George Taylor FUNDED Himalayan EXPEDITIONS selling seed!

The UK has a long tradition of helping to fund botanical exploration of the Himalaya through selling seed shares in the spoils of these expedition. It was someone who had trained at Edinburgh Botanic Garden, who introduced me to seed 'shares'!

Each of the three British participants in the expeditions led a team of collectors - here they are pressing specimen with an enthralled audience © Bill Sykes

List of Recipients of Seed from the 1954 Stainton, Sykes & Williams (joint Natural History Museum[London] & Royal Horticultural Society Expedition to Nepal

1. Sir Willliam Wright Smith - Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh - you will note that Edinburgh were top of this list. IF, as Dr Watson implies, it is damaging to the Himalayan environment to collect seed, why has the institution he works for being gathering seed there for so long?

2. Lord Aberconway - Bodnant

3. The Director, RHS Gardens, Wisley

4. Major Knox Finlay - Keillour Castle

5. J. Renton Esq. - Branklyn

6. R. Cooke Esq. - Corbridge, Northumberland

7. W. Bentley Esq. - Burghclere, Berks

8. E.B. Anderson Esq. - West Porlock, Somerset

9. F. Knight Esq. - The Nursery, Woodbridge, Suffolk

10. E. Savill Esq. - The Great Park, Windsor

11. Norman Haddon Esq. - Porlock, Somerset

12. Jack Drake Esq. - Inshriach Alpine Plant Nursery, Aviemore

13. Dr. H. Dovaston - West of Scotland College of Agriculture, Ayr

14. David Livingstone Esq. - Carluke, Lanarkshire

15. W. Hepburn Esq. - Superintendent's Office, Hyde Park

16. W. Buchanan Esq. - Beasdon, Dumbartonshire

17. Mrs Berry - Portland, Oregon, USA

18. Prof. P. Richards - University College North Wales, Bangor

19. Miss M. Campbell - Natural History Museum, London

20. The Hon. Lewis Palmer - Headbourne Worthy Grange, Winchester

21. Lady Evelyn Malcolm - Liphook, Hants

22. Hon. D. Bowes Lyon - St. Paul's Waldenbury, Herts

23. A. Johnston Esq. - Invergowrie, Dundee

24. Mr Maurice Mason - Fincham, Norfolk

25. A.P. Balfour Esq. - Lothian Cottage, Slough This may sound strange but was a trial ground for Sutton Seeds - so there is a tradition of growing Himalayan plants in Slough!

