John EllisFRS (
c. 1710 – 15 October 1776) aka Jean Ellis was a
British linen merchant and
naturalist. Ellis was the first to have a published written description of the
Venus flytrap and its botanical name. The standard
author abbreviationJ.Ellis is used to indicate this person as the author when
citing a
botanical name.[1]
Ellis specialised in the study of
corals. He was elected a member of the
Royal Society in 1754 and in the following year published An essay towards the Natural History of the Corallines. He was awarded the
Copley Medal in 1767. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1774.[2] His A Natural History of Many Uncommon and Curious Zoophytes, written with
Daniel Solander, was published posthumously in 1776.
A royal botanist, William Young imported living plants of the Venus flytrap to England. They were then shown to Ellis. In 1769, he wrote a description of the plant discovery from North Carolina to send to the 'Father of Taxonomy',
Carl Linnaeus.
Ellis also gave it the scientific name of Dionaea muscipula. Later, his essay Directions for bringing over seeds and plants, from the East Indies (1770) included the first illustration of a
Venus Flytrap plant.[3]