John Ewbank Leefe

John Ewbank Leefe FLS (1813–1889) was an English amateur botanist and vicar in the Church of England. He was a leading expert on the British willows (Salix).

Education and career He was the son of Octavus Leefe of Richmond, Yorkshire, an alderman and magistrate, and his wife Mary Wright, daughter of Thomas Wright of Richmond. In 1831 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated there B.A. (24th Wrangler) in 1835 and M.A. in 1838. He was ordained a deacon (Oxford) in 1838 and became a priest in 1840.

Leefe was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society on 19 November 1868. He was a member of the Tynesides Naturalists' Field Club (founded in 1846), became their vice-president, and president from 1873 to 1874. He collected in various locations in England, the north of Wales, the Scottish Borderlands, and the far north of Scotland. Most of his letters and botanical specimens are at Kew. He recorded rainfall and temperature data at Cresswell until 1881. John Beckwith Leefe became a general in the British Army. Charles Octavius Leefe became an executive engineer in the British Raj's Indian Civil Service and died of cholera.

Selected publications