26. Col. D.G Lowndes - Ringwood, Hants

27. R. Cooke Esq. - Oorbridge, Northumberland

28. W. Bentley Esq. - Burghclere, Berks

29. Miss Goodman - Horsham, Sussex

30. F. Wood Esq. - Durrington, Sussex

31. Prof. A Urbain - Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

32. Dr. F. Mendenca - Centro de Notanico da JUnta de Investigacces Coloniais, Lisbon, Portugal

33. Colonel F.C. Stern - Goring-by-Sea, Sussex

34. Miss Davenport Jones - Hawkhurst, Kent

35. Capt. Collingwood Ingram - Granbrook, Kent

36. John Innes Horticultural Institute - Bayfordbury, Herts

37. Sir William Milner Bt. - Parcevall Hall, Skipton, Yorks

38. Sir John Ramsden Bt. - Muncaster Castle, Cumberland

39. Colonel Niall Rankin - House of Treshnish, Isle of Mull, Argyll

40. Capt. A Walmsley M.C. - Garlieston, Wigtown

41. P.M. Synge Esq. - c/o RHS, Vincent Square, London

42. Colonel F.N. Bailey - Cromer, Norfolk

43. Miss Logan Home - Edrom Nurseries, Coldingham, Berwickshire

44. Mrs Cicely Crewsdon - Kendal, Westmorland

45. Andre Harley Esq. - Blinkbonny, Kirkcaldy

46. T. Hay Esq. - Haslemere, Surrey

47. F. Wood Esq. - Durrington, Sussex

48. John Dudley North - Bridgnorth, Salop

49. Dr C. Fuller - Duryard Grange, Exeter, Devon

50. The Director - The University Botanic Gardens, Cambridge

51. Rev. L. Ahrendt - Broughton Rectory, Banbury, Oxon

52. James Russell Esq. - The Nurseries, Sunningdale, Berks

53. The Director - Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Mass., USA

54. J. Stevenson Esq. - Ascot, Berks

55. C. B. Cherriff Esq. - Craigmarloch, Kilmalcolm

56. Major G. Sherriff, Kirriemuir, Angus

57. M. Williams Esq. - St. Keverne, Cornwall

58. T. Jackson Esq. - Kitale, Kenya

59. The Curator - Cheksea Physic Garden, London

60. Dr D. Humphreys - The General Hospital, Birmingham

61. R. Masterton - Cluny, Aberfeldy, Perthshire

62. G. Berry Esq. - Enfield, Middx.

63. Lady Linlithgow - Hopetown House

64. Dr. Harry Smith - Universitets Botaniska Museum, Uppsala, Sweden

65. Mrs Purnell - Birmingham

66. Mrs Fladk - Beeston, Nottingham

67. Mrs Ludlow - Hawkchurch, Axminster

68. The Director - The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx Park, NY, USA

69. Dr Charles Baehni - Conservatoire et Jardin Botaniques, Geneva, Switzerland

70. Dr H Lam - Leiden, Holland

71. Prof. W. Robyns - Jardin Botanique de l'Etat, Brussels, Belgium

72. W. Th. Ingerwersen - Birch Farm Hardy Plant Nursery, East Grinstead, Sussex

73. Prof. Lily Newton - Botany Dept. Univsersity Coll. of Wales, Aberystwyth

74. Edgar Robers - Syston, Leics.

75. J. Hicks Esq. - Cheltenham, Glos

76. Fred Meyer - Missouri Botanic Garden, St. Louis, Missouri

77. Major General D. Murray - Pitlochry, Perthshire

78. The Curator - Lloyd Botanic Garden, Darjeeling, India

79. Col. Horlick - Isle of Gigha, Argyllshire

80. W. Bishop Esq.- Parks Dept., Harrogate, Yorks

81. Kibble & Clare Ltd. - Ascot Wood Nursery, Ascot

82. M. Noble - Cairndow, Argyll

83. Major A. Pam - Broxbourne, Herts

84. The Hon. Robert James - Richmond, Yorks

85. Dr. A Lisvey - Dorchester, Dorset

86. Prof. N. Burgel - Dept. of Botany, The University, Liverpool

87. Lord Stair - Loch Inch, Wigtownshire

88. O. Hambro Esq. - Logan House, Wigtownshire

89. Lord Digby - Cerne Abby, Dorchester

90. Sir Henry Price - Wakehurst Place, Ardingly, Sussex

91. The Director, Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin

92. Hillier & Sons - Winchester, Hants

Adam Stainton, co-author of 'Flowers of the Himalaya' (who was able, thanks to inherited wealth, to pay personally for the publication of the 'Supplement' to this guide to the region's flora and to meet the costs of participation in both official expeditions and his own extensive independent travels in the Himalaya) wrote about SIR GEORGE TAYLOR'S CONTRIBUTION TO HIMALAYAN BOTANY within the Jan-June 1986 issue of the 'Himalayan Plant Journal' (this Indian publication received by subscription has nothing to do with the Himalayan Plant Association or its journals). This article, since Adam knew Sir George well, has been used as a main reference for the following account. Taylor was smart enough to encourage Stainton to devote much of his life to the botanical exploration for plants along the Himalaya. Indeed it was also Taylor who gave Oleg Polunin, then a botany master at Charterhouse Public School in England, his first opportunity to explore in the region by suggesting him as a non-climbing member of a mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya in 1949; he was able to study the plants during the walk-in and on forays from base-camp. I personally owe Oleg a big debt as he was friendly and approachable when I began my interest in the Himalaya. Not every well-known figure I have dealt with since 1980 have been so helpful, some in fact the complete opposite. When you are young and struggling to establish yourself, such kindly and considerate people make all the difference.

BOTANICAL exploration in the Himalaya (without which its flora CANNOT be conserved) has always gone HAND-IN-HAND with HORTICULTURAL exploration. This has NEVER been EXPLOITATION. Nepal is to be COMMENDED for allowing much greater collaboration than other Himalayan countries - this has greatly benefited the study of its flora, despite that country's minimal financial resources. Nepalese people are known for their resilience and their warm welcome to visitors. This is an example of their WISDOM. It is has been CLEVER for Nepal to take advantage of British and other Western countries fascination, albeit amongst a relatively small number of educated plant enthusiasts, in PLANTS FOR THE CONNOISSEUR found in the Himalaya, such as Primulas, Mecononopsis and Rhododendrons - just as they take advantage of the attraction (in some cases obsession) amongst Western mountaineers to attempt to scale the world's highest peaks, a majority of which are located in Nepal. But Nepalese people and those in other Himalayan countries must recognise FUNDS are strictly limited for botanical/ horticultural exploration - there is no money to be made, so there should be an element of gratitude as to what is PUT BACK, in return for the opportunity to PLANT HUNT!

