Robert Morison (162010 November 1683) was a Scottish botanist and taxonomist. A forerunner of John Ray, he elucidated and developed the first systematic classification of plants.
Biography
Born in Aberdeen, Morison was an outstanding scholar who gained his Master of Arts degree from the University of Aberdeen at the age of eighteen. During the English Civil War he joined the Charles I of England's Cavaliers and was seriously wounded at the 1639 Battle of the Bridge of Dee during the Civil War. On recovering, he fled to France when it became apparent that the cause was lost.
thumb|left|A diagram from Morison's 1672 book on Umbelliferae illustrating genus affinities
In 1648, he took a doctorate in medicine at the University of Angers in Western France and from then on devoted himself entirely to the study of botany. He studied in Paris under the guidance of Vespasien Robin, botanist to the king of France, who introduced him to Gaston, Duke of Orléans. On Robin's recommendation, Morison became director of the Royal Gardens at Blois, Central France, a post which he subsequently held for ten years.
In the year that he began teaching at Oxford, Morison published Praeludia Botanica, a work which stressed using the structure of a plant's fruits for classification. At the time, classification focused on the habitat and medicinal properties of the plant and Morison's criticism of systems promoted by botanists such as Jean and Gaspard Bauhin caused some anger among his contemporaries.
In 1669, he also published 'Hortus Regius Blesensis' by the newly revived University Press, it was a catalogue of the Blois garden to which Morison added the description of 260 previously un-described plants, although Richard Pulteney (A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus, 1781) disagreed and noted that they were only varieties and others were already described.
In the preface to his Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova (1672), Morison gave a definitive statement of the principles of his method and was the first person to write a "monograph of a specific group of plants", the Umbelliferae.
Morison was fatally injured by the pole of a carriage as he was crossing the street on 9 November 1683 and died the following day at his house in Green Street, Leicester-fields. He was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. It was entrusted by Oxford University to Jacob Bobart the Younger, who on the death of his father Jacob Bobart the Elder published a second and final instalment of the Historia in 1699 dealing with the remaining ten sections of herbaceous plants. system which was half expiring. If you look through Tournefort's genera you will readily admit how much he owes to Morison, full as much as the latter was indebted to Cesalpino, though Tournefort himself was a conscientious investigator. All that is good in Morison is taken from Cesalpino, from whose guidance he wanders in pursuit of natural affinities rather than of characters.