Green-fingered Brian loved life in the Botanics

Published on Saturday 7 June 2008 10:37

BRIAN BURTT, a world-renowned botanist based at the Royal Botanic Garden for more than 50 years, has died aged 94.

Born in 1913, Mr Burtt developed an interest in plants from an early age, a passion which would later see him embark on a career spanning almost 70 years.

Known to his friends and family as Bill, he was the only child of Laurence and Mabel Burtt and was born in Claypole, Surrey.

He started his career in botany at Kew Gardens after leaving Dulwich College in south London in 1930 with a BSc in botany.

The Second World War interrupted his time at the famous gardens and he was called up to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and billeted at Reading in 1940.

During his time there he would meet his future wife, Joyce Daughtry, and the couple married in 1942.

Their first son, Anthony, was born in 1943 and was followed by Julian in 1947.

When the war ended, Bill returned to Kew, but in 1951 was given the chance of working at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden as one of its botanists.

The family stayed in Ferry Road from 1951 until 1966, when the couple separated and Mrs Burtt returned to England with her youngest son.

Anthony had already left the family home in 1963 for Sandhurst and the Army and Bill moved to Inverleith, where he lived till his death.

At the Botanics he also had major responsibilities for the planning of the herbarium.

Within the field of botany, he was a specialist taxonomist whose job it was to classify different plants.

He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a fellow of the Linnaean Society, a fellow of the Archaeological Society of Scotland and an associate of the Royal Botanic Garden.

Following a trip to Sarawak, Malaysia, in the 1960s, he and colleague Dr Olive Hilliard travelled to South Africa to study the flora for the Botanics in Edinburgh.

Outside of his work, he was keen tennis player, cricketer and golfer. His son Julian said: "Dad was a serious scientist, but he had a good sense of humour and loved puns and subtle humour involving play on words.

"When relaxing, he would find pleasure in English and French literature and poetry and listening to his classical records of Schubert, Brahms and Beethoven, as well as enjoying Gilbert and Sullivan operas and researching ancient civilisations."

Despite his separation from Mabel, the couple never divorced and after his wife died in 2003, Mr Burtt married his colleague Dr Hilliard a year later.

The couple had worked together for many years studying the flora of the Drakensburg area in South Africa and published a number of scientific papers and books.

Despite retiring in 1975, he continued to work in the field until he died, writing for the Edinburgh Journal and several other botany titles, with his last work published in 2006.

He is survived by his wife, Olive, sons Anthony and Julian, four grandchildren and four great-grandsons.