William A. Schipp

William Augustus Schipp (1891-1967) is an Australian-born explorer and plant collector: collected in Northern Australia, New Guinea and Java before moving to British Honduras (Belize) via San Francisco. He collected in Belize from 1929 to 1935 when he returned to Australia because of failing health, living ultimately in New South Wales. His health improved in Australia where he was later employed as a landscape gardener by Norman Lindsay. In 1967 William Augustus Schipp living in retirement in a country town in New South Wales die, leaving his few possessions to the local Horticultural Society, in which he was keenly interested.

William was born in Silverton, near Broken Hill, New South Wales to Christian and Barbara Schipp (née McNair). Christian, a builder and bricklayer, had come from Germany in 1855 and followed the gold rush to Broken Hill and then Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. William was the youngest of five children. He studied botany, especially flowering tropical plants.

William worked in the Darwin Botanical Gardens and collected plants in New Guinea, Java and Dutch East Indies for several years prior to 1929 before moving to Belize, perhaps with the Catholic Church.

He came to San Francisco, California from Tjondong, Tjikandang, Java in late January 1929. At the University of California, Berkeley he spent several days with ED Merrill. Schipp left San Francisco passing through southern United States to New Orleans where he boarded the SS Abargarez for British Honduras. On the evening of 28 January 1929 he arrived at Belize, the capital and main port of the colony. Early in February 1929 Schipp left Belize equipped with a brief outline map of the colony for the Stann Creek District directly south of Belize District where he started collecting twenty specimens of each taxon in order to fulfill requests of his subscribers.

A pioneer, he made the first comprehensive collection of Belize botany. His collections from British Honduras are in many herbaria. Herbarium sets distributed by William A Schipp to European and American institutions represent one of the most significant and extensive collections ever made of the coastal plain flora for the Stann Creek and Toledo Districts of southern British Honduras. He compiled the first complete flora of these districts in the form of a Catalogue entitled "Flora of the British Honduras, Pricelist of Seeds & Herbarium Material". As a professional botanical explorer, his discrimination in the field yielded a total of 154 taxa new to science, including two new genera - Schippia and Schizocardia. Hardships were soon overcome by this keen and discriminative botanical explorer. Whilst the most complete collections are thought to be at the Field Museum in Chicago and the Gentle Herbarium in Belmopan, Belize.

Forestry Department Herbarium, Paslow Building, Belize City, Belize. (1934 specimens)

Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Berlin-Dahlem, Germany

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