Bernard Hyland, known as Bernie Hyland, has a long career as an Australian botanist. He has contributed significantly to understanding of Australian plants especially rainforest plants. His contributions include many activities. He has collected eighteenthousand specimens. He has named and scientifically described hundreds of species, especially species of his home and workplace the Wet Tropics of Queensland. He has particular expertise in the Australian rainforests’ rich diversity of species of the plant families Lauraceae and Myrtaceae. For instance, his Lauraceae 1989 major revision of sevengenera of one hundred and fifteen species, and his rainforest Myrtaceae 1983 major revision of seventy species of the genus Syzygium and allied genera.
A major project he worked on for approximately 45 years is the Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants information system. He retired in 2002, continuing as a CSIRO Honorary Research Fellow, contributing to the development of the most recent release, the 2010 6th edition, titled: This edition achieved the goal of making it freely available, via the internet page: http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/cd-keys/rfk/. This current edition 6 version 6.1 describes 2553 species, and allows identification via an interactive, user determined multiple–entry–point key. Each of the species described in the information system has the voucher evidence of dried, pressed, mounted specimens and preserved, bottled, wet specimens, held in the Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University, Cairns. For each species, the information system includes more than just the identification key’s comprehensive plant characteristics. In addition, it includes fact sheets providing comprehensive descriptions of: current names and synonyms, common names, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, seedlings, known distributions in the Wet Tropics, Australia-wide and globally, ecology, wood characteristics of selected tree species, life forms and, a total of, more than 11,000 paintings, illustrations and photographs.
Plants named in his honour
The genus Hylandia described in 1974 by Herbert K. Airy Shaw, and the following species have names in his honour:
