Braggins, John Edward   (1944 -  )

Born on 9 August 1944 in Wellington, NZ; .

He was adopted by descendants of the early Wairarapa settlers Edward George Braggins (1842-1919) and his wife Sarah.

John was raised in Dannevirke until his first year of secondary school, when the family moved to Wellington and he went to Rongotai College.

At Victoria University John was involved in the student-run biological society and went on many of its field trips and those of the Wellington Botanical Society.

After attaining his BSc in 1966 and MSc on the fern Botrichium in 1969 he moved to Auckland where he was awarded his PhD from the University of Auckland in 1975 on the fern genus Pteris.

He became senior lecturer in the botany department. Early in his career he became fascinated by the bryophytes, and when botanist Jessica Beever indicated her growing interest in the mosses he was happy to concentrate on the less known liverworts and hornworts.

He built up an international reputation as New Zealand's leading resident hepaticologist.

Forced into retirement in 2000 by destructuring of the University of Auckland, he became an honorary research associate at the herbarium of the Auckland War Memorial Museum where his specimens are now housed, and a freelance botanical consultant.

He has travelled widely, including overland across Asia with his wife 1975-77; sabbaticals based in Sri Lanka 1980-81 and Kenya 1990-91; January-February 2000 at the Field Museum Chicago on a Visiting Scientist Scholarship and the Pacific to research and obtain images for the book Tree Ferns, published jointly with Mark Large in 2004.

In 1997 his work was acknowledged in the generic name of a rare liverwort, Bragginsella anomala, known only from one site in Arthur's Pass National Park, NZ.

Source: Extracted from:
https://citscihub.s3.amazonaws.com/BRAGGINS_Bragginsella_anomala.pdf
Portrait Photo: 2013, above website.

Collecting localities for 'Braggins, J.E.' from AVH (2026)

Data from 1,534 specimens