Brian Laurence "Bill" Burtt

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

FLS (27 August 1913 – 30 May 2008), was an English botanist and taxonomist who is noted for his contributions to the family

Gesneriaceae Gesneriaceae, the gesneriad family, is a family of flowering plants consisting of about 152 genera and ca. 3,540 species in the tropics and subtropics of the Old World (almost all Didymocarpoideae) and the New World (most Gesnerioideae), with ...

. In a career that spanned 74 years, he worked first at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

, and then at the

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies ...

(RBGE). He made numerous field trips to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

and

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the M ...

and described a total of 637 new plant species. Burtt is denoted by the author abbreviation B.L.Burtt when citing a

botanical name A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the '' International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN) and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar or Group epithets must conform to the ''Intern ...

Education and career

Brian Laurence Burtt, known to colleagues as Bill, was born 27 August 1913 in

Claygate Claygate is an affluent suburban village in Surrey, England, southwest of central London. It is the only civil parish in the borough of Elmbridge. Surrounded by green belt, it lies inside the Greater London Built-up Area. Claygate was once in t ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, to Mabel Johnston and Laurence Buckley Burtt. He was educated at

Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2–19 independent, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...

, excelling in Latin. After Dulwich he was employed at Kew as herbarium assistant to

Arthur William Hill Sir Arthur William Hill (11 October 1875, in Watford – 3 November 1941, in Richmond) was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a noted botanist and taxonomist. The only son of Daniel Hill, he attended Marlborough College where hi ...

, the Director. Here he learnt to work with dried plant material from all over the world, painstakingly dissecting and classifying. Burtt wrote his first paper in 1932 with the assistance of John Hutchinson, the authority on South African plants. This was the first of 384 papers, the final being published in 2006. Another of his papers appeared in 1935 and was co-authored by the Director, Arthur William Hill, dealing with two genera from New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia, ''

Gaultheria ''Gaultheria'' is a genus of about 135 species of shrubs in the family Ericaceae. The name commemorates Jean François Gaultier of Quebec, an honour bestowed by the Scandinavian Pehr Kalm in 1748 and taken up by Carl Linnaeus in his '. These pla ...

'' and ''

Pernettya ''Gaultheria'' is a genus of about 135 species of shrubs in the family Ericaceae. The name commemorates Jean François Gaultier of Quebec, an honour bestowed by the Scandinavian Pehr Kalm in 1748 and taken up by Carl Linnaeus in his '. These pl ...

''. He took night classes in botany at

Chelsea Polytechnic Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educati ...

, and was awarded an

external External may refer to: * External (mathematics), a concept in abstract algebra * Externality In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party' ...

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1936. No work had been done at RBGE on

Zingiberaceae Zingiberaceae () or the ginger family is a family of flowering plants made up of about 50 genera with a total of about 1600 known species of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes distributed throughout tropical Af ...

until the 1960s when Burtt and Paddy Woods went on a collecting trip to Sarawak. By the 1980s RBGE led the world in their extensive living collection of Zingiberaceae from

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

, only being rivalled in recent years by that of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. In 1962 Burtt left Edinburgh on the first of five strenuous collecting trips to Sarawak. He made the first of 19 visits to South Africa in 1964, to collect and study ''

Streptocarpus ''Streptocarpus'' ("twisted fruit" from Greek στρεπτός (''streptos'') "twisted" and καρπός (''carpos'') "fruit") is an Afrotropical genus of flowering plants in the family Gesneriaceae. The genus is native to Afromontane biotopes ...

''. Here he made the acquaintance of fellow botanist Olive Hilliard of

Natal University The University of Natal was a university in the former South African province Natal which later became KwaZulu-Natal. The University of Natal no longer exists as a distinct legal entity, as it was incorporated into the University of KwaZulu-Na ...

, and started a collaboration which would last some 44 years. Their botanical collaboration was extraordinarily prolific, resulting in numerous papers and three books, ''Streptocarpus: an African Plant Study'' (1971), ''The Botany of the Southern Natal Drakensberg'' (1987), and ''Dierama: The Hairbells of Africa'' (1991). They revised the taxonomy of the twinspur, ''Diascia'', a South African member of the

Scrophulariaceae The Scrophulariaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the figwort family. The plants are annual and perennial herbs, as well as shrubs. Flowers have bilateral (zygomorphic) or rarely radial (actinomorphic) symmetry. The Scr ...

. The diascias with which they returned to Scotland were noticed by the nurseryman Hector Harrison, who raised cultivars from this original stock and turned the plant in the space of ten years into one of the most popular subjects for gardeners throughout Britain. Through Burtt's work, Edinburgh became an important research centre for Gesneriaceae, and led to the popularity in Britain of

African violet ''Streptocarpus'' sect. ''Saintpaulia'' is a section within '' Streptocarpus'' subgenus ''Streptocarpella'' consisting of about ten species of herbaceous perennial flowering plants in the family Gesneriaceae, native to Tanzania and adjacent so ...

and ''

'' as window-sill plants. Another favoured family were the

, among which are

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices ...

turmeric Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asi ...

cardamom Cardamom (), sometimes cardamon or cardamum, is a spice made from the seeds of several plants in the genera ''Elettaria'' and ''Amomum'' in the family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia. They are rec ...

and some species of medicinal interest.

Honours and awards

In 2003 the ''

Edinburgh Journal of Botany Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

'' published a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

for his 90th birthday, including numerous contributions from friends and colleagues scattered throughout the world. An attractive tree-dwelling ''

Aeschynanthus ''Aeschynanthus'' is a genus of about 150 species of evergreen subtropical and tropical plants in the family Gesneriaceae. They are usually trailing epiphytes with brightly colored flowers that are pollinated by sunbirds. The genus name comes fro ...

'' from

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...

, ''Aeschynanthus burttii'' Mendum was named in his honour. Burtt was a fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

and the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

, and a holder of the

Veitch Memorial Medal The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize issued annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Goal The prize is awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement o ...

of the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nort ...

, the Linnean Society of London’s Medal for Botany and the Gesneriad Society’s Award of Appreciation.

Personal

Burtt was married to Joyce Daughtry in 1942 with whom he had two sons. They separated in the 1960s, and after a long relationship with Olive Hilliard, Burtt married her in 2006. He died 30 May 2008 at

Loanhead, Midlothian Loanhead is a town in Midlothian, Scotland, in a commuter belt to the south of Edinburgh, and close to Roslin, Scotland, Roslin, Bonnyrigg and Dalkeith. The town was built on coal and oil shale mining, and the paper industries. History Loanhead ...

, Scotland.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Burtt, Brian Laurence 1913 births 2008 deaths People from Claygate Alumni of University of London Worldwide Alumni of the University of London Botanists with author abbreviations English taxonomists English botanists Veitch Memorial Medal recipients Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Linnean Society of London 20th-century British botanists