Lovis, Professor John Donald

• Professor John Lovis

• John Lovis

• John Donald Lovis

Professor of Botany and head of Botany department at Canterbury University for many years. He led regular student trips to the Cass field station and other parts of the South Island and collected intensively from the plant groups he was researching or just interested in.

But his first trip to New Zealand was in 1955-1956 when as a young PhD student from Leeds University, John and his wife spent a year travelling the length of the country. His one year fellowship included visiting many botanists and joining them on field trips. He collected a specimen of about 75% of the native fern species – apparently with a view to donating them to the British Museum. For some reason this didn’t come about and when the family later emigrated to New Zealand the carefully dried, pressed specimens came with him.

After his death in 2017, his daughter donated his whole collection to Te Papa.

Created - April 2026, C.Kemnitz

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• latin

Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand) (n.d.). John Lovis Herbarium. [online] <https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/. Available at: https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/11139>