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Born Kincardineshire 1892; died Edinburgh 1960
Educated at Gordons College Aberdeen and Edinburgh University graduating MA with honours botany, John Macqueen Cowan completed his training in forestry at Oxford before being appointed to the Indian Forest Service in 1914. During ten years with the Indian Service he studied and classified vegetation and made considerable plant collections in Sikkim, Bengal and Burma, travelling with his wife, also a botanist. He was attached to the Indian Army during the First World War and served in Egypt and Palestine. On his return to India he officiated as Director of the Botanical Survey then as Superintendent of Royal Botanic Garden Calcutta from 1926, retiring in 1928. In that year he gained a temporary appointment as a botanist in the herbarium at Kew and in 1929 undertook botanical expeditions to Iraq and Persia principally to collect tulip bulbs but returning with 2,500 plant and herbarium specimens. In 1930 Cowan became assistant to the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a post he was to hold for 24 years. Using the Garden’s extensive collections he became an authority on Rhododendron, publishing widely on this and other genera. During the Second World War he was seconded to the Ministry of Supply build up timber production in west of Scotland. Cowan was President Botanical Society of Edinburgh from 1951 to 1953. On retirement in 1954 he took charge of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) Garden at Inverewe in Wester Ross developing it into a major visitor attraction, and also inaugurated the prestigious NTS garden cruises.
Sources: R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists); HR Fletcher and WH Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; obituary folder.
D.W.

Robert Kaye Greville was an English botanist, mycologist and bryologist. He was also an excellent illustrator.

born at Bu of Hoy, Orkney on 29th November 1913, and died at Kirkwall, Orkney, 15th February 1968, James Sinclair obtained a BSc at Edinburgh University in 1936, became a teacher on Orkney where he also studied algae. He worked as a botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh between 1946 and 1948, moving to become Curator of the Herbarium of the Botanic Gardens in Singapore between 1948 and 1963. He collected plants in Malaya, Borneo, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Born in 1807, the son of a farmer at Blackhouse, near Peterhead, William Brand was initially educated in parish schools before being apprenticed to Writers (solicitors) in Peterhead then in Edinburgh where he entered legal classes at the University. Having completed his legal education he became a Writer to the Signet in 1834 and a partner in the Edinburgh firm of Scott, Findlay and Balderston. In 1846 he was elected Secretary to the Union Bank of Scotland, a position he held until his death. In 1863 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Whilst completing his medical degree at Edinburgh University, Brand developed a strong interest in botany, accompanying Professor Robert Graham (Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Professor of Botany at Edinburgh University) on collecting excursions throughout Scotland during 1830 and 1831. In 1836, when meetings were being held to discuss the creation of a new Botanical Society, Brand was there. He attended the inaugural meeting of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh on the 8th February 1836 making him a founding member and also logical choice for its first Treasurer. He developed ideas for a number of Society publications, devised methods for arranging and cataloguing the Society’s herbarium and collected a significant herbarium collection himself, discovering several new plants including <i>Astragalus alpinus</i> in the process.
He was also a member of the Botanical Society Club, an offshoot of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh initially comprising its original members, becoming its Secretary. At the last Club meeting he attended, in June 1869, he complained of feeling ill. After a couple of months he recovered enough to visit relatives in Peterhead, but became ill again on his return home, dying on October 15th 1869. He left behind a widow, a son and two daughters.
DW and LP

Born Fife, 1837; died Edinburgh 1882
John Sadler joined the staff of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1854, working in the propagating department and herbarium before becoming assistant to Regius Keeper Professor J.H. Balfour, a post he held for almost 25 years. He was appointed curator (principal gardener) at the Garden in 1879. An inveterate rambler he gained a great knowledge of the Scottish flora, especially the flora of Perthshire, and discovered many new stations for plants, several of which perpetuate his name. Sadler lectured regularly to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, which he served as Assistant Secretary from 1858 until 1879. Known as a genial, good natured man his many other professional and social memberships included being a founder member of the Scottish Alpine Botanical Club (1868) and Secretary of the Scottish Arboricultural Society from 1862 to 1879. An all round practical botanist, he was awarded the Neill Prize in 1869 and also lectured in botany at the Royal High School for over 20 years. In 1881 he took charge of the development of the Arboretum, then administered separately from the Garden. While engaged in planting the Arboretum in December snow he caught a chill and died at the age of 45, leaving a widow and 7 children.
Sources: R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists; HR Fletcher and WH Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; (Deni Bown, ‘4 Gardens in One’); obituary folder.
D.W.