Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Born 31st July 1936
at Hurstville, NSW; died ? 2015
While his
childhood was spent in Central Australia his
schooling was firstly at Mittagong Primary
School and then the Hurlstone Agricultural
College in Glenfield in New South Wales.
Having originally intended being a vet he found
that it was plants that were his passion and on
his return to Alice Springs his first jobs were
in gardening and propagating before he opened
The Centre Nursery in the 1950s.
A herbarium had been established in Alice
Springs by George Chippendale in 1954
and Rob joined the staff
around 1960.
The NT Herbarium has 469
records of his collections, predominantly
from 1961 to 1964, some of them collected
with Des Nelson. There is one earlier record
of an Erodium (Geraniaceae) collected from
Ooraminna rockhole in 1957. Rob had a
keen interest in the Geraniaceae family and
was an early member of the South Australian
Geranium & Pelargonium Society, but his
interests clearly predated this membership.
He
described and registered many Pelargonium
hybrids, particulary those developed by Ted
Both and commonly known as "Both's Staphs".
Rob was appointed to a new position as
Technical Assistant at the Adelaide Botanic
Gardens in early 1966. In this position he
collected a large number of specimens for the
newly established herbarium of cultivated
plants, now incorporated in the general
herbarium collection.
While his cultivated
collections are not databased, there are c. 400
of his wild collections resulting from Botanic
Gardens field trips, the major one being to the
Lake Torrens area in 1968.
He also further
extended his interest in growing plants and
became very actively involved in a number
of specialist societies, for several of which he
was the Foundation President, e.g. Australian
Begonia Society, Australian Carnivorous
Plant Society and the Fern Society of South
Australia.
Under
the pseudonym 'Ptilotus', he contributed
the South Australian notes for the monthly
magazine Your Garden.
He left his position in the Botanic Gardens
in the mid 1980s because of poor health but
continued involvement in horticultural pursuits.
One of his enduring interests was in early plant
and seed catalogues for South Australia and
the history of the associated nurseries. This
interest had eventually led to the publication
of Years of Endeavour (1982)
and from the notes gathered in this project, to
Gardens Lost (2006), a history of
some early South Australian gardens; this latter
project was completed by Merilyn Kuchel and
the South Australian branch of the Australian
Garden History Society after Rob donated his
manuscript to them in 1987 due to declining
health.
Source: Extracted from: Obituary by Robyn Barker:
Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 166 (March 2016) p.34-36
Portrait Photo: 1978, George Chippendale collection held by ANBG.
Data from 1,488 specimens