Biography

English-born pharmacist and plant collector active in New Zealand. William Townson was born in Liverpool, where his father was a medical doctor. Following his father into the field of medicine, Townson trained as a pharmaceutical chemist, which business he pursued for some 40 years in New Zealand. He probably arrived in the country around 1876, and settled in several different places over the years, first registering as a chemist at Westport in 1888. He married Lucinda Dagg at Masterton about a year on.

After first collecting plants on behalf of Thomas Kirk in the 1890s, Townson took the opportunity to study the flora of each area he moved to, making collections in the Tararua Range, Mounts Ruapehu and Egmont, and from the mountains near his final home at Thames. He was registered at Gisborne in 1911-1912 and Pukekohe from 1913-1917, then Thames from 1918. He sent his specimens and observations to Thomas Cheeseman following the death of Kirk in 1898.

As the North Island had already been well scoured by collectors before Townson, his most useful botanical fieldwork was carried out on the South Island. His only paper for the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute was "On the vegetation of the Westport District" (1906), which listed species he found on explorations including his scaling of Mt. Owen from the Owen Valley side, probably undertaken in 1902. T.F. Cheeseman praised Townson's collecting work around south-west Nelson, the Mokihinui River, the Grey River, the Lyell Mountains and the peaks around the Buller Valley among other locations, where he found many novelties.

Described as being of a modest and gentle nature, Townson was an active church worker, a champion chess player and also collected Maori crafts. Among the taxa named after him are the orchid genus Townsonia Cheeseman (now usually included in Acianthus), Aciphylla townsonii Cheeseman, Dracophyllum townsonii Cheeseman and Euphrasia townsonii Petrie.

Sources:
B.C. Aston, 1928, Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 58: 186-188
E.J. Godley, 1992, "Biographical Notes (8): William Lewis Townson (1855-1926)", New Zealand Botanical Society Newsletter, 30(December): 17-18.