Editorial for Volume 42 part 1

Abstract

Since the last issue (Vol 41, part 4) went to press it has been revealed that our former editor, Martyn Rix, has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Victoria Medal of Honour. This is recognised to be the highest accolade in horticulture, presented to persons of British nationality for lifelong achievement. Only 63 people hold the medal at any one time, in honour of the number of years of Queen Victoria's reign. It is a very public acknowledgement of Martyn's life-long contribution to horticultural and botanical knowledge, not least through his editorship of Curtis's Botanical Magazine.

At the same ceremony on 25 March one of the authors in this issue, and of many previous papers in the Magazine, Graham Duncan, received his Veitch Memorial Medal from the RHS. Awarded to him in 2023, it is given ‘to persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of the science and practice of horticulture.’ Recently retired from a lifetime's career at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Graham has also recently been awarded his PhD from the University of Cape Town for a thesis on Lachenalia systematics.

We congratulate Martyn and Graham most warmly on these achievements.

It is frequently the case that retirement is as busy as working life, demonstrated here by Graham Duncan's article on a new species of Strumaria, discovered by his co-author Adam Harrower twenty years ago, and painted for us by the South African botanical illustrator Elbe Joubert, whose first work in this Magazine appeared alongside Graham's article on Cyrtanthus guthrieae in 2003.

In contrast, two artists have their work published here for the first time, both portraying plants from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Eulophia edwardii, delicately illustrated by Kate Grieve and described by Benny Bytebier, is a Critically Endangered orchid from a minute known range. Its specific epithet honours Edward (Ted) Oliver, the Cape botanist best known for his work on Ericaceae, who died in January 2025 after a very long career in the South African botanical institutes and through his retirement. He was South African Liaison Botanist at Kew from 1967 to 1969.

Siobhán Larkin worked on a South African plant in exile, in this case the magnificent Encephalartos woodii that has grown at Glasnevin for 120 years, sibling of the 126 year-old at Kew. This species has been Extinct in the Wild since 1912, and functionally so for an unknown period before that, since the species has only ever been known to science as a single male clone. Brendan Sayers and Michael Calonje track its fascinating story here.

Our ‘cover species’ for this issue is the beautiful Cuban palm Copernicia macroglossa, illustrated by its compatriot Julio Figueroa, who also painted the plate of Euphorbia regis-jubae to follow on from his first illustration for us of E. tuckeyana, published in 2018. The long influence of King Juba in botany is explored thoroughly in the accompanying article by Julià Molero Briones and his collaborators, and he pops up again in David Mabberley's book Citrus (reviewed here) as the originator of the idea that the golden apples of the Hesperides were Citrus not Cydonia. The portrayal of another apparently idyllic land – the development of a 19th century Ceylonese estate – is the subject of a remarkable article by Dame Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra DSG.

Margareta Pertl has added another Cynorkis to the species she has previously illustrated to accompany articles by Johan Hermans and other orchidologists, while the story of the surprising recognition of Primula subpyrenaica as a new European species is told by David Rankin and illustrated by Nicola Macartney. Fritillaria frankiorum, painted from the Kew collection by Joanna Langhorne, is no longer quite so ‘new’ but is finding its place in gardens, as recounted by Bob Wallis and Martyn Rix, the pre-eminent ‘fritologists’ of our time. I have learnt a great deal about the intricacies of willow morphology through working on Irina Belyaeva's article on Salix magnifica, beautifully portrayed by Christabel King.

So this is another great miscellany in the best tradition of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, bringing together botanists, gardeners and artists from around the world to tell the stories of nine fascinating plants.