George Gordon (botanist)

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George Gordon (1801-1893) was a British botanist, also partaking in the study of Geology and Naturalism. He attended Aberdeen University in 1815, aged only 14. He graduated four years later. He worked for the London Horticultural Society as Foreman of the Horticultoral Society Gardens at Chiswick, near London.

Gordon's first publication was regarding Collectanea for a Flora of Moray in 1839, covering Moray and Nairn, as well as parts of Banffshire and Inverness. However,Gordon is particularly noted for his work on conifers, publishing The Pinetum in 1858, followed by a Supplement in 1862 and a fully revised second edition of The Pinetum in 1875 to which his publisher H. G. Bohn had added an index and a list of plates from three earlier nineteenth century botanical works. He described many new species of conifers from specimens collected by Karl Theodor Hartweg in Mexico and California.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Gordon is applied to plants he described.