From Plant Press, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1999.
Prof. Sir Ghillean T. Prance (b. 1937, Brandeston, Suffolk), for eleven years director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and currently the president-elect of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, visited the department in May while in Washington, D.C. to present lectures in conjunction with the Margaret Mee exhibition (see related article in this issue). Iain (short for Ghillean) became acquainted with the department in 1964. During a brief interview wedged into his visitation schedule, he observed that the Smithsonian has a very important position in world plant systematics, and that as one of the major botany departments, it is crucial that the momentum of development of its research, staffing, and collections be maintained with supportive funding.
In August 1999, Sir Iain (who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1995), will vacate his position as the Kew Director to Prof. Peter Crane. Under Prance’s tenure there was an impressive facilities construction program at Kew, resulting in the Sir Joseph Banks building (1990), restoration of the Palm House (1990), and extensions to the Jodrell Laboratory (1994), as well as laying of the foundations of the Millennium Seed Bank (1998) and the Centre for Economic Botany (CEB) with its “Local Plants for Local People” program in northeastern Brazil. Completion of the Flora of Tropical East Africa is now an important Kew corporate goal for the year 2005, with Flora Zambesiaca to be finished shortly thereafter.
Few botanists and conservationists are the subject of a book-scale biography like the one on Prance by Clive Langmead, entitled A Passion for Plants: From the Rainforests of Brazil to Kew Gardens (1995). In it Sir Iain’s fervor for plants and his ideologies are given broad coverage. The book will soon be reissued with the addition of information on “The Kew Years” and color photos. In addition to numerous articles on conservation of the Brazilian forests and detection of areas of endemism in the country, he has made extensive observations and published on the Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae; the giant Victoria amazonica water lily; and his newly described family Rhabdodendraceae. In the field of ethnobotany, Prance has studied the hallucinogens and other plants utilized by at least six Brazilian Amerindian tribes: Mayongong, Paumari, Yanomami, Jagua, Maku and Deni.
In retirement, Prance will be working out of the Plant Sciences Department, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berks. RG6 2AS, England (to which specimens may be sent for identification). Initially his large-scale projects will be to finish Proteaceae for Flora Neotropica, and prepare a treatment of the c.540 species of Chrysobalanaceae for Species Plantarum, a modern flora of the vascular plants of the world. The field guide to 2,000 plant species occurring in a forest reserve near Manaus, Brazil, referred to in his visionary article “Beyond the Floras” (Australian Systematic Botany 11: 153-159. 1998), is now in press for 1999, to be published first in Portuguese, later in English.
Sir Iain and Lady Prance reside at The Old Vicarage, Silver Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3HS, England; telephone 01297 44491; e-mail: gtolmiep@aol.com.
[by Robert DeFilipps]
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