John Hutchinson, 7 April 1884 - 2 September 1972

Abstract

The death of John Hutchinson on 2 September 1972, at the age of 88, removed an international and highly esteemed authority from the ranks of botanical systematists, and the last of the Kew staff with living memories of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. He died at the close of a working day, much as he would have wished, after he had made his usual happy visit to the Kew Herbarium. There he was among the plants he loved, in a building which had been almost a second home for him for more than sixty years, and for which he had a deep feeling of affection. At his funeral on 8 September, at Mortlake Crematorium, a wreath in his memory, composed mainly of South African flowers, was sent from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, in the names of his numerous colleagues and friends, many of whom were present. John Hutchinson had risen from very humble positions in the horticultural profession and as a junior assistant in the Kew Herbarium to the Kew botanists of a past generation, to become one of the world’s leading taxonomists, renowned for his extensive botanical publications, especially on the classification of the families and genera of flowering plants, and on the flora of Africa. His vast knowledge of the general morphology and floral structure of the Phanerograms, gained from long and patient studies of the wealth of living and preserved material at Kew, probably exceeded that of any other living botanist. In fact to find another taxonomist with his deep understanding of plant structure and classification and the ability to present botanical data clearly and concisely for a wide range of readers, one has to return to the great names of the past, such as George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker, for whom he had the greatest admiration and respect. Although primarily a taxonomist of the old school, his botanical interests covered a wider field and he did not hesitate to take full advantage of findings in other branches of botany, such as anatomy and phytogeography, when they confirmed or fitted in with his schemes of classification and phylogenetic theories. He was usually known as Hutch, or J. H. to many of his colleagues and friends.