Quick Facts
Biography
Thomas Velley (c.1748–1806) was an English botanist.
Life
Born at Chipping Ongar, Essex, in 1748 or 1749, he was son of the Rev. Thomas Velley of the town. He matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, on 19 March 1766, and graduated B.C.L. in 1772. He became lieutenant-colonel of the Oxford militia, and was made D.C.L. of the university in 1787. He resided for many years at Bath, and devoted himself to botany, and especially to the study of algæ, collecting chiefly along the south coast. He was the friend and correspondent of Sir James Edward Smith, Dawson Turner, John Stackhouse, Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, Sir William Watson the younger, and Richard Relhan, and became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1792.
Jumping from a runaway stage-coach at Reading on 6 June 1806, Velley fell and suffered concussion, from which he died on 8 June.
Legacy
Velley's annotated herbarium, illustrated by dissections and microscopic drawings of grasses and other flowering plants, and especially of algæ, in eight folio volumes, was purchased from his widow by William Roscoe for the Liverpool Botanical Garden. Sir James Edward Smith in 1798 gave the name Velleia, in his honour, to an Australasian genus of flowering plants.
Works
Velley's only independent work was Coloured Figures of Marine Plants found on the Southern Coast of England, illustrated with Descriptions, Bath, 1795, pp. 38, with five coloured plates. He was credited with four papers in the Royal Society's Catalogue (vi. 131), but the last was the work of Smith.