The RESULT has been that the FLORA OF NEPAL is, in many respects, better known than that of the INDIAN HIMALAYA - thus the country is in a much better position to conserve its flora.... Though there certainly remains a great deal more to do. Recent developments in terms of ever-increasing rules, regulations and restrictions, far from helping, actually will HARM genuine conservation efforts.

Famous plant-hunter George Forrest in an exhibit originally staged at the Glasgow Garden Festival (1984) -

then moved to the Threave School of Gardening, Kirkcudbrightshire © Chris Chadwell

Returning to George Taylor. Born in 1904, he graduated with first class honours in botany in 1926 from Edinburgh University. Awarded the Vans Dunlop Scholarship, he was able to undertake research at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, where he met the famous PLANT HUNTER George Forrest, who had been on his first expedition to Yunnan, SW China on the recommendation of Professor Bailey Balfour of Edinburgh Botanic Garden; Edinburgh continued to receive plants from Forrest's Chinese expeditions throughout his very successful career. Writing many years later, Taylor stated, "Forrest's verbal and written accounts of his field experiences fired my youthful hopes of one day SAVOURING THE JOYS AND RISKS of plant collecting in remote parts". Taylor was in fact invited by Forrest to accompany him on what proved to be his last expedition in 1930, but duties at home made him unable to accept. Forrest died that year in the field.

Taylor's association with Forrest was to have one particularly fruitful outcome. Amongst the many plants coming in from Yunnan and other parts of the Sino-Himalaya were gatherings of MECONOPSIS, some of which were proving difficult to identify. Sir David Prain, at one time Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden and later Director of Kew, had published a paper on MECONOPSIS in 1915, but from the flood of new material coming in it was becoming evident that a revision of the genus was imperative (not because of a demand by the botanical world but the interest in the CULTIVATION of MECONOPSIS in the UK and Western countries). Forrest was one of several people who urged Taylor to tackle this problem, which resulted in 1934 in his monograph AN ACCOUNT OF THE GENUS MECONOPSIS. This, much of which is based on Forrest's material, was the thesis on which Taylor was awarded his doctorate.

In 1928 Taylor left Edinburgh for a post at the British Museum (Natural History) in London. At this date no great tradition of work on Sino-Himalayan flora such as existed at Edinburgh, was in being at the Museum, but one of Taylor's first acts on arrival was to inveigle out of Edinburgh a duplicate set of Forrest's botanical (pressed) specimens, thereby greatly strengthening the Museum's representation of the flora of this region. Incidentally, he was thereby also forestalling Kew, which might reasonably have considered itself entitled to the second set.

At this time and for many years thereafter another great plant collector was often to be seen in the herbarium of the Museum in the intervals between his many PLANT HUNTING expeditions, Frank Kingdon Ward. His sphere of operations mostly lay in the remote mountainous borderlands where China, Burma, Tibet and the North-East frontiers of India meet. He started his PLANT HUNTING career in 1909 and was still planning further expeditions at the time of his death in 1958 (coincidentally, the year Chris Chadwell was born). Taylor got to know Ward well, writing later, "...with whom in correspondence and conversation I shared vicariously his later expeditions". WARD'S PRIME OBJECTIVE, AS WAS FORREST'S, WAS TO INTRODUCE NEW SPECIES FOR CULTIVATION IN BRITAIN but his botanical (pressed specimen) collections much enriched the Museum herbarium. It should be noted that Chris Chadwell primary objective was always BOTANICAL study then CONSERVATION of Himalayan flora - the interest in its cultivation was a MEANS TO AN END as NO funding was available to him to specifically undertake his BOTANICAL research and CONSERVATION projects.

GENTIANA ORNATA - introduced from Nepal ('Plants for the Connoisseur')

An interesting episode in Nepalese PLANT HUNTING, with which Taylor was closely concerned, took place at this time. Nepal was then still a closed country, and although some botanical exploration had been carried out there in the earlier part of the 19th century, the flora was still largely unknown. In Britain there was a strong desire to carry out further exploration, ONCE AGAIN PRIMARILY WITH A VIEW TO BRINGING INTO CULTIVATON NEW SPECIES.

