Biography

The Reverend William Walter Watts was a British-born Australian bryologist who became the greatest authority of his day on the mosses of New South Wales. Born in Ugborough, Devon, Watts began his working life at the Post Office and married his wife, Helen Maitland, before training for the Congregational Church at New College, London. Ordained in 1882, he served for four years in Stratford-upon-Avon. During this ministry he was stricken with scarlet fever and diphtheria, and suffering bad health thereafter was sent to the warmer climes of Australia in 1887, where he was appointed pastor of the Congregational Church at Milton, Brisbane. Here he remained with his wife and four children until 1893, when floods and a financial depression forced him to leave the area. He then made his way to New Zealand, spending a year there before settling in New South Wales.

It was in New Zealand that Watts became interested in mosses, inspired by the Tasmania-based bryologist William Weymouth, and began to make collections. Returning to Australia, he suffered a severe attack of typhoid and when recovered served only part-time in churches around Sydney. At the same time he warmed to the approach of the Presbyterian Church, in which he was ordained in 1896, thereafter serving as a minister at various locations (Ballina 1896-1903, Young 1904-1907, Gladesville-Ryde 1910-1916). During this time he edited the church newspaper The Messenger (1907-1912) and later, The Presbyterian, old leaves of which he used down the years to pack his specimens. Watts' final few years were spent in Wycheproof, Victoria, unfortunately not a good area for his favourite activity of moss collecting.

Watts collected not only mosses but ferns, hepatics, lichens and fungi in New South Wales, amassing a herbarium of more than 12,000 specimens. He also made collections in Victoria, Queensland, New Zealand and Lord Howe Island, being especially taken with the "veritable paradise of plant life" to be found on the latter, where he joyfully discovered "fern after fern and moss after moss that occurs nowhere else in the world."

Despite no formal training, Watts built up his expert knowledge with the help of scientific correspondents in Europe. He sent many specimens to Viktor Brotherus for determination and his dozens of letters to the renowned brylogist are to be found in Helsinki. Watts published prolifically in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, as well as in the Victorian Naturalist and The Bryologist. His Census Muscorum Australiensum appeared between 1902 and 1906 (co-authored with T. Whitelegge, unfinished) and the The Sphagna of Australia and Tasmania in 1912. His chief collaborator was Thomas Whitelegge, but he also collected alongside J.L. Boorman in 1915 at Bulga Heights and Mount Wilson, New South Wales. He served as Honorary Curator of Cryptogams at the National Herbarium of New South Wales in Sydney (from 1907) and was a Fellow of the Linnean Society. Watts was known familiarly as Willy Wally Watts.

Sources:
J. Nangle, 1921, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 55: 3-4
H.P. Ramsay, 1980, "Contributions of Rev. W.W. Watts FLS, to Australian Botany", Taxon, 29(4): 455-469
W.W. Watts, Papers of W.W. Watts held at the Solander Library of the National Herbarium of New South Wales, Sydney: RBGS MSS 588.3
J.H. Willis, 1949, "Botanical Pioneers in Victoria II", Victorian Naturalist 66: 105-106.