A 60-year-old scandal, an eminent botanist and a plant that was planted

Published on Thursday 2 October 2008 22:26

THE discovery of a rare plant on the Isle of Rum in the 1940s led scientists to question whether the Ice Age had ever reached the Scottish isles.

Now, more than half a century later, it has emerged that the man credited with finding the plant had grown it in his Newcastle garden before replanting it in the Inner Hebrides.

Professor John Heslop-Harrison, formerly of Newcastle University, led scientific investigations to the Hebrides in the 1940s. But his "discovery" of rare Arctic alpine plants, which he claimed were indigenous to the Isle of Rum, was criticised in his lifetime and in recent years.

In his 1999 book, Karl Sabbagh put forward evidence that the professor had planted the species himself. Mr Sabbagh subsequently received widespread criticism from academics for his "unfounded" theories.

But now a debate that has gone down in botanic folklore has come to an end as fresh evidence has emerged implicating Prof Heslop-Harrison in faking the discovery that catapulted him to scientific fame.

Mr Sabbagh claims to have accessed reports by two fellow botanists that were uncovered in the Natural History Museum archives.

Botanist RB Cooke is said to have written of a 1943 expedition to the Isle of Rum: "I saw a dozen or more plants which in my opinion had been recently planted. There were to be seen marks which suggested a stone having been used to press in the soil round the roots."

Mr Sabbagh said: "When I did my research, they (the reports] weren't around and I rather wish they had been.

"It's quite satisfying years later to see two distinguished botanists who had both been worrying about this and clearly believed he was faking things."

Mr Sabbagh's book, A Rum Affair: A True Story Of Botanical Fraud, in which he accuses Prof Heslop-Harrison of fakery, was largely based on a hidden report by Cambridge University don John Raven.

Prof Raven infiltrated one of the expeditions to the Isle of Rum and wrote a report claiming that the Arctic alpine plants had been imported. However, he left instructions that his report should not be made public until Prof Heslop-Harrison had died.

After the publication of his book, Mr Sabbagh came under fire from Newcastle University academics, who accused him of disgracing the name of an eminent botanist. Dr Gregory Kenicer, a lecturer at the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, said: "This is a really famous affair which, for lots of botanists, is an extremely amusing topic. To the rest of the world, why someone would go to such great lengths to find fame may seem fairly ridiculous, but even in botanic circles this still seems a bizarre boast."

Dr Kenicer said that fortunately this was an isolated incident and that botanic forgery was certainly not commonplace.

He said: "It is also quite odd that someone would waste so much time and effort when botanists have just as much chance of becoming famous by finding real discoveries."

Cold beginnings for early Scots settlers

SCOTS first began establishing communities during the last ice age, which occurred around 13,000 years ago.

The remainder of the last glacial period, or ice age, ended about 10,000 years ago, and all that remains of the ice sheets that spanned continents are areas of Greenland and the Antarctic.

At this time, the location of northern European plains suggests that Scotland's first settlers were reindeer hunters from the Ahrensburgian culture.

Scientists also suspect that early Scots hunted deer and other large herbivores, as well as fish.

The last ice age was also more severe than the previous three known ice ages, with increased fluctuating and colder temperatures.

British archeologists discovered early settlements at Stronsay on Orkney last year dating from 11,000BC.

These findings predated an 8,500BC Edinburgh hunting campsite, which was previously thought to have been Scotland's oldest settlement.