododendron, publishing widely on this and other genera. During the Second World War he was seconded to the Ministry of Supply build up timber production in west of Scotland. Cowan was President Botanical Society of Edinburgh from 1951 to 1953. On retirement in 1954 he took charge of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) Garden at Inverewe in Wester Ross developing it into a major visitor attraction, and also inaugurated the prestigious NTS garden cruises.
Sources: R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists); HR Fletcher and WH Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; obituary folder.
D.W.
Histoire archivistique
Source immédiate d'acquisition ou de transfert
Zone du contenu et de la structure
Portée et contenu
5 maps: Baghdad, Resht, Teheran, Tabriz and India and the adjacent countries.
1 box of personal and miscellaneous papers
- includes paper on 'A Survey of the Anatomy of the Rhododendron Leaf in relation to the Taxonomy of the Genus' by S.F. Hayes, J. Keenan and J.M. Cowan : for publication in Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinburgh 21 (1), 1–34.
- 'The Rhododendrons of India' by J.M. Cowan
Évaluation, élimination et calendrier de conservation
Accroissements
In October 2022, a typescript Report on the Inverewe Gardens by J. Macqueen Cowan with a sketch map (annotated) and plates by R.M. Adam, RBGE, May 1949 was added to the collection. It had been the RBGE Library copy, but transferred to archives due to its unique nature and the original photographic prints by Robert Moyes Adam.
Mode de classement
Zone des conditions d'accès et d'utilisation
Conditions d’accès
Conditions de reproduction
Langue des documents
Écriture des documents
Notes de langue et graphie
Caractéristiques matérielle et contraintes techniques
Instruments de recherche
Zone des sources complémentaires
Existence et lieu de conservation des originaux
Existence et lieu de conservation des copies
Unités de description associées
Zone des notes
Identifiant(s) alternatif(s)
Mots-clés
Mots-clés - Sujets
Mots-clés - Lieux
Mots-clés - Noms
- Adam, Robert Moyes (Sujet)
- Hayes, Stuart F. (Sujet)
- Keenan, James (Jimmy) (Sujet)