English-born surveyor and forest conservator in New Zealand. Edward Phillips Turner was born in Havant, Hampshire, but from the age of five lived mostly in New Zealand and Tasmania. In 1887 he qualified as a surveyor in New Zealand, going on to work in both that country and New South Wales, Australia.

In 1891 he was appointed to survey the silver fields on the west coast of Tasmania and in 1894 joined the Department of Lands and Survey in Auckland, New Zealand. Turner's work thereafter became more involved with scenery, forests and conservation as he became Inspector of Scenic Reserves for the Dominion in 1907 and in 1913 Secretary to the Royal Commission on Forestry. He was especially concerned with the Rotorua, Tarawea and Waikato areas, and in 1918 was placed in charge of the forest branch of the Lands Department. His title became Director of Forestry in 1919, but he relinquished the post a few years before his retirement, wishing it to be filled by someone officially qualified as a forester; his lifelong regret was that he was by training not a forester. He then served as Secretary to the State Forest Service until his retirement.

Turner had a passion for the birds and plants of New Zealand, sending his collections of the latter to the country's leading botanists, Thomas Cheeseman and Leonard Cockayne. He mostly made his botanical explorations in the thermal region of the North Island. In 1908 he surveyed the central volcanic region with Cockayne, with whom later he co-authored The Trees of New Zealand (1928). Pittosporum turneri Petrie is named after him.

Sources:
W.R.B. Oliver, 1938, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 150(4): 342-343
C.M.S., 1939, "Edward Phillips Turner, 1865-1937", Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 68: 28-29
Ministry for Culture and Heritage, "Edward Phillips-Turner", updated 5 November 2007:
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/edward-phillips-turner, accessed18 June 2010.