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http://www.kewguild.org.uk/media/pdfs/v10s95p881-36.pdf

Born Vienna, Austria 1884; died Hawaii 1962
Relatively uneducated, penniless and often in poor health Joseph Rock left Vienna as a young man in 1902, travelling through Europe and on to the United States. Moving to Hawaii where he was appointed by the Division of Forestry as its first botanical collector, he became a naturalised American in 1913. Although self taught as a botanist, Rock was appointed lecturer at the College in Hawaii, established its first herbarium, and served as its first curator from 1911 until 1920. In 1920 he was appointed by the US Department of Agriculture to find a tree in south east Asia the oil from which was supposed to be useful in treating leprosy. This was the start of his new life as an explorer and in 1922 he arrived in Lijiang, Yunnan which was to become his ‘home’ province though he also travelled widely in Szechuan, Gansu and also Tibet. He was to spend the next 27 years living among the people of the Western Provinces of China collecting plants for western museums and exploring and mapping mountains on the Tibetan border. Working for organisations such as Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Natural History Museum and the National Geographic Society, he photographed and wrote about the indigenous plants, people and geography of the remote region. He entered the lamaseries of Tibet and became deeply involved in the social and political conditions that affected Western China, witnessing much brutality during various rebellions. He was forced to leave communist China in 1949, but continued travelling around the world, eventually returning to Hawaii where he died in 1962. Rock bequeathed his extensive photographic collection to the archives of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, alongside his diaries documenting his travels.
Source: ‘In China’s Border Provinces; The Turbulent Career of Joseph Rock’ S.B. Sutton. ‘Joseph Rock and His Shangri-La’ Jim Goodman. Archives
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Amy N. Cameron has been identified as the regular photographer of MacWatt’s collection of Primulas and other items in his horticultural collection, and responsible for the illustrations in his publications.
Amelia Nisbet Cameron was born at Trinity Lodge in Duns, Berwickshire on 21 October 1871 to the late Rev Daniel Cameron (1840 -1871) and Elizabeth Waller Dowling Brown (1842-1879). Daniel, Minister of Ayton Parish Church had died on 3 June. Elizabeth remarried on 28 June 1875, to William George Dunlop (Scotsman 29 June 1875, p8) but died 4 years later.
In 1891, Amelia, now aged 19, is listed in the census with her elder sister Elizabeth Waller Cameron (1869 -1955), aged 21, as living with their great-aunt Margaret Stuart Brown, aged 68, sister of their maternal grandfather Forbes Scott Brown (1816-1874). Along with 7 Brown relatives and 8 live-in servants, their residence was Nisbet House, the castle/mansion at Edrom. Both young women were described as 'living on independent means'. As they had lost both their parents when small, Margaret Brown may have had a leading part in their up-bringing.
By the time of the 1901 census, Amelia, with her great-aunt and 3 servants, is recorded as living again in the place of her birth, - Trinity Lodge, a respectable but less magnificent residence, long in the hands of the Brown family. It seems that Trinity Lodge remained Amelia's home for the rest of her life. In his 1923 monograph on 'The Primulas of Europe', Dr John MacWatt refers to her as Miss Amy N. Cameron of Trinity, Duns. At 'Morelands' in Station Road, Duns, his married home with extensive gardens, MacWatt would have been a near neighbour.
In 1923 Dr John MacWatt publishes ‘The Primulas of Europe’ with 41 black and white and 8 coloured illustrations. In the introduction (vi) he states: ‘My thanks are also due to Miss Amy Cameron, Trinity, Duns, for the generous way in which she has expended time and labour in the photographs which add so greatly to the value of the book’. Some of these, published earlier, were among figs 25-40 illustrating his 1913 paper to the Third Primula Conference and/or were among the MacWatt prints dated 1913 in the RBGE collection, confirming that Amy was already his regular plant photographer by this date.
When interviewed in April 2023, Mrs Elizabeth Farquharson, MacWatt’s youngest child, then aged 107, had clear memories of Amy. She described her as shorter and stouter than her elder sister. Although she was artistic and sometimes tinted her prints, it was for her accuracy that MacWatt particularly appreciated her work. Amy apparently had no interest in selling her prints and rarely even signed them.
In New Flora and Silva, Vol 2, No 2 (January 1930), 111-112, Amy Cameron provided a note, illustrated with a photograph (Fig xxxv) on ‘Digitalis dubia’ in the New and Interesting Plants section. She describes and comments on the performance of this perennial foxglove from the Balearic Islands, which she has grown from seed. ‘The Foxglove in the accompanying picture is growing at the top of a miniature cliff, with Erica vagans St. Kerverne growing near it’. This implies that a year before her death she was still active as a photographer, and was herself a knowledgeable horticulturist.
Amy Nisbet Cameron died on 19 April 1931. A report of her funeral appeared in Berwickshire News and Advertiser 28 April 1931, p6; the pall bearers listed included her sister, Dr MacWatt, and Mr George Hume, gardener, Trinity.
Biography by Dr. Helen Bennett

