Edward Llwyd

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Edward Llwyd (also spelt Lhuyd) (1660–June 30, 1709) was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary.

Llwyd was born in Loppington,Shropshire. He attended grammar school in Oswestry and went up to Jesus College, Oxford in 1682 but dropped out before his graduation. In 1684, he was appointed assistant to Robert Plot, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and replaced him as Keeper in 1690: He held this post until 1709.

Whilst employed by the Ashmolean he travelled extensively. A visit to Snowdonia in 1688 allowed him to construct for John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicorum a list of flora local to that region. After 1697 Llwyd visited every county in Wales, and then travelled to Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany: In 1699, with financial aid from Isaac Newton, he published Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, a catalogue of fossils collected from places around England, mostly Oxford, and held in the Ashmolean. In 1707 he released the first volume of Archaeologia Britannica: an Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland and Scotland.

Llwyd died of pleurisy in Oxford.

In 1701 Llwyd was made MA honoris causa by the University of Oxford, and he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1708. The Snowdon Lily Lloydia serotina bears his name, as does Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd, the National Naturalists' Society of Wales.

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