The paleobotanical contributions of Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809-1886)

During the 1850s, Charles James Fox Bunbury, 8th Baronet Bunbury, was Britain's leading paleobotanist, who published a series of papers on fossil floras of Carboniferous, Jurassic and Neogene age. He also planned a major synoptic review of paleobotany, to rival Brongniart's Histoire de vegetaux fossiles. He was financially comfortably-off, and well-connected with the scientific community in the London of his day. However, he failed to fulfil his ambitions in this field due to a combination of a lack of experience, and that on the death of his father he had to take over the running of the family estate. Today he is mainly remembered as the author of a number of names of still widely used fossil-taxa. Nevertheless, he fulfilled an important role in maintaining paleobotanical interest in Britain during the middle part of the nineteenth century.