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Purdom, William

Purdom, William

  • GB/NNAF/P165646
  • Person
  • 1880-1921

William Purdom was born on the 10th of April at Heversham near Kendal but he spent most of his childhood at the Lodge, Brathay Hall in Ambleside, where his father, William, was head gardener. After leaving school at 14, Purdom's first four years of gardening training was under his father's tuition, before joining Low Nursery of Enfield, and then the Veitch Nursery of Coombe Wood.
In 1902 Purdom applied for a student position at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew where he stayed for six years before being chosen to lead a plant collecting expedition to China in 1909 planned by Veitch and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts. He returned to England in 1912.
Reginald Farrer heard of Purdom's achievements and determined to travel to China to collect plants with Purdom as his assistant. He chose Kansu / Gansu in northern China as it was hoped that this area would yield alpine plants suitable for the British climate. The dangerous and difficult expedition took place between 1914 and 1915 and was funded by Charles Hough of White Craggs, Ambleside and William Groves of Holehird.
Farrer returned to England in 1915, but Purdom elected to remain in China to become a forestry advisor to the Chinese Government. He died in November 1921 in Peking / Beijing after a short illness at the age of 41 while working on a comprehensive forestry survey for the Chinese Railways.
Biographical information on William Purdom was compiled by Margaret I. Perkins, Hon. Archivist for the Lakeland Horticultural Society.

Prijanto, Botjah (1942-1969)

  • PRI
  • Person
  • 1942-1969

The first (and only?) Indonesian palynologist, Dr Botjah Prijanto was born on the 1 April 1942 in Djombang, East Java. He studied at the College of Agricultural Sciences at Tjiawi, Bogor where he obtained his Batchelor degree in 1962 (taxonomy of flowering plants) and discovered a new species of Lancium (Meliaceae).
Prijanto then joined the Botany Division of the Forestry Research Institute in Bogor as Assistant Botanist before continuing his studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1963 under the supervision of Dr Peter H. Davies and Brian (Bill) L. Burtt. He submitted a thesis on the taxonomic problems of the Scrophulariaceae and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1966.
Prijanto then spent a year in the Palynological Laboratory in Stockholm where he studied palynology under Prof. G. Erdtman.
In 1968 he was appointed Botanist at the Forest Research Institute in Bogor, regularly working in the Herbarium Bogoriense.
He travelled to many places in Indonesia on field trips, including Udjong Kulong, Sumbawa and South Sumatra. In 1969 he was collecting in South Celebes when he was tragically killed in a car accident.
(Reference, Reinwardtia, vol.8, 1970, pp.1-2)

Pilling, Liz

  • PIL
  • Person
  • 1940-2009

Liz studied Dentistry at Liverpool University and worked as a school dentist in Edinburgh between approximately 1963 and 1975 before working as a local authority dentist(?) in the Midlothian area, until her retirement, aged 50, in 1990.
A keen amateur botanist and hillwalker, Liz started volunteer work soon after “retirement” at the Royal Museum Annexe in Granton and at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. She regularly volunteered for the Botanical Survey of Scotland, which involved identifying and recording all the flora in a given square kilometre of countryside. She had a particular interest in taxonomy, and her work at the Botanics involved assisting Richard Pankhurst in cataloguing of the Rosaceae family.
With many thanks to Liz's family for this information.

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