John Goodyer was a 17th century botanist who lived in Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, England. He was born in Alton

Alton, Hampshire

Alton is a historic market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of the English county of Hampshire. It had a population of 16,584 at the 1991 census and is administered by East Hampshire district council. It is located on the source of the River Wey and is the highest town in...

, and evidently received a good education, although it is not known where. He worked as estate manager to Sir Thomas Bilson, of West Mapledurham House (demolished 1829), near Buriton

Buriton

Buriton is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England, 2 miles south of Petersfield. It lies just east of the A3 road....

, and also as agent for two Bishops of Winchester

Bishop of Winchester

The Bishop of Winchester is the head of the Church of England diocese of Winchester, with his cathedra at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire.The bishop is one of five Church of England bishops to be among the Lords Spiritual regardless of their length of service. His diocese is one of the oldest and...

: Thomas Bilson

Thomas Bilson

Thomas Bilson was an Anglican Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of Winchester. He, along with Miles Smith, oversaw the final edit and printing of the King James Bible. He is buried in Westminster Abbey in plot 232 between the tombs of Richard the Second and Edward the Third...

 (father of Sir Thomas Bilson) and later, Lancelot Andrewes

Lancelot Andrewes

Lancelot Andrewes was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, Ely and Winchester and oversaw the translation of the...

. Goodyer resided in the village of Droxford

Droxford

Droxford is a village in Hampshire, England, lying in the Meon valley, and lies around 3¾ miles east of Bishop's Waltham within the new South Downs National Park. The A32 passes through the village between Gosport and Alton...

 until his marriage in 1632, when he moved to Petersfield

Petersfield, Hampshire

Petersfield is a market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is north of Portsmouth, on the A3 road. The town has its own railway station on the Portsmouth Direct Line, the mainline rail link connecting Portsmouth and London. The town is situated on the...

, where his house on The Spain still stands http://www.petersfieldmuseum.hampshire.org.uk/html/history/17C.html.

Goodyer developed a great interest in botany, and added many plants to the British flora. He is credited with clarifying the identities of the British elms, and for discovering an unusual elm endemic to the Hampshire coast between Lymington

Lymington

Lymington is a port on the west bank of the Lymington River on the Solent, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. It is to the east of the South East Dorset conurbation, and faces Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight which is connected to it by a car ferry, operated by Wightlink. The town...

 and Christchurch named for him as Goodyer's Elm, believed to be a form of the Cornish Elm

Cornish Elm

Ulmus minor Mill. subsp. angustifolia Stace , often known as the Cornish Elm, is a species of deciduous tree...

 Ulmus minor subsp. angustifolia, later confused with Plot's Elm

Plot's Elm

Ulmus minor var. plotii Richens, known as Plot's Elm, or Lock Elm, is found only in England, where it is encountered mainly in the East Midlands, notably around the River Witham in Lincolnshire and in the Trent Valley around Newark on Trent...

 also known as 'Lock Elm' Ulmus minor var. plotii by Augustine Henry

Augustine Henry

Augustine Henry was an Irish plantsman and sinologist. He is best known for sending over 15,000 dry specimens and seeds and 500 plant samples to Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom. By 1930, he was a recognised authority and was honoured with society membership in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland,...

.

Goodyer gained the reputation of being "the ablest Herbalist now living in England". He is also believed to have introduced the Jerusalem Artichoke

Jerusalem artichoke

The Jerusalem artichoke , also called the sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambour, is a species of sunflower native to eastern North America, and found from Eastern Canada and Maine west to North Dakota, and south to northern Florida and Texas...

 to English cuisine, but perhaps his most enduring legacy was his revision, with Thomas Johnson

Thomas Johnson (botanist)

Thomas Johnson has been called "The Father of British Field Botany" but has been largely neglected, no doubt largely due to the very scanty records of his life which have survived. Such as there are, moreover, in any cases confuse rather than help the biographer, owing to the popularity of the...

, of Gerard's Herbal, the greatest herbal

Herbal

AThe use of a or an depends on whether or not herbal is pronounced with a silent h. herbal is "a collection of descriptions of plants put together for medicinal purposes." Expressed more elaborately — it is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their...

 of its time.
He also translated a Latin version of Dioscorides's work, 'De Materia Medica

Materia medica

Materia medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . The term 'materia medica' derived from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica libre...

'. Indeed, Goodyer's reputation was such that in 1643 during the English Civil War

English Civil War

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

, Ralph Hopton, one of the senior Royalist commanders, ordered troops "to defend and protect John Goodyer, his house, family, servants and estates".

Goodyer lies in an unmarked grave near his wife's at St Mary’s church, Buriton, where a stained glass window can be found as a memorial to him, showing the Goodyer coat of arms. With no children to succeed him, the majority of his estate passed to his nephew, the Reverend Edmund Yalden, but proceeds from the residue were used to establish the John Goodyer Charity to help the poor of Weston, a hamlet near Buriton; the charity still exists today. His works and books are now stored at Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, and in recognition of his industry, Goodyera

Goodyera

Goodyera are a wide-ranging genus of orchid, one of approximately 800 described Orchidaceae genera within that large and diverse family. The genus is named after botanist John Goodyer....

, a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of small terrestrial orchids, has been named for him.