One of the most important participants in the project was Thomas Hay, Superintendent of the Royal Parks, with its headquarters in Hyde Park. Another was Sir Clive Wigram, a keen gardener and perhaps more relevantly, private secretary to King George V. Behind the secretary stood the figure of the King himself, though to what extent he was personally concerned in obtaining permission from Nepal for the project to succeed is not exactly known. George Taylor was a close friend of Tom Hay, and as a knowledgeable gardener he took a keen interest in the plants which Hay raised from Nepalese seed, as well as handling in the Museum herbarium the dried material (pressed specimens) coming in from Nepal.

In Kathmandu an important link was the British Resident there, Lt.-Col. F.M.Bailey. In earlier years Bailey had carried out some extraordinarily adventurous PLANT HUNTING EXPEDITIONS, including one in 1913 when for the first time he investigated in the Tsangpo gorges in S.E.Tibet. It was on this journey that he discovered the famous blue poppy known for years to gardeners as MECONOPSIS BAILEYI, but which is now MECONOPSIS BETONICIFOLIA. Although Bailey was the first to locate it in the wild, the honour of having first introduced it into cultivation in fact is due to Kingdon Ward, from seed collected on his expedition to the same area in 1924. Just as it was P.N.Kohli (not Chand) who should have the honour of first introducing PRIMULA CLARKEI, first located in the wild by C.B.Clarke.

MECONOPIS DHWOJII - introduced from Nepal ('Plants for the Connoisseur'); this is a rather straggly form (species vary, with each seedling raised from wild-collected seed having the potential to look different, some more ornamental than others)

Finally, and most importantly, there were the Nepali collectors in the field. There was no possibility of using British collectors at that time (although these often relied heavily on local/native collectors, often un-credited, anyhow), and initially Bailey used his own men. Soon Major Lal Dhwoj of the Nepal army was seconded for the task during the years 1927-30 he made several journeys and sent both seed and dried material to Britain. One successful introduction is RIGHTLY named after him, MECONOPSIS DHWOJII. After Dhwoj's death in 1931, Professor Sharma, a Burmese-born Nepali with a large herbalist practice in Kathmandu, between 1931-37 continued the work. PRIMULA SHARMAE is named after him. It was under Sharma's charge that the Department of Medicinal Plants in Kathmandu was started.

Plants raised from seed sent back by Dhwoj and Sharma aroused considerable interest in Britain. One surprise was the delightful little golden-flowered PRIMULA AUREATA, which Tom Hay flowered in Hyde Park (no mean achievement as the climate of London is not ideally suited to raising primulas, meconopsis or gentians from the monsoon-ridden districts of Nepal, as Kew has found to its cost on numerous occasions - conditions at Edinburgh Botanic Garden are much more favourable) when it was still quite unknown from any botanical (herbarium) specimens collected in the wild. Flowering specimens were sent to Edinburgh, where they were described and published as a new species, but it was not until over twenty years later, after Nepal opened its frontiers, that the range and habitat of this species was established.

MECONOPSIS REGIA - introduced from Nepal ('Plants for the Connoisseur')

Another new species was named after the King's private secretary, PRIMULA WIGRAMIANA, but the naming of MECONOPSIS REGIA after the reigning British sovereign was somewhat fortuitous. Taylor in 1929 described this fine yellow-flowered species as a new species, and in bestowing the SPECIFIC EPIPHET (species name) REGIA, he had in fact intended to indicate no more than that it was a truly regal poppy in a general sense. However, it so happened that when King George V came to visit the annual Chelsea Flower Show, Taylor was in attendance, and showed the king some of the new introductions grown by the Royal Parks Department. Taylor recounts with amusement that on being shown the big yellow poppies and hearing their name, the Monarch without hesitation claimed them as his own by declaring how pleased he was that such splendid plants should be named after himself (this incident suggests that the King was not actually that interested or knowledgeable about unusual plants). Wigram, able to approach the King of Nepal and Maharajah of Kashmir on Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle note paper, used his position well to further PLANT HUNTING in the Himalaya.

