Adelaide pathologist J.B. Cleland also major collector, writer and researcher on fungi, birds, flora and fauna
Professor J.B. Cleland (left) at Adelaide Railway Station in 1934 with his fungi-collecting equipment for a trip to South Australia's far north. Poring over research at Rocky River (top right) in 1940 and Cleland Conservation Park (below right) named after him.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia and ridemorebikes.com
J.B. (John Burton) Cleland’s botanical and naturalist studies have been called as important as his major contributions to Australian pathology and medicine.
As first Marks professor of pathology (and bacteriology) at Adelaide University from 1920, Cleland began a study of more than 7,000 meticulous autopsies.
Norwood-born Cleland’s return to Adelaide revived his interest started as a boy with a gift from his doctor/father: M.C. Cooke’s Handbook of Australian Fungi (1892). In 1934-35, Cleland published two volumes on the larger fungi of South Australia – the only general Australian work on the subject.
He also wrote papers on local vascular plants, mainly as a collector and surveyor. He presented nearly 30,000 plants to the South Australian Herbarium. His collecting included nearly 60 plant species new to science, described by John McConnell Black (strongly supported by Cleland) and others.
Ornithology was another of Cleland’s major interests, particularly in distribution and general ecology, and he did a lot of field collecting and observing during anthropological and other surveys. He donated nearly 1,000 birdskins to Gregory Mathews’s book, The Birds of Australia (1910-1927). In 1956, Cleland presented 450 skins to the South Australian Museum, together with valuable data. He also collected the birds' ectoparasites and endoparasites.
Wildlife conservation later absorbed Cleland. He was a commissioner of Belair national park in 1928 and chairman 1936-65. He chaired, in 1922-68, the flora and fauna handbooks committee of South Australia that produced descriptive biological manuals, with some geology. They provided unparalleled work on local, and Australian, flora and fauna.
Cleland's biological collecting resulted in perhaps 40 species or subspecies among fungi, vascular plants and animals being named after him, as well as a new genus clelandia in the plant and animal worlds.
He was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia in 1949 and a life member of the South Australian Ornithological Association in 1961.
Cleland Conservation Park in the Mount Lofty Ranges was named after him.