Background
Tomitaro Makino was born on 24 April 1862 in what later became Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku.
Tomitaro Makino was born on 24 April 1862 in what later became Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku.
Tomitaro Makino dropped out of elementary school and devoted his time to the observation of plants, studying systematic botany on his own.
After serving as an elementary school teacher, in 1881 Tomitaro Makino began making occasional trips to Tokyo and from around 1884 on was often to be found in the botany study room of Tokyo Imperial University, immersed in research.
In 1888 he published his Nihon shokubutsu shi zuhen (Illustrations of the Flora of Japan). Tomitaro Makino later served as an assistant and lecturer at Tokyo University and after his retirement in 1939 devoted himself entirely to the classification and description of his botanical specimens.