PRIMULA ROTUNDIFOLIA - introduced from Nepal ('Plants for the Connoisseur')

Another pair of remarkable PLANT HUNTERS were operating in the Himalaya during these inter-war years, Frank Ludlow and George Sherriff. Ludlow had at one time worked for the Indian Education Department, and was seconded during the years 1923-26 to the Tibetan government to run a school for boys at Gyantse. The first of the many EXPEDITIONS which Ludlow made for the Natural History Museum in London came from this area of Tibet. Taylor remembers that one of his first jobs when he arrived at the Museum was to work on a collection which Ludlow had made in the Tien Shan mountains of Chinese Turkestan. Sherriff seconded from the army for political service, worked here in the British Consulate at Kashgar, and here he and Ludlow became close friends and discussed together plans for exploration of Bhutan and Tibet in years to come.

Taylor first met Ludlow and Sherriff in person when they came to the Museum to discuss future expeditions some time in the early 1930s. By this time they were both retired and living in Kashmir. The mutual liking seems to have been immediate, and from that time on Taylor acted as their Home Agent and made himself responsible for the distribution of the seeds and living plants from all their travels. Over the years their collections were very large, both of plants and also of birds. During the years 1933-49 they covered much of Bhutan and S.E.Tibet, and although during the war years their collecting was curtailed they nevertheless were able to collect a number of plants from the vicinity of Lhasa when first Ludlow and then Sherriff occupied the British Residency there. (Please note in 1939 it was TSONGPEN LEPCHA, who undertook a plant hunting expedition to the Baspa Valley, Kinnaur, principally to locate PRIMULA OBTUSIFOLIA, though all his pressed specimens and seed collections were given Ludlow & Sherriff (L&S) collection numbers). To this day, some remain convinced it must have been Sherriff or Ludlow who collected these - even though an account of Tsongpen's travels was published in the Journal of the Linnaean Society.

MECONOPSIS PANICULATA rosette - introduced from Nepal ('Plants for the Connoisseur')

Taylor had already been a member of two botanical expeditions to Africa, but it must have been very frustrating for him during these years to have had friends such as Forrest, Kingdon Ward, Ludlow and Sherriff pouring into his ears tales of their travels in what is undoubtedly the richest temperate flora in the world. Now came the invitation from Ludlow & Sherriff to join them for their 1938 season. This year they planned to extend their exploration of S.E.Tibet. Taylor in fact very nearly missed the expedition, for shortly before they were due to start he needed to have an operation. By the time he had recovered and reached Sikkim his friends had already set out six weeks before, so Taylor had to make his way to join them (though he would have had a local guide). This was a long expedition, for they were in the field until November during which they covered an enormous amount of ground and made very large collections of birds and plants - the largest and most comprehensive collection of plants that has ever come out of Tibet in any one season.

If circumstances had permitted there is no doubt that Taylor would have made a plant collector of very high order, and it was unfortunate that this was his last opportunity to ever free himself long enough to take to the field. Shortly after his return from Tibet the war begun, and he was seconded to the Air Ministry. On returning to the Museum in 1945 he was he was heavily engaged in rebuilding and enlarging the herbarium, which had been bombed during the war, and then from 1950-56 he became Keeper of the Department. But if Himalayan PLANT HUNTING lost a splendid field-collector, it gained an energetic and powerful supporter who had attained a position of considerable influence. As well as being Keeper of Botany Taylor was on many committees of a botanical and horticultural nature, including perhaps most importantly the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society.

With the withdrawal of the British from India and Burma in 1947, and the resurgence of Chinese control over Tibet after the communists' advent to power in 1949 the operations of PLANT HUNTERS in the remote mountain borderland areas became more difficult. Ludlow and Sherriff made one more expedition to S.E.Tibet in 1947, but were refused permission for 1949 and in that year made their last expedition to Bhutan. Kingdon Ward was in Northern Burma as late as 1953, but since then no one has been allowed to visit those parts. And quickly too the frontier areas of all N.E.India became inaccessible. It was fortunate therefore that just at this time Nepal was opening its frontiers.

