William Mitten papers

William Mitten (1819-1906) was the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century. A pharmaceutical chemist by trade and never a professional botanist, he classified and named thousands of bryophyte specimens which came into Kew Gardens from around the vast British Empire.

Successor to Thomas Taylor, the premier bryologist of the first half of the nineteenth century, William Mitten left his native England only once in his lifetime. He was one of the first to realize that the same taxa occur throughout broad geographical ranges. This is contrary to the prevailing opinion of his day which held that different geographic areas had entirely different flora. As he was able to see examples of all the major families of bryophytes, he developed a phylogeny reflecting these relationships. His concepts deeply influenced generations of British bryologists.

He was a member of the Botanical Society of London and maintained an active correspondence with Sir William Hooker. He published his first paper in 1846 at the age of 26.

By the time of his death, he had amassed the largest and most important collection of bryophytes in private hands. This collection of some fifty thousand specimens was purchased by the NYBG.