Richard Kenneth "Dick" Brummitt (22 May 1937 – 18 September 2013) was a British botanist.

Early life

He was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

in1937 where he went to university and did his Ph.D. on

Calystegia ''Calystegia'' (bindweed, false bindweed, or morning glory) is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the bindweed family Convolvulaceae. The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution in temperate and subtropical regions, but with half of ...

Career

In 1963 he was employed by the

Ministry of Overseas Development The Department for International Development (DFID) was a ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom, from 1997 to 2020. It was responsible for administering foreign aid internationally. The DFID was founded by the UK gov ...

working in the African Section at the

Herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant biological specimen, specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sh ...

of the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

. He joined the staff of Kew in 1968 working on

Leguminosae Fabaceae () or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomen ...

for

Flora Zambesiaca ''Flora Zambesiaca'' is an ongoing botanical project aimed at achieving a full account of the flowering plants and ferns of the Zambezi River basin covering Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and the Caprivi Strip, and is published by ...

. He was known for his expertise on

Botanical Nomenclature Botanical nomenclature is the formal, scientific naming of plants. It is related to, but distinct from taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. Plant taxonomy is concerned with grouping and classifying plants; Botany, botanical nomenclature then provides na ...

and was awarded the Kew Medal in 1991 for his contributions to nomenclature. From 1975 he was secretary of the Committee for Spermatophyta, which became the Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants, until 2011. He was one of the founders in the 1980s of

Biodiversity Information Standards Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), originally called the Taxonomic Databases Working Group, is a non-profit scientific and educational association that works to develop open standards for the exchange of biodiversity data, facilitating bio ...

(TDWG), and was author of Vascular plant families and genera (1992) and Authors of Plant Names (1992). He worked on the Index to European Taxonomic Literature which became the Kew Record of Taxonomic Literature (1971–2007). He was also a plant collector in southern Europe, Russia, East Africa, and Australia. He contributed to the debate on

paraphyly Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

versus Hennigian classification. A series of papers on Paraphyly was dedicated to Dick Brummitt in 2014. Brummitt retired in 1997 but continued to work in the Herbarium.

Eponymy

brummittii'' P.P.A.Ferreira & Sim.-Bianch. and ''

Alchemilla ''Alchemilla'' is a genus of herbaceous perennial plants in the family Rosaceae, with the common name lady's mantle applied generically as well as specifically to ''Alchemilla mollis'' when referred to as a garden plant. The plant used as a herb ...

brummittii'' K.M.Purohit & Panigrahi are named for him.

Personal life

Brummitt was married to Hilary Jane Crawford (1945–1988) in 1968 and had three children, Patrick, Neil and Lindsay.

Selected publications

* Brummitt, R. K. ''Index to European taxonomic literature''. 1966, 1968, 1969 (from 1968 with Ian Keith Ferguson; published in ''Regnum Vegetabile''). * Brummitt, R.K. 1992. ''Vascular plant families and genera.'' Royal Botanic Garden, Kew * Brummitt, R.K. & Powell, C.E, 1992. R. K. ''Authors of plant names. A list of authors of scientific names of plants, with recommended standard forms of their names, including abbreviations''. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1992 * Hollis, S. & Brummitt, R. K., World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. Plant Taxonomic Database Standards No. 2. Version 1.0. 1992 Published for the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences (TDWG) by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh * Brummitt, R.K. 1997. Taxonomy versus cladonomy, a fundamental controversy in biological systematics. Taxon 46 723–734 * Brummitt, R. K. with assistance from F. Pando, S. Hollis, N. A. Brummitt and others. 2001. Plant Taxonomic Database Standards No. 2.ed. 2. World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, ed. 2. * Brummitt, R. K. ''World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions''. TDWG, 2001 * Brummitt, Richard K. 2003. How to chop up a tree. Taxon 51 31–41. * Brummitt, Richard K. 2003. Further dogged defense of paraphyletic taxa. Taxon 52 803–804

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brummitt, Richard Kenneth Botanists with author abbreviations British botanists People from Liverpool Botanists active in Kew Gardens 1937 births 2013 deaths