Bernard de Winter (31 July 1924 - 8 May 2017

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

) was a South African botanist who from 1973 was Director of the Botanical Research Institute, which later became the National Botanical Institute and then the

South African National Biodiversity Institute The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is an organisation tasked with research and dissemination of information on biodiversity, and legally mandated to contribute to the management of the country's biodiversity resources. ...

. He attended

Pretoria University The University of Pretoria (, ) is a multi-campus public university, public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and ''de facto'' capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 as the Pretoria campus of the Johan ...

from 1942 to 1946, and was awarded an MSc in 1947. After teaching for a period, he joined the staff of the National Herbarium, and was made Officer in Charge of Botanical Survey in 1959, and Assistant Director in 1963. His main contributions to botany have been publications on Ebenaceae and

Gramineae Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated i ...

, especially the genus ''

Eragrostis ''Eragrostis'' is a large and widespread genus of plants in the Poaceae, grass family, found in many countries on all inhabited continents and many islands. ''Eragrostis'' is commonly known as lovegrass or canegrass. The name of the genus is de ...

''. He is commemorated in '' Kirkia dewinteri'', '' Aloe dewinteri'', ''Silene dewinteri'' and other taxa. The

Pedaliaceae Pedaliaceae, the pedalium family or sesame family, is a flowering plant family classified in the order (biology), order Lamiales. The family includes sesame (''Sesamum indicum''), the source of sesame seeds. It comprises 13 genera and approx ...

genus of '' Dewinteria'' is named after him, with the single curious species ''D. petrophila'' from the Kaokoveld in

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

. His collection of some 9 500 specimens is housed in Pretoria with duplicates in several herbaria including

Kew Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is ...

and

Windhoek Windhoek (; ; ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek, which ...

. They were collected between 1947 and 1975 on his own or together with Willi Giess, D. S. Hardy, O. A. Leistner, W. Marais or J. Wiss. His main collecting areas were Pretoria and northwards to

Messina Messina ( , ; ; ; ) is a harbour city and the capital city, capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of 216,918 inhabitants ...

Kruger National Park Kruger National Park () is a national park in South Africa covering an area of in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in the country's northeast. It extends from north to south and from east to west. The administrative headquarters are i ...

Northern Cape The Northern Cape ( ; ; ) is the largest and most sparsely populated Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley, South Africa, Kimberley. It includes ...

, Okavango, Kaokoveld,

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

, Matopos, Caprivi Strip. Bernard de Winter together with his wife Mayda, and botanist D. J. B. Killick, were responsible for the publishing of "''Sixty-six Transvaal Trees''" in 1966 on the occasion of South Africa's ''Republic Festival''.

References

20th-century South African botanists 1924 births 2017 deaths {{SouthAfrica-scientist-stub