The pre-war collections of Dhwoj and Sharma had already confirmed the supposition that Nepal possessed a rich endemic flora worthy of much further investigation. Now the stimulus for this was to come very largely from George Taylor, who with his influential contacts was well-placed to raise the funds without which PLANT HUNTING and associated BOTANICAL exploration is impossible. Taylor was instrumental in sending to Nepal the two earliest post-war British PLANT HUNTERS, Oleg Polunin in 1949 and Donald Lowndes in 1951, both as botanists attached to mountaineering expeditions led by H.W. Tilman. He was also the inspiration behind much more ambitious PLANT HUNTING expeditions to West and Central Nepal in 1952 and 1954 (the years before and after the first ascent of Everest), led by John Williams of the Natural History Museum but also the Royal Horticultural Society, whose representative on both expeditions was Bill Sykes (whom I have the privilege to meet during a lecture tour to New Zealand in 1992). Oleg Polunin, then a botany master at Charterhouse public school joined the 1952 team; whilst Adam Stainton, joined the 1954 team (helpfully being able to fully fund his own participation in the lengthy expedition). Stainton's mother was from one of main Scottish Whiskey families, so Adam was a man of Independent means. In his privately published memoirs, he recounted meeting a Professor of Geology, who strongly advised him he should travel with a purpose, suggesting he meet George Taylor. Those who can imagine the financially restrictive atmosphere prevailing in Britain in those post-war years will be able to appreciate the magnitude of the task of raising money at such a time for these big expeditions, and most of the credit of its successful accomplishment was due to Taylor. Modern-day, well-educated, comfortably-off younger generations in Himalayan countries, imagining that everyone from Britain in rich and has limitless funds to explore in the Himalaya, are WAY OFF THE MARK. The activities of PLANT HUNTERS and BOTANISTS, past and present have NEVER exploited these countries. The motivation for much of the plant exploration has been HORTICULTURAL and why not? In return, Himalayan countries have had their floras studied FAR MORE extensively and to a MUCH HIGHER STANDARD than they could achieve by themselves and MUCH BETTER than the Indian Himalaya has been. An element of gratitude and appreciation should exist. Many of those British plant hunters, educated and skilful, have been prepared to undertake ARDUOUS, at times DANGEROUS expeditions, at ALTITUDE, when MOST of the educated scientists from Himalayan countries mostly sit comfortably in their offices, seldom venturing into the mountains - with a few HONOURABLE exceptions......

The work of the two Natural History Museum/Royal Horticultural Society expeditions in the 1950s, together with latter collectors (including the efforts of many Japanese botanists), makes Nepal botanically one of the best-known parts of the Himalaya, and these botanical collections form the basis on which the Natural History Museum, London, in conjunction with the University of Tokyo, published the ENUMERATION OF THE FLOWERING PLANTS OF NEPAL (1978-82). The Museum now contains a very fine representative collection of the Nepal flora. Although perhaps not strictly relevant to Stainton's article upon which these notes are based, after publication of the ENUMERATION the museum staff are now no longer primarily concerned with the Himalayan flora (this remains the case, after a spell focussing on the flora of Meso-America). I have not visited the Museum in recent years, so cannot report on the present situation except to report that like most botanical institutions in the West, the numbers of botanical staff have been decimated, since I first consulted their collections in the early 1980s. The pendulum, as to studying Himalayan plants has swung back once more to Edinburgh, with A.J.C. Grierson and D.G.Long having published the FLORA OF BHUTAN.

In 1956 Taylor became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, a post which he held with distinction until 1971. This was the summit of his career but are not relevant to the Himalaya. He was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1956, was knighted in 1962, and in 1968 became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Amongst all these honours and achievements Sir George retained a keen interest in Himalayan matters, and was always ready to give encouragement and assistance to anyone who shared his interest.

So in conclusion, it is clear that Sir George Taylor along with many others interested in the cultivation of unusual species from the Himalaya, played a vital role in the plant exploration and subsequent study of its flora. The combination of botanical study and plant hunting for species of garden merit is a fine tradition Britain should be proud of, not apologising for - without such horticultural interest, the flora of the region would have remained virtually unknown beyond the basics discovered thanks to, mostly British, botanists in the 19th Century.

Regrettably, in the parts of the Himalaya where international collaboration/involvement has been discouraged/prevented, much of what is published in journals and books about the flora cannot be relied upon - too many international bodies/organisations un-critically believe what is submitted to them, especially in the area of supposedly 'Rare & Endangered' species. I KNOW that many of the submissions are FALSE. What about the species which are genuinely rare - they have been abandoned to their fate..... As for the future? The situation will only get worse, as ever increasing rules & regulations, pretending to help PROTECT the Himalaya and its flora (not to forget native peoples) are going to contribute to DAMAGING the plants of the region as we will, in the West, shall, increasingly not know what is happening...... I, a weird, British eccentric, actually cares about such things. But then in the world we live in, you don't want people like me, who know what they are talking about, to raise uncomfortable truths and oblige those in positions of power and influence to "grasp nettles".....