Biography

Pioneering British orchidologist who served as assistant secretary at the Royal Horticultural Society. Lindley was also recognised for his fine artistic ability and untiring contributions to botanical literature. John Lindley was born in Catton near Norwich, where his father ran a plant nursery. His father passed on his horticultural knowledge to Lindley, who attended Norwich Grammar School and learnt French from a French refugee. The latter also nurtured his drawing skills, which were impressive despite Lindley being blind in his left eye from infancy. It was this talent that drew the attention of William Hooker and Joseph Banks and in 1819 found Lindley work at Banks' house in Soho Square, London, drawing and describing new varieties of plants and acting as assistant librarian. At this time he used his French to produce his first publication, a translation of Demonstrations botaniques, ou, L'analyse du fruit by Louis-Claude Richard. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society at the age of just 21 and in 1820 was employed by the Horticultural Society of London to draw roses.

Soon climbing to become assistant secretary at the society's garden at Chiswick, Lindley was steadily developing an interest in orchids. The 1820s also saw him accept an appointment at the newly formed London University (University College London) as professor of botany, travelling on horseback from his home near the Chiswick gardens to deliver morning lectures five days a week at the university in Gower Street. Over the decade he worked with John Claudius Loudon on the elaborate volume, An Encyclopaedia of Plants (1829), though he disagreed with the Linnean system upon which it was based. He espoused instead Jussieu's 'natural' system, which he expounded in An Introduction to the Natural System of Botany (1830) and The Vegetable Kingdom (1846). His argument that taxonomical divisions in the same hierarchical level should share a common suffix stands to this day, with family names all ending -ceae and orders with -ales. Lindley also wrote about plants collected in Australia, and edited and contributed to journals including The Gardener's Chronicle (which he co-founded in 1841) and The Botanical Register. He continued to classify huge numbers of orchids, becoming the leading authority on the family as the author of volumes such as The Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants (1835) and Folia Orchidacea (1852), and a herbarium that became a repository for type specimens from all over the world.

The Royal Society elected him a Fellow in 1828; he subsequently gained membership of more than 50 scientific societies and a profusion of honours from European institutions. Alongside his numerous duties, including initiating and organising the Horticultural Society's flower shows (which saved the organisation from bankruptcy), he relaxed in his spare time by drilling with the South Middlesex Militia. A keen archer and rifleman, he up set a 100-yard shooting range at the centre of his garden, where he once missed the target and hit a servant in the thigh.

Lindley championed the education of gardeners and was vociferous on topics including the potato famine in Ireland and the tax on glass. It was Lindley who, in 1838 as part of the committee reviewing the future of the Royal Gardens at Kew, recommended that they should be "at once taken for public purposes, gradually made worthy of the country, and converted into a powerful means of promoting national science" or else be abandoned by the Treasury, which had been financing the gardens since the death of George III in 1820. His advice was swiftly acted upon by the government.

Lindley set himself a punishing schedule throughout his professional life and had taken on debts belonging to his father, thus monetary problems plagued him year after year while he attempted to keep up appearances. These factors no doubt had a hand in his reputedly brusque manner, and in his ailing health from the 1850s, though his fainting fits and headaches could also have been partly down to his use of mercury in preserving specimens. His problems were compounded by the demands of the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1862, in which he agreed to take charge of the colonial department. Constant headaches and fits forced him to retire around this time from both his professorship and the RHS. He removed to Vichy in southern France to rest, but after returning to London died in 1865. The RHS subsequently purchased his library of 1,300 botanical and horticultural volumes, establishing its famous Lindley Library, which has since grown into the world's largest collection of horticultural literature. Meanwhile his orchid herbarium of nearly 60,000 sheets and his drawings were deposited at RBG Kew and the University of Cambridge. Nathaniel Lindley, one of his five children with his wife Sarah (whom he married in 1823), became a judge and baron. A long list of orchids are named in honour of John Lindley.

Sources:
Anon., 1865, Gardeners' Chronicle: 1058-59, 1082–83
R. Drayton, 2004, "Lindley, John (1799–1865)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.