Leonard Cockayne

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Dr Leonard Cockayne (7 April 1855 – 8 July 1934) was born in Sheffield, England where he attended Wesley College.

He travelled to Australia in 1877 and shortly moved on to New Zealand where he became established as a botanist.

In June 1901, he attended the first conference of horticulturists in New Zealand at Dunedin where he presented a paper on the plants of the Chatham Islands and advocated the establishment of experimental plant research stations in New Zealand. This helped to establish Cockayne's reputation.

Cockayne's major contributions to botany were in plant ecology and in his theories of hybridisation. In 1899 he published the first New Zealand account of successional changes in vegetation.

He was elected F.R.S. in 1912 on the proposal of Sir J. D. Hooker and was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal in that same year. In 1914 he was awarded the Hutton Memorial Medal.

The Cockayne Reserve in Christchurch and the Cockayne Nature Walk near Otira on the West Coast are both named after him.

[edit] Bibliography

New Zealand Plants and Their Story, 1910
Observations Concerning Evolution, Derived from Ecological Studies in New Zealand
Vegetation of New Zealand
Trees of New Zealand (with E. Phillips Turner)
Report on the dune-areas of New Zealand: their geology, botany and reclamation.
Report on a botanical survey of Stewart Island