Plant and animal collector based at Collingwood, New Zealand. Born in York, England, James Dall began a career at sea before settling in Nelson, New Zealand. At Nelson he started a horticultural business and collected plants for sale. He supplied Wellington Botanic Garden in the 1870s and visited Sydney annually to sell to private buyers. He was particularly renowned for his ferns and tree ferns and in 1880 received awards for his display at the Melbourne International Exhibition.

Dall lived at Collingwood for many years, acquiring land at Pakawau in 1892, halfway between Collingwood and Rockville. Here he had a small nursery and a few cows. Carex dallii Kirk and Celmisia dallii Buchanan commemorate him. The small tree Pittosporum dallii Cheeseman is named after him, too. He discovered the latter in 1905 in the rugged back country near Collingwood, north-west Nelson. He also gathered many molluscs, birds, fish, mammals and insects.

Sources:
G.B. Cone, 1945, Wellington Botanical Society Bulletin, 12: 9
E.J. Godley, 1985, "James Dall (1840-1912) and the Discovery of Pittosporum dallii", Record of the National Museum of New Zealand Records, 3(1): 1-12.