William Wilson

William M. Wilson (1799–1871) was an English botanist, known for his focus on bryology.

Life The second son of Thomas Wilson, a druggist, he was born at Warrington (which was then in Lancashire, and later transferred to Cheshire) on 7 June 1799. He was educated at Prestbury Grammar School and under Dr John Reynolds at the dissenting academy in Leaf Square, Manchester. He was then articled to a firm of solicitors in Manchester; but fell ill. This led to his love of botany, and when he was about 25, his mother gave him an allowance so that he could devote himself entirely to it.

In 1821 Wilson discovered Cotoneaster cambricus on Great Orme's Head. It brought him into correspondence with Sir James Edward Smith, who encouraged him. In 1827 John Stevens Henslow introduced him to William Jackson Hooker.

Wilson entered into correspondence with specialists: Sextus Otto Lindberg and Wilhelm Philippe Schimper. His major work was the Bryologia Britannica (1855) intended as a third edition of the Muscologia Britannica (1818) of Hooker and Thomas Taylor, but was substantially a new work. Over a hundred new species of British mosses were then added to the list between its publication and his death. being named after him by William Borrer, and the Wilson's filmy fern named Hymenophyllum wilsonii by Hooker. Wilson described many new species of exotic mosses in the Journal of Botany. His papers were enumerated in the Royal Society's Catalogue (vi. 389, viii. 1249), and his herbarium and botanical correspondence went to the Natural History Museum. Later on he issued the exsiccata Musci Britannici (1855).