Edgar Wolston Bertram Handsley Milne-Redhead (1906-1996) was a British botanist. He was born in Frome,

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, UK. Educated at

Cheltenham College Cheltenham College is a public school ( fee-charging boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. The school opened in 1841 as a Church of England foundation and is known for its outstanding linguis ...

and

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, he began work at 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 ...

in 1928. In 1930, he accepted an offer to work in the Colonial Office in

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(now

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), where he collected

plants Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars f ...

for

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 ...

specimens. He was based at Matonchi Farm, west of Mwinilunga,

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, near the borders of

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and the

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for 4½ months. He also collected extensively near Kalene Hill. He discovered many new

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

, and several were named after him, including ''Commelina milne-redheadii'' Faden ( Commelinaceae). In 1933, he married artist and illustrator Olive Shaw, with whom he had one daughter. In 1949, he and others began the process to establish an “Association pour l’Etude Taxonomique de la Flore d’Afrique Tropicale” (or “ Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora of Tropical Africa”) (AETFAT). He prepared treatments for the '' Flora of Tropical East Africa'' and eventually published 161 new names. Returning to the U.K., he was appointed Deputy Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and editor of '' Kew Bulletin'', serving from 1959 until 1971. He became president of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, now the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, in 1969. His last campaign at Kew was an effort to set up a Conservation Unit, which occurred in 1972. He died in 1996 in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in northeastern Essex, England. It is the second-largest settlement in the county, with a population of 130,245 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census. The demonym is ''Colcestrian''. Colchester occupies the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Milne-Redhead, Edgar People from Frome British botanists 1906 births 1996 deaths