John Graeffer

John Graefer or Johann Andreas Graeffer (1 January 1746 – 7 August 1802) was a German botanist nurseryman born in Helmstedt. Graeffer/Graefer is remembered by garden historians as having introduced a number of exotic plants to British gardens and to have worked for the king of Naples at the palace of Caserta.

Trained by Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, one of the most prominent botanical gardens of Europe during the 18th century, Graeffer was subsequently gardener to the Earl of Coventry at Croome Court, Worcestershire, which was being landscaped by Capability Brown, and then to James Vere, of Kensington Gore, a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society Graeffer struck out on his own as a partner with Archibald Thompson and the prominent nurseryman James Gordon in Gordon's long-established Mile End nursery near the New Globe, Stepney, just beyond the East End of London. After Gordon's retirement and his death in 1780, the nursery at Mile End was inherited by Gordon's three sons.

In August 1781, it was reported in L'ésprit des Journaux, that MM Grœffer et Bessel had been issued a royal patent (dated 30 December 1780) for their preparation of cooked and preserved vegetables for the Royal Navy and the use of those on sea voyages; it was the first recorded patent for preserving vegetables by drying them. For that purpose, it was reported, they had purchased 200 arpents of land near the "nouvelle globe", Mile End, for plantings, which appears to be Gordon's long-established plant nursery. The patent was issued for preserving "a vegetable of the Brassica kind, generally known by the name of green and brown borecole, scotch or other kale with a salt solution and drying so it will keep for up to a year."

Among Graeffer's introductions to British horticulture by far the most familiar was the variegated form of Aucuba japonica, the loved and loathed "Spotted Laurel" of gardens, which he introduced to British horticulture in 1783, at first as a plant for a heated greenhouse; it became widely cultivated as the "Gold Plant" by 19th-century gardeners. According to John Claudius Loudon he was also responsible for the introduction of Pyrus bollwylleriana, the Bollwyller pear (later called Shipova), and P. baccata (later called Malus baccata), the Siberian wild crab. Another of his introductions was Sideroxylon melanophloeos (later called Rapanea melanophloeos), from the Cape Province, 1784.

...
Wikipedia