Species Lightfootia rubens

For John Lightfoot (1735–1788), British botanist, conchologist, lichenologist and clergyman. A graduate of Oxford University in 1760, he was a meticulous organiser, researcher and recorder of information and chaplain and librarian of Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland; also, a close friend of Joseph Banks. He is best known for his two-volume Flora Scotica (1777), which contains hundreds of plant species and cryptogams and was by far the greatest contribution to Scottish mycology until Thomas Hopkirk published his Flora Glottiana some 36 years later. Lightfoot also published An Account of Some Minute British Shells (1786). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and became one of the original fellows of the Linnaean Society in 1785.