Flora of Connemara and the Burren - National Botanic Garden of ...

FLORA OF CONNEMARA AND THE BURREN - RECORDS FROM 1984 9
Fig.1. The foreword to Walter Wade’s Catalogus plantarum rariorum in comitatu
Gallovidiae, praecipue Cunnamara inventarum published in the Transactions of the
Dublin Society in 1802.
In 1731 the Dublin (later Royal) Society was founded for the purpose of ‘improving
husbandry, manufactures and other useful Arts’, Science was added later. Walter Wade,
M.D. (c.1760 – 1825) was appointed professor of Botany to the Society in 1796, following
the publication of a paper on the flora of county Dublin. As Ireland’s leading botanist of
the time, he was chiefly responsible, along with John Foster, for the establishment of the
Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin.