Compiled by Chris Preston

Compiled by Chris D. Preston, Obituaries Editor

19 Green’s Road, Cambridge, CB4 3EF

DONALD (DON) CHARLES FRANCIS COTTON (1950–2022)

Don Cotton, the BSBI Vice-county Recorder for Co. Sligo (v.c.H28), died peacefully at home in Sligo on 13 January 2022, after a long illness.

Don was born in Carlisle on 19 November 1950; he started his secondary education in London but spent his sixth form years at Tiverton Grammar School in Devon before spending a short time in nature conservation in Scotland. He then went to Reading University where he undertook a first degree followed by a PhD on the insects colonising cattle slurry. In 1976, after his time in Reading, Don came to Ireland to do postdoctoral research at University College, Dublin on the impact of new farming practices on the ecology of soil invertebrates, especially earthworms. In the late 1970s he moved to Sligo to lecture in ecology and geology at the Regional Technical College where he taught undergraduates and supervised higher degrees. From the day of his arrival in Sligo Don got

Photo: Don Cotton on a family outing to the top of the Ben Bulbin range, Co. Sligo, 1986. Elaine Cotton involved in recording the natural history of this part of the north-west of Ireland. In the most general terms Don was a naturalist, an ecologist and a conservationist, but more particularly he was an ornithologist, an entomologist, an odonatist and a botanist; he also studied whales, earthworms, hoverflies, spiders, snails, ladybirds, jellyfish and marine debris, though this list is not exhaustive. He added significantly to the knowledge of the distribution of many species in these groups in Ireland. The only validated record of Gervais Beaked Whale in Ireland was due to Don’s curiosity and attention to detail; he had a whale exhumed by Sligo County Council on 26 January 1989, and transported to the Ulster Museum, Belfast where it was identified as a species new to Ireland. In 1981 Don discovered a damselfly, Coenagrion lunulatum, which was new to Britain and Ireland; the species is now known as the Irish Bluet, and is quite widespread in the northern part of Ireland but it has yet to be found in Britain.

Don’s records were submitted to the relevant recording groups and he published over 30 articles in the Irish Naturalists’ Journal and many others in the Sligo Field Club Journal. His most recent article, published jointly with Micheline Sheehy Skeffington just before his death, was on the Strawberry Tree Arbutus unedo in County Sligo. In 2012 Don was awarded the Distinguished Recorder Award from the National Biodiversity and Data Centre for his life-long commitment to conservation.

Sligo and Leitrim, where Don did most of his recording, are both counties famous for their

arctic-alpine plant species at well-known sites such as Glenade, Glencar, the Horseshoe and Ben Bulben. Mullaghmore, a site with well-developed machair and numerous orchid species, is also in Sligo. When Dr Daniel Kelly retired as Vice-county Recorder for Leitrim in 1995, Don was appointed in his place as he had started recording in the county soon after his arrival in Ireland. The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora (2002) contains over 16,000 of Don’s records from the county. Don’s meticulous recording skills added many new vice-county records to what was already a relatively well-recorded county, amongst the most notable species being Blackstonia perfoliata, Carex lasiocarpa, Echium vulgare, Equisetum pratense, E. × trachyodon, Hammarbya paludosa, Limosella aquatica, Milium effusum and Oenanthe fluviatilis. Even after his appointment as VCR for Sligo in 2006, Don continued his interest in Leitrim’s plants until shortly before his death.

Don’s first botanical records from Sligo date from 1981, soon after his arrival, and by the time that the New Atlas was published Don had collected over 11,000 plant records for the county. On Dr Sharon Parr’s retirement from the position of VCR for Sligo in 2006, Don took over her position to officially record in his home county where he had been living and recording for the previous quarter of a century. As in Leitrim, Don’s keen eye, methodical quartering of the ground and accurate identification skills added many new first county records for Sligo. Some of the more interesting were Eleocharis acicularis, Fumaria purpurea, Hieracium umbellatum, Lathraea squamaria, Luzula pilosa and most notably Viola persicifolia at Lough Gowra in 2006.

The yet to be published Plant Atlas 2020 will contain some 100,000 of Don’s records for Sligo and Leitrim and they will be a fitting tribute to his years of exploring these two counties.

Don was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and from then until late 2021 he received many different courses of treatment. Each would be effective in suppressing the myeloma for a period but eventually the markers for the disease would increase again, necessitating a change to a different treatment. By late 2021 there were no new treatments left to give him and through December he deteriorated quite quickly, finally succumbing to the disease in January 2022. Don continued to botanise during his illness, spending many days in the field exploring Counties Leitrim and Sligo.

Don will be sadly missed by all those in Ireland interested in conservation and natural history, but he will be especially missed by his friends in the BSBI. Don is survived by his wife Elaine and his daughters Róisín and Aisling; he was predeceased by his son Martin.

MICHAEL JAMES YATES FOLEY MBE, PhD (1935–2022)

Ifirst met Michael by chance in August 1985 at Sandscale Haws in south-west Cumbria. We had a long and, for me, informative conversation during which he promised to show me Orchis morio (as it then was) at several south Cumbrian sites the following spring. That second meeting in May 1986 was wholly successful and was the first of many over the next 35 years, encompassing visits to all parts of Britain, shortly followed by trips to Ireland, Gotland, Crete, Cyprus, the Peloponnese, Spain, Switzerland and France. Initially, orchids were our main target but Michael had a wide and constantly evolving range of botanical enthusiasms and interests and, as the years went by, salvias, broomrapes, horsetails, sedges and violas were added to our list with birds and butterflies and, latterly, other insects playing an increasingly important role. What never failed to amaze me was the way Michael always seemed to know exactly the places to go to see the various species we were looking for. In the wilds of the Peloponnese, he might say, ‘We need to park here and walk up this little valley and then, over the top there should be …’.

Michael Foley after receiving his MBE, 2003.

And there was! I soon realised this was due to a wide range of contacts throughout Europe, a phenomenal memory, meticulous planning and, above all, a feel for where a particular plant would grow.

Michael (often Mike to his friends) was born on 15 December 1935, the only child of Harriet (née Yates) and Robert Foley, a cotton mill manager. For the first years of his life the family lived in Darwen, Lancashire before moving a short distance to 87 Ribchester Road, Clayton-le-Dale in September 1939, the house where Michael was to live until his death in 2022. He attended Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, obtaining A-levels in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and playing both association football and cricket for the school first teams. He was called for Lancashire youth team cricket trials as an off-spinner but was not selected. He obtained a BSc Tech. in Chemistry at the University of Manchester and an MSc Tech. in Organic Chemistry (with a thesis on steric inhibition of mesomerism) in 1960. He was a keen walker and mountaineer, on one occasion completing half the Cuillin ridge by himself after his companion decided that the task was too challenging. After university, he was employed at Crown Paints as a research and development chemist until he was made redundant in 1988. Following a short period of work as an ecological consultant, Michael began a PhD at the University of Lancaster on the taxonomy of some European species of Orobanche. This was successfully completed in 1998. Before this date Michael had produced several academic papers on botanical matters but he subsequently wrote many more (30 in total) on subjects as diverse as Salvia veneris in Cyprus, Orobanche on the Arabian Peninsula and Spiranthes aestivalis in north-west Europe. He also wrote articles on little-appreciated British botanists and a paper on Christopher Merrett’s Pinax rerum naturalium britannicarum (Foley, 2006). Shortly after gaining his PhD he carried out work in conjunction with Ian Hedge of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and became an associate of the Garden. He wrote the text for Orchids of the British Isles (Foley & Clarke, 2005), was joint author of two BSBI Handbooks, Sedges of the British Isles (Jermy et al., 2007) and Violas of Britain and Ireland (Porter & Foley, 2017) and contributed substantial items on Orobanche to Flora Iberica and the Flora of Nepal. Whilst maintaining the highest scientific and academic standards, Michael had the happy knack of writing interestingly and his work is always highly readable. He was also able to back up his investigations with photographs, as he was a skilled and imaginative photographer. During this period of his life he travelled widely and frequently in Britain and Europe, sometimes alone, sometimes with Ruth and Trevor Piearce (including two visits to Svalbard), sometimes with me, in pursuit of plants. His trips were not for the faint-hearted! I remember on more than one occasion driving to the Scottish Highlands, climbing a substantial hill, collecting details of a sedge, going back down the hill and then driving home – 600 miles, and a moderate climb, all in one day. Or I might get a phone call one evening ‘Do you fancy a trip to France to look at Spiranthes aestivalis – on Friday? If we sleep in the car and don’t hang around we can manage it in two days’. Though Michael will be remembered by many botanists for his exceptional contributions to botanical knowledge, he had many other interests, chief among which was cricket and the coaching of

young cricketers. He devoted much of his life to this, being awarded an MBE for services to sport in 2003. One of the many young cricketers he had coached later said of him ‘One thing that really stood out about him was that he wasn’t just interested in the good players. He wanted everyone to do well’.

Michael’s many other interests were mainly in the field of natural history and were wideranging – hares, waxcaps, birds, butterflies, bees and orthopterans. As with his botanical interests, he was a great communicator, administering several Facebook sites and writing local guides to the insects of north-west England, as well as a short volume of poetry Forsinard and Other Memories in 2019. In all these fields and in others new to him he rapidly gained a high level of knowledge, testimony to a quick and retentive brain and an ability to assimilate and synthesise information. He retained these qualities to the end of his life and, even when health problems had greatly reduced his mobility, he never lost his enthusiasm for wildlife and for getting out in the field – only days before his death, he was making plans to re-visit a site for Neotinea ustulata in Wensleydale and even arranging a trip by plane to the Outer Hebrides to see the Great Yellow Bumblebee. Michael died, from heart failure, on 21 February 2022.

Michael wore his scholarship lightly, never forcing his views on others and always at pains to ensure that the opinions of fellow enthusiasts were taken into account. His great number of friends in Britain and Europe, in various fields of activity, are a testament to his warmth, his enthusiasm and his readiness to share his knowledge – he will be greatly missed.

Foley, M.J.Y. 2006. Christopher Merrett’s Pinax rerum naturalium britannicarum (1666): annotations to what is believed to be the author’s personal copy. Archives of Natural History 33: 191–201. Foley, M.[J.Y.] & Clarke, S[.J.] 2005. Orchids of the British Isles.

Griffin Press, Cheltenham. Jermy, A.C., Simpson, D.A., Foley, M.J.Y. & Porter, M.S. 2007.

Sedges of the British Isles (3rd edn). Botanical Society of the

British Isles, London. Porter, M.[S.] & Foley, M.[J.Y.] 2017. Violas of Britain and

Ireland. Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, Bristol.

CHARLES GORDON HANSON (1938–2021)

Gordon (as he was always known) Hanson’s name may not be familiar to many presentday botanists, but his passion for and commitment to studying the nature and origins of our alien flora has made huge contributions both regionally and nationally. In later years his attendance at indoor and field meetings was constrained by prolonged bouts of ill health, with the result that few local contemporaries had the chance to interact with him personally. However, the number of records for exotic and introduced species attributed to Gordon in successive Floras of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, alongside his research papers and a vast amount of herbarium material, is ample testimony to his achievements, enthusiasm and expertise.

Gordon was born on 7 September 1938 at Langley near Slough and grew up in that area,

Gordon Hanson in his garden of alien plants, Ware, Hertfordshire, September 2017. June Crew

obtaining a scholarship to Slough Grammar School. At school he developed a reputation as something of a prankster, but secondary education must also have helped to develop the passions and rigour that characterised both his subsequent professional and amateur careers. He served briefly as a laboratory assistant at the renowned Fulmer Research Institute before embarking on a part-time threeyear HND physics course at Kingston Polytechnic. Having then obtained a teaching certificate at Huddersfield Polytechnic, he was appointed in 1964 to a lecturership in physics and engineering at the Mid-Herts College of Further Education in Welwyn Garden City. His lectures were reputedly rather unorthodox and hands-on, involving such props as sledgehammers and drain covers, but no doubt very memorable as a consequence. He also produced a physics textbook to accompany his teaching (Hanson, 1971). Gordon married Jill at her home town of Norwich in 1960, and they had a son Andrew and daughter Philippa, born in 1964 and 1966, respectively. In 1966 the Hansons moved to a house in Coltsfoot Road, Ware, where Gordon and Jill lived ever since.

Aside from his day job, Gordon had many consuming passions including music (he sang with the Ware Choral Society), railway history, Meccano (an enthusiasm nurtured in childhood that prevailed though his adult life) and gardening. The garden at Coltsfoot Road acquired widespread fame for its collections of plants obtained on overseas holidays, cultivated from bird seed (see below), or encompassing specialised taxonomic groups. As an example of the latter, his assemblage of Cotoneaster species proved a valued resource for Peter Sell when producing descriptions of flowers and fruits for Volume 2 of Sell & Murrell’s Flora of Great Britain and Ireland.

Gordon’s passion for alien plants was absorbing and infectious. June Crew, a staff colleague at the Mid Herts College and a fellow naturalist, recalls his talks on this subject to the Cheshunt Natural History Society where he circulated specimens from such exotic genera as Amaranthus, Datura and Nicandra. His associated field meetings focused on alluring habitats such as sewage works and rubbish tips, and most excitedly also included fields in south Bedfordshire where farmers had incorporated, as soil fertiliser, shoddy from sheep fleeces imported from Australasia and South America. Some of the material collected on these forays was cultivated for further inspection in greenhouses at the University of Hertfordshire’s (then Hatfield Polytechnic’s) field station at Bayfordbury, a site that itself has generated some interesting botanical discoveries. In its disused glasshouses, Gordon found a mystery species of Solanum that became increasingly frequent as the glasshouses became increasingly derelict, and has since even spread outdoors. This plant was assigned a number of incorrect names until Sandy Knapp at the Natural History Museum diagnosed it as Solanum chacoense. This is a South American species only ever recorded in Europe in the vicinity of research institutes involved in potato improvement and utilising S. chacoense as a source of resistance to potato blight. Mystery solved: before it was acquired by Hatfield Polytechnic, Bayfordbury was the site of the original John Innes Institute, which at the time was undertaking work on potato breeding!

Perhaps his most significant botanical contribution and enduring legacy was painstaking research on the occurrence of alien plants originating from seed sold for wild and caged birds, based both on documenting the presence of such plants in the ‘wild’ as well as cultivating material from commercial seed mixes. Gordon’s son Andrew recalls ‘ah yes, the bird seed! I recall being trained from an early age to sort through packets of the stuff, and remember being particularly impressed to be told I’d found seed of Cannabis sativa’. A landmark paper in Watsonia (Hanson & Mason, 1985) presented a list of 425 species believed to have been imported by this means, of which 318 had actually been cultivated by the authors from birdseed mixtures. A follow-up paper (Hanson, 2000) added a further 44 taxa to the list. As editor of BSBI’s new online journal British & Irish Botany, one of us (ID) had the pleasure of working with Gordon on a further paper (Hanson, 2019) dealing specifically with plants originating as impurities in batches of Niger (Guizotia abyssinica)

seed imported as wild bird food from Ethiopia and south Asia. The paper includes the (no doubt) considerable understatement ‘sorting through 1kg packets of Niger seed with a hand lens and tweezers to separate out the impurities is a laborious task but is necessary because the product is normally well over 99% pure’! The obscurity of many species retrieved and cultivated required expert assistance with identification provided by one of the current authors (EJC) among others. This paper is also notable for including images of specimens from Gordon’s herbarium that leave no doubt about the great care taken in their preparation.

Material collected and preserved by Gordon is held at the Natural History Museum, National Museum of Wales, University of Reading, North Herts Museum and the personal herbarium of Eric Clement. Material remaining at Ware following Gordon’s death on 13 December 2021 has been transferred to the Bayfordbury campus for sorting and eventual rehousing. In its entirety this material represents an astonishing legacy of what was a purely amateur pursuit.

Hanson, G. 1971. Problems and Examples in Physics for ONC/

OND. McGraw Hill, Maidenhead. Hanson, C.G. & Mason, J.L. 1985. Bird seed aliens in Britain.

Watsonia 15: 237–252. Hanson, C.G. 2000. Update on birdseed aliens (1985–1998).

Watsonia 23: 213–220. Hanson, C.G. 2019. Birdseed aliens originating from Niger (Guizotia abyssinica) wild bird food. British & Irish Botany 1: 292–308.

CLIVE MARTIN LOVATT (1955–2022)

It is with great regret that we have to report the sudden and unexpected death of our friend and colleague Clive Lovatt on 1 March 2022, at the age of 67. Clive was born on 15 February 1955 in Coventry, where his father was a bank manager, whilst his mother later ran an antiques shop in Tewkesbury. His older sister, Wendy, became a general medical practitioner. Clive’s father was a keen walker and naturalist and encouraged Clive’s interest from an early age. Clive attended primary school in Kenilworth and then Warwick School, despite having a fight with a friend on the entrance exam day and not completing the afternoon’s paper. At school he also enjoyed dancing which led to a keen interest in Morris dancing and folk music. He was a squeeze box player and owned a large collection of melodeons. He belonged for a time to a Morris group in Shepton Mallet.

Clive obtained a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1974 to read chemical engineering but transferred to botany in his second year. On graduation he moved to Bristol University in 1977 to work for a PhD under Dr Lewis Frost. His thesis The history, ecology and status of the rare plants and the vegetation

Clive Lovatt. Liz McDonnell

of the Avon Gorge, Bristol (1982) ran to two volumes and 722 pages. Dr Frost, he later wrote, ‘in his own way, let me get on with my historical researches even though some were regarded as peripheral’ (Nature in

Avon 67: 57, 2007). Whilst undertaking his research he joined Bristol Naturalists’ Society and we first met him on their field meetings. The most memorable occasion was a meeting Clive was leading in the Gorge on 25 April 1981 when he turned up late, having rescued a woman who was in imminent danger of drowning in the nearby Bristol Docks. For this feat he received a Royal Humane Society award and certificate.

Shortly after the completion of his thesis he married Pam. At the age of 26 Clive became a teacher at Wells Cathedral School, teaching science and enjoying Saturday rugby. This was the last year teaching was allowed without a diploma. After a short time he changed career to train as an accountant with David Pearman’s old firm in Shepton Mallet, eventually being employed by Deloittes in Kenya. His move to Africa meant leaving behind many botanical books with friends for safe custody. He spent 25 years there, mainly in Malawi where he kept a large number of Alsatian dogs. Before returning to Britain he maintained his correspondence with local botanists and he agreed in 2004 to write the annual ‘Bristol Botany’ report for Bristol Naturalists’ Society, following the retirement of Professor Willis.

Clive returned to Britain in 2010 and after his divorce he briefly lived at Mountain Ash in the South Wales valleys before buying a house in Shirehampton, close to his beloved Avon Gorge. In 2011 he joined the staff of BSBI as part-time Administrative Officer, working from home. His role included administering the contracts with the country conservation agencies and keeping the books for the Honorary Treasurers. He was present during the tortuous change from an unincorporated charity to a charitable company, becoming Company Secretary after the transition. On inheriting money from his mother and an aunt he was able in 2016 to retire gracefully from these posts that he had found increasingly uncongenial. He was also able to buy a town house in Stroud which was large enough to accommodate his botanical library and gave him views over Rodborough Common.

From almost the moment he arrived in Bristol Clive was wedded to the Avon Gorge and its unique flora. He pursued botany with increasing enthusiasm. We remember that in April 1985 whilst square bashing for the Flora of the Bristol Region on Worlebury Hill, Weston-super-Mare with Liz McDonnell and Captain Roe, author of the 1981 Flora of Somerset and who was probably on one of his last field meetings, Clive announced that we had to record absolutely everything as we might never return to that locality again. Clive would often carry on botanising long after the rest of the party had worn themselves out and returned home or gone to the pub. His botanising would continue until the arrival of dusk. If the botany at a site was good Clive could become completely engrossed in his pursuit and he would lose all sense of time. This is best illustrated when a quick stop at a motorway service station revealed some fine arable weeds. This quick stop turned into a three-hour stay and resulted in a fixed penalty parking fine.

Once back in England Clive had resumed more active botany with the Bristol Naturalists’ Society and became the President of the Botanical Section and chaired the library committee; he was also the honorary archivist. Over the years he contributed many well researched and erudite historical articles for the society’s monthly newsletter. He also joined the Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society, eventually becoming a joint author of the annual county botanical report in The Gloucestershire Naturalist. At about the same time Clive joined the Somerset Rare Plant Group and recently became their treasurer. He led many immensely enjoyable field meetings and workshops for these societies. He was in the process of writing an ‘Historical Flora of the Avon Gorge’ at the time of his death.

In 2014 the BSBI approached him to become the Vice-county Recorder for West Gloucestershire following our retirement. He gladly accepted this role and recorded many first county and vice-county records during his botanical exploration. Lately he had been assisting in the county wildlife trust’s Habimap Project.

Clive was a prolific collector of botanical books which occupied several floors of his town house. He particularly enjoyed his collection of annotated

county Floras which included multiple copies of J.W. White’s The Flora of Bristol (1912) and the Flora of Gloucestershire by Riddelsdell et al. (1948). Latterly he would spend hours trawling eBay and whenever a copy of White’s Flora was offered for sale, either with annotations or even just with the signature of a notable botanist on the fly leaf, he would snap it up. He collected all manner of botanical ephemera and announced one day with great glee that he had secured several medicine bottles from the pharmacy of one of his botanical heroes, G.C. Druce of Oxford. He kindly shared the hoard with his friends. Whenever he saw a painting of the Avon Gorge, usually in watercolour, Clive would snap it up eagerly and these covered the walls of his home. These views of the Gorge together with his large herbarium of pressed plants contained in three cabinets originally owned by J.W. White have been donated to Bristol Museum, as has the bryophyte herbarium of R.M. Payne which Clive had custody of.

Clive was very active in his final days, leading a Bristol Naturalists’ meeting at Portishead, delivering our joint county botanical report for 2021 for publication and he spent his final day studying Sphagnum species in the Forest of Dean with three friends.

We make no apology in selecting quotes, with some slight adaptation, from Clive’s botanical hero James Walter White’s Flora of the Bristol Region, his favourite historical flora, and incorporating our own words. Clive strove to emulate the standards of this botanist and his publication throughout his own botanical research and field work. In the words of White:

He endeavoured to make botany more interesting to those with a love for wild flowers, who were willing to learn more, respecting the natural riches that surround them. He was a very patient teacher. With friends he enjoyed many delightful experiences that fall to the lot of a field botanist wherever he may bend his steps. If there be any lesson to learn or advantage to gain from studying the doings of people of botany it must be the same that is taught or conferred by his example as the mark he has left upon the world. Namely we should emulate his diligence and that the desire to rank with him in good repute should be stimulated and strengthened. In any case it is surely fitting that we should sometimes pause and turn aside from the occupations of today, thankfully to remember and acknowledge what Clive has done for us.

We have lost our treasured and valued great friend of more than 40 years. He was our go to botanist, someone we could share our plant identification doubts with, someone who would appreciate and share our great botanical moments and finds with and he shared his doubts and triumphs with us. In travelling around the county there is nowhere that either we have fond memories of botanising with our kind friend or that we wished to take him and show him some botanical treasure. He is sorely missed.

OBITUARY NOTES

Since we compiled the last Obituary Notes, news has reached us of the death of the following members or former members, including several of very long standing. We send our sympathy to their families and friends.

Mr J.E Aslett of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, a member for 63 years; Mrs P. Clark of Holyhead, Anglesey, a member for 5 years; Mr B. Goater of Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, a member for 62 years; Dr G.S. Joyce of Sevenoaks, Kent, a member for 21 years; Mrs P. E. Popely of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, a member for 16 years; Prof. R.O. Robinson of Amberley, West Sussex, a member for 24 years; Mr T. Swainbank of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, a member for 30 years; Mr F.M. Tulley of Coupar Angus, Perth & Kinross, a member for 15 years; Mr C. Walker of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, a member for 54 years.

Assisted by the Membership Secretary, Gwynn Ellis. Date of compilation 3 August 2022.