New Zealand schoolteacher and botanist. Self-trained in plant identification, Bartlett collected plants and fungi indefatigably in his spare time, especially in botanically under-explored areas of New Zealand. He was especially interested in bryology and discovered some 50 mosses new to New Zealand, many of them new to science. He was also an enthusiastic lichenologist.

John Bartlett was born in Hamilton, where as a child he showed a thirst for knowledge and an interest in music, especially the piano and organ. He studied maths at the universities of Auckland, Brisbane and Sydney, gaining his master's degree at the latter. He then entered a career in teaching at Auckland Grammar School, later being appointed Head of Science at Sacred Heart College.

Bartlett's interest in botany first became apparent in the early 1970s, when he began to collect flowering plants in North Auckland. He also gathered seaweeds, ferns and mosses, going on to specialise in the latter. He joined the Wellington Botanical Society and joined many of the group's summer field trips to the mountains of north-west Nelson, where Tony Druce encouraged him to concentrate on the lower plants. Bartlett's extreme speed in collecting earned him the moniker 'Hurricane' and staff at Lincoln herbarium suggested he begin concentrating on lichens in 1977 to help with the New Zealand lichen flora then being prepared.

As well as collecting, Bartlett collaborated on a number of bryological papers and in 1983 worked on a revision of the moss genus Blindia at D.H. Vitt's laboratory in Edmonton, Canada. Before returning home he spent two months travelling through Europe, where he met many lichenologists and bryologists.

Had he lived beyond his forties, it seems Bartlett might have become New Zealand's most prolific collector. His herbarium was deposited in Auckland after his death in 1986. The new moss family Hypnobartlettiaceae was named in his honour in 1985. Hypnobartlettia fontana Ochyra, Bryobartlettia costata W.R. Buck and Metrosideros bartlettii J.W. Dawson also commemorate him, among a number of further moss and lichen species.

Sources:
Anon, 1986, New Zealand Botanical Society Newsletter, 4: 3
D.J. Galloway, 1987, "Obituary. John Kenneth Bartlett, MSc (Sydney) 1945-1986: An Appreciation.", New Zealand Journal of Botany, 25: 173-176.