Johan Havaas


Johan Johnsen Havaas was a farmer and botanist from Granvin Municipality in Søndre Bergenhus county, Norway.

Early life and career

Johan Havaas grew up on the farm Havås in Granvin Municipality and took an early interest in natural history and botany. He was particularly interested in the cryptogam flora. Havaas had only social studies and was largely self-taught, and also learned foreign languages on his own, so he could both exchange letters with scientists abroad and publish his dissertations. With support from the Bergen Museum, among others, he traveled all over the country and collected and recorded large quantities of mosses, lichens and parasitic fungi. His interest was too low, and he himself described about 6 new species. For example, he found the first specimen of the lichen coastal coral lichen in Norway, near Mosterhamn in Sunnhordaland in 1912. In 1911 he registered a find of bog herring in Stadlandet, a moss that was first found in Norway in the early 1800s. Two lichens have been given a species epithet named after him. One is Flavoplaca havaasii, the other is Umbilicaria havaasii. His work aroused international interest, while he has been less well known in Norway. The Granvin Bygdatun Museum has a collection after Johan Havaas, otherwise there are collections after him at the University of Bergen and at Duke University in North Carolina in the USA. In 1934 he was honored with the King's Medal of Merit in gold. He continued to run his father's farm in Granvin even in his old age. He probably had the last kvanngarden in Granvin.

Selected publications

  • Floristiske undersøgelser i Søndre Bergenhus Amt
  • Nye findsteder for nogle sjeldnere lichener
  • Om vegetationen paa Hardangervidden
  • Beiträge zur Kenntnis der west-norwegischen Flechtflora 1
  • Lichenvegetationen ved Mosterhavn
  • Om vegetasjonen på toppen av Hårteigen
  • Om lichenvegetasjonen på Stadtlandet
  • Notes to the lichen flora of the mountains Steinsæterhorgi and Smøreggfjellet in Granvin, Hordaland fylke
  • Granvins løvmosflora
Johan Havaas has also published two valuable exsiccata works:
  • Lichenes exsiccati Norvegiae, a museo Bergensi editi
  • Lichenes Norvegiae occidentalis exsiccati, a museo Bergensi editi