page_title: John Lightfoot (biologist)
section_title: Flora Scotica
hierarchical_section_title: John Lightfoot (biologist) / Flora Scotica
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of Lobelia dortmanna L.
context_page_description: The Reverend John Lightfoot was an English parson-naturalist, spending much of his free time as a conchologist and botanist. He was a systematic and effective curator of the private museum of Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. He is best known for his Flora Scotica which pioneered the scientific study of the plants and fungi of Scotland. He elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his scientific work.
  He was an excellent scholar in many branches of literature; but after the study of his profession, he addicted himself chiefly to that of botany and conchyliologie [sic]. He excelled in both.
  — Thomas Pennant
context_section_description: The Flora Scotica: or, a systematic arrangement, in the Linnaean method, of the native plants of Scotland and the Hebrides, published in London in 1777 as a bulky book of two volumes for a total of 1151 pages, is Lightfoot's greatest work. Many of the illustrations are drawn by Pennant's artist, Moses Griffith, and engraved by Peter Mazell; some are both drawn and engraved by Mazell.
  As well as flowering plants, the "Cryptogamia", including ferns ("filices"), mosses ("musci"), algae and fungi, are covered, starting on page 643. Lightfoot covers the liverworts, recognising only the genera Marchantia, Jungermannia, Targionia, Riccia and Ryssus, but including also "Lichen" as "Algae Terrestres", terrestrial algae.
  Only nine genera of fungi are recognised in the book: Agaricus, Boletus, Hydnum, Phallus, Helvella, Peziza, Clavaria, Lycoperdon, and Mucor (listed on page 645); a tenth fungal genus, Tremella is covered, but included among his algae. Scottish Fungi note that "While his classification might be a bit wonky by today's understanding, most of the species he recorded can be traced to modern taxa", and that he provided the first British records for the chanterelle and the summer truffle.
  The book has an "English and Scotch Index of the Names of Plants" which however is entirely in English, the "Erse Index" of Gaelic names following the list of English ones. There is also a Latin index to the genera (but not to individual species).
caption: Lobelia dortmanna from Lightfoot's 1777 Flora Scotica, painted by Moses Griffith and engraved by Peter Mazell
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