W.H. Campbell was a student of Robert Graham and one of the founding members of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh in 1836, becoming its first Secretary.

Born c 1638/39; died Edinburgh 1719.
Little is known of Sutherland’s early life but by the 1670s he was responsible for maintaining the original Edinburgh botanic gardens at St. Anne’s Yards near Holyroodhouse. In 1676 was appointed ‘intendant’ of the new Edinburgh Physic Garden, leased by the town council at a site near Trinity Hospital (later known as the Botanic Garden) where his responsibilities included teaching botany to medical students. He built an international network of correspondents who sent him seeds and plants and he is credited with the introduction a number of new species including the common larch. By the early 1680s the Trinity Hospital garden contained over 2000 plants, described by Sutherland in his ‘Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis’. The Garden was heavily damaged in 1689 during the siege of Edinburgh Castle when the Nor’ Loch drained into its grounds and Sutherland supervised its repair and successful renovation. In 1695 he was appointed to a new post as professor of botany at Edinburgh University and in the same year he assumed responsibility for planting the Town College Garden (known as the Physick Garden) as well as the running of the private Royal Garden at Holyrood, known as the Kings Garden. In recognition of his contribution he became the King’s Botanist under a royal warrant of William III in 1699. In 1706 he resigned from his professorship and the town and college keeper posts, though in 1710 in a Warrant of Queen Anne he was created the first Regius Professor of Botany for the Royal Garden, a rival to the University. In retirement he continued his botanical work as well as his specialist interest in coins and medals.
Sources: Dictionary of National Biography; HR Fletcher and WH Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; Deni Bown, ‘4 Gardens in One’; (R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists).
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Born Manchester 1885, died London 1958
Frank Kingdon-Ward took part one of the natural sciences tripos at Cambridge but was forced to leave university after 2 years when the death of his father left the family impoverished. After teaching in Shanghai, in 1909 he joined an American zoological expedition up the Yangtze to the borders of Tibet which gave him a lifelong passion for exploration. Through a family contact he became a professional plant collector for AK Bulley of Bee’s Nursery (replacing George Forrest), setting off to south west China for a year long expedition in 1911. A second commission saw him returning to the Himalayas in 1913-14 before moving west into Burma, Assam and Tibet. After serving in the army in the First World War he returned to collecting with a successful fifth expedition in the upper section of the Brahmaputra in 1924-25 where he collected 97 different rhododendrons as well as the elusive blue poppy <i>Meconopsis betonicifolia</i> which became one of the most prized garden plants. As a botanist Kingdon-Ward had an excellent knowledge of several plant groups including primulas, lilies and gentians as well as rhododendrons and poppies and also published on plant geography. A plantsman and horticultural ‘connoisseur’ with a flair for collecting good flower forms, he was a keen observer of scenery and an excellent photographer. His main reputation however was as an explorer and one of the last great plant collectors (he went on 25 expeditions in total, latterly with his second wife) with the temperament and resilience to work, usually alone, in challenging and largely uncharted country.
Sources: Dictionary of National Biography; Gardeners Chronicle 1958; obituary folder; (R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists).
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