This article is about the forester and ecologist. For the architect who practised as J. Stanley Beard, see
John Stanley Coombe Beard.
John Stanley Beard (15 February 1916 – 17 February 2011) was a
British-born
forester and
ecologist who resided in
Australia. Beard studied at the
University of Oxford where he completed his doctoral thesis on tropical forestry.
While working with the Forestry Division in
Trinidad and Tobago during the 1940s, Beard developed a system of forest classification for
Tropical America and described the forests of
Trinidad,
Tobago, and the
Lesser Antilles;[1][2] these descriptions remain standard references on the topics.
After leaving Trinidad, Beard moved to
South Africa and then to
Australia, where he produced an extensive series of vegetation maps covering much of the country.
His extensive surveys of
Western Australia set standards for understanding regional floristic zones and
biogeographical areas for the whole state. He was the main author of the 1964–1981 explanatory notes to the mapping project of the Vegetation Survey of Western Australia, which involved travelling some 150,000 kilometres. He was also foundation director of the
Kings Park and Botanic Garden between 1961 and 1970.[3][4] He was subsequently director of the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (1970–72) before retiring to
Perth.[5] During his directorship, many of Western Australia’s unique native plants were brought into cultivation for the first time.[3] Beard edited the Descriptive Catalogue of Western Australian Plants (1965), which was published by the Society for Growing Australian Plants, to promote understanding of the
horticultural requirements of Western Australia’s native plants.[3]
In his retirement, he produced popular accounts of his vegetation studies in Plant Life of Western Australia (1990),[6] and of his taxonomic and horticultural studies of Protea spp. in Proteas of Tropical Africa (1992).[7]
Beard received an OAM in 2003.[4] He died in February 2011 at the age of 95.[8][9]
^
abcKeighery, B. and G., ‘Beard, John Stanley’, in R. Aitken and M. Looker (eds), Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 80
^
abDixon, Kingsley W. (2006) Celebration of a life in botany. Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia vol. 89, pt. 3, (Sept. 2006), p. 93-97
^‘John Stanley Beard (1916–2011)’, Australian Garden History, 22 (4), 2011, p. 28