Thomas Wrench Naylor Beckett

Thomas Wrench Naylor Beckett was an English-born coffee and tea planter in Ceylon and a noted botanist and bryologist, who collected specimens there and in the north-western Himalaya between 1882 and c.1900. He did not publish any account of the mosses he collected while in Ceylon – many of his specimens though are recorded in Max Fleischer's "Musci der Flora von Buitenzorg". He emigrated to New Zealand where he also collected. His main pteridophyte collection is at World Museum Liverpool. His bryophyte material at Kew was transferred to the British Museum of Natural History in about 1961 in terms of the Morton Agreement. The University of Canterbury and Christchurch houses some 12,000 of his specimens. Specimens are also cared for at the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL), Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Australia. Beckett was one of three amateur bryologists active in Christchurch, the other two being Robert Brown (1824–1906) and Thomas George Wright (1831–1914).