Galfrid Clement Keyworth "Stalky" Dunsterville (February 18, 1905 – November 26, 1988) was a business executive and a botanist who studied the
orchid
Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Orchids are cosmopolitan plants that are found in almost every habitat on Eart ...
s of
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
.
He was born in
Devon
Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...
to
Lionel Dunsterville
Major General Lionel Charles Dunsterville (9 November 1865 – 18 March 1946) was a British Army officer, who led Dunsterforce across present-day Iraq and Iran towards the Caucasus and Baku during the First World War.
Early life
Lionel Charle ...
(who inspired the title character of
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...
's ''
Stalky & Co.'' and later became a major-general) and his wife, the former Margaret "Daisie" Keyworth. Galfrid took a degree in mining engineering from the
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...
in 1925.
He then joined
Shell Oil
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company, headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Y ...
and worked in various countries. He married Ellinor "Nora" Freeman in 1929; they had two daughters.
Dunsterville had never liked his given names, and when a co-worker and Kipling fan nicknamed him "Stalky", it stuck.
[
In the early 1950s, he became interested in Venezuela's native orchids, initially as subjects for painting. He made contact with the orchidologist Leslie A. Garay and after retirement devoted himself to orchids full-time, traveling around Venezuela with his wife to draw and collect them. His collaboration with Garay led to the six-volume ''Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated'' (finished in 1976) and ''Orchids of Venezuela: An Illustrated Field Guide'' (1979). He also published over 250 articles on orchids, solo or co-authored with his wife, Garay, and others.][ His book with Ellinor, ''Orchid Hunting in the Lost World (And Elsewhere in Venezuela)'' (1988), was a collection of 64 articles that had originally appeared in the ''American Orchid Society Bulletin''.
]
Legacy
Garay named two genera, each with only one known species, after him: ''Dunstervillea
''Dunstervillea'' is a genus of flowering plants from the orchid family, Orchidaceae. At present (June 2014), only one species is known, ''Dunstervillea mirabilis'', native to Venezuela (Bolívar Province) to Brazil (State of Roraima), and easter ...
'' and ''Stalkya
''Stalkya'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants from the orchid family, Orchidaceae.Pridgeon, A.M., Cribb, P.J., Chase, M.C. & Rasmussen, F.N. (2003). Genera Orchidacearum 3: 1-358. Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford. The sole species ...
''.[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunsterville, G. C. K.
Orchidologists
1905 births
1988 deaths