Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster, was a German geographer, naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, A Voyage Round the World, contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature.
Johann Reinhold Forster was a German Reformed (Calvinist) pastor and naturalist of partially Scottish descent who made contributions to the early ornithology of Europe and North America. He is best known as the naturalist on James Cook's second Pacific voyage, where he was accompanied by his son Georg Forster. These expeditions promoted the career of Johann Reinhold Forster and the findings became the bedrock of colonial professionalism and helped set the stage for the future development of anthropology and ethnology. They also laid the framework for general concern about the impact that alteration of the physical environment for European economic expansion would have on exotic societies.
Anders Sparrman was a Swedish naturalist, abolitionist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.
Acronychia is a genus of about fifty species of plants in the rue family Rutaceae. The leaves are simple or pinnate, and the flowers bisexual with four sepals, four petals and eight stamens. They have a broad distribution including in India, Malesia, Australia and the islands of the western Pacific Ocean. About twenty species are endemic to Australia.
Commersonia is a genus of twenty-five species of flowering plants in the family Malvaceae. Plants in this genus are shrubs or trees, occurring from Indochina to Australia and have stems, leaves and flowers covered with star-like hairs. The leaves are simple, often with irregularly-toothed edges, the flowers bisexual with five sepals, five petals and five stamens and the fruit a capsule with five valves. The genus underwent a revision in 2011 and some species were separated from Commersonia, others were added from Rulingia.
Ripogonum is a genus of flowering plants confined to eastern Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea. Until recently this genus was included in the family Smilacaceae, and earlier in the family Liliaceae, but it has now been separated as its own family Ripogonaceae.
Meryta is a genus in the flowering plant family Araliaceae. There are 28 described species in the genus and a number of undescribed species, all small, resinous trees of the subtropical and tropical Pacific Ocean, characterized by huge, simple leaves and a dioecious sexual system, a unique combination in Araliaceae. Meryta has its center of diversity in New Caledonia. Phylogenetic analyses have placed Meryta as a monophyletic genus in one of the three major clades of the Araliaciae, the Polyscias-Pseudopanax group, and more specifically in the Pacific Schefflera subclade.
Anna Blackburne was an English botanist and collector who assembled an extensive collection of natural history specimens and corresponded with several notable naturalists of her era. Blackburne was born at Orford Hall, Orford, Warrington, Lancashire, into a family of landowners and merchants. After her mother's death, she lived at Orford with her father John Blackburne, who was known for his interest in botany and his hothouses for exotic plants. John Blackburne also had an extensive library where Anne probably studied botany; she later taught herself Latin so she could read the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus. She developed a natural history museum where she collected insects, shells, minerals and birds. She regularly met with the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster while he was teaching at Warrington Academy. Forster instructed her in entomology and helped with her insect collection.
Dichondra repens, commonly known as kidney weed, Mercury Bay weed, tom thumb, or yilibili in the Dharawal language, is a species of flowering plant in the family Convolvulaceae and is native to Australia, New Zealand, and the Indian Ocean islands, Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues. It is a perennial, herb with kidney-shaped to round leaves and small, greenish-yellow, star-shaped flowers.
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships Resolution and Adventure were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772.
Codia is a genus of trees and shrubs in the family Cunoniaceae. The genus is endemic to New Caledonia in the Pacific and contains 15 species. The leaves are opposite or whorled, simple, and the margin usually entire. The flowers are arranged in capitula. the ovary is inferior. The fruit is indehiscent and is covered with woolly hairs.
Ripogonum scandens is a common rainforest vine endemic to New Zealand. The species was described by Johann Reinhold Forster, and Georg Forster in 1776. It has a conservation status of Not Threatened.
Balanophora is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Balanophoraceae found in parts of tropical and temperate Asia, including the Eastern Himalayas, Malesia region, Pacific Islands, Madagascar, and tropical Africa. There are about 20 accepted species, including the newly discovered B. coralliformis. Many species emit an odour which possibly attracts pollinators in the same way that pollinators are attracted to Rafflesia.
Decaspermum is a genus of the botanical family Myrtaceae, first described as a genus in 1776. It is native to China, Southeast Asia, Queensland, and various islands of the Pacific Ocean.
Zanthoxylum pinnatum, commonly known as yellow wood, is a species of flowering plant of the family Rutaceae native to Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. It is a tree with pinnate leaves, white male and female flowers arranged in groups in leaf axils, and spherical, purple follicles containing a single black seed.
Thelymitra longifolia, commonly called the white sun orchid, common sun orchid or maikuku, is a species of orchid in the family Orchidaceae that is endemic to New Zealand. It was the first of a large number of similar species to be described and is therefore the type species. It has a single grass-like leaf and up to five white flowers
Plagianthus is a genus of flowering plants confined to New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. The familial placement of the genus was controversial for many years, but modern genetic studies show it definitely belongs in the Malvaceae subfamily Malvoideae. The name means "slanted flowers".
A Voyage Round the World is Georg Forster's report on the second voyage of the British explorer James Cook. During the preparations for Cook's voyage, the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks had withdrawn his participation, and Georg's father, Johann Reinhold Forster, had taken his place at very short notice, with his seventeen-year-old son as his assistant. They sailed on HMS Resolution with Cook, accompanied by HMS Adventure under Tobias Furneaux. On the voyage, they circumnavigated the world, crossed the Antarctic Circle and sailed as far south as 71° 10′, discovered several Pacific islands, encountered diverse cultures and described many species of plants and animals.
Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World is Johann Reinhold Forster's systematic account of the scientific and ethnological results of the second voyage of James Cook. Forster, a former pastor who had become a Fellow of the Royal Society after writing several papers on natural history, and his son Georg had accompanied James Cook as naturalists on board of HMS Resolution. Originally, it had been planned that Forster's account should appear together with Cook's "narrative" of the voyage, but after lengthy arguments between Forster and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Georg went ahead and published his own narrative instead in 1777, A Voyage Round the World. Observations then appeared in 1778, financed by subscriptions. It was translated into several European languages, including a German translation by Georg Forster.
A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's ship, the Endeavour is a 1773 book based on the papers of Sydney Parkinson, who accompanied Joseph Banks as botanical illustrator on the first voyage of James Cook. Parkinson died at sea in 1771 on the return voyage, and the Journal was compiled by William Kenrick for Parkinson's brother Stanfield, who quarrelled with Banks about his brother's papers and belongings and attacked Banks and others in the book's preface. A legal injunction prevented the publication of the Journal until after the official account of Cook's voyage, edited by John Hawkesworth, had appeared. A second edition appeared in 1784 with explanatory remarks by John Fothergill.
