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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
D.W.

Betty Sherriff nee Graham was born at the turn of the century in British India in the Himalayan foothills. She was the youngest daughter of a Scottish vicar and missionary. Dr. John Anderson Graham, who had founded the St. Andrew's Colonial Homes (now the Kalimpong Homes) on behalf of needy Indian children. She had previously been married and had a degree in Botany from Oxford.

Sources: Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive by Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt

Primula by John Richards

(right click, open link in new tab) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1465030/Robb-Anderson.html

(right click, open link in new tab) http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/A/AndersonJAR.htm

Charles C. V. Batts, Mycologist, National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Cambridge, 1951 - 1956.
Lecturer in Plant Pathology, Imperial College of Science, London, 1956 - 1960

"Grahame, an assistant in his family’s ironmonger’s business, botanised on his own and with great dedication compiled a very useful list for a limited area around Duns which is now lodged in the library of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh." - taken from Michael Braithwaite's 'A Short Flora of Berwickshire" (right click, open link in new tab:) https://bsbi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/Short_Flora_of_Berwickshire_2014.pdf