Black, Roger Foster   (1923 - 2008)

Roger Black, was born in Spalding, South Australia on 21st April 1923, died in Adelaide on 10th October 2008.

Roger, schooled in Adelaide, was trained during the war years as an electrical engineer for the Royal Australian Air Force.

After the war he began a Science degree at Adelaide University which was completed at Sydney University where he majored in Botany and undertook Honours and finally a Ph.D. in the uptake of salt by saltbush.

Roger was then employed for a time in the mid 50s by CSIRO at Griffith, before moving to Queensland in 1959 to work with the Department of Primary Industry. There were later short stints in Adelaide (c. 1969) and Darwin before Roger shifted to Western Australia in the early 1970s. Here he worked for many years with consultants, Dames & Moore, in the rehabilitation of mining sites. As a result of this work he did have some contact with the Western Australian Herbarium.

He returned to Adelaide in 2003 working as a volunteer at the State Herbarium from October 2004 until shortly before his death. One of his main tasks was to sort the large Western Australian Eremophila collection in AD into botanical regions.

His own collections were not many: there are 182 in PERTH, collected between 1974 and 1977, with a further c. 10 Solanaceae specimens of this same period being found in AD. All appear to be unicates.

Roger was the grandson of J.M. Black and was the proud owner of a number of his grandfather’s botanical relics which have been on display in the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium Library.

Source: Death Notice: Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 136 (September 2008) p.26
Portrait Photo: https://www.geni.com/people/Dr-Roger-Foster-Black/6000000005898043096.

Collecting localities for 'Black, R.F.' from AVH (2021)

Data from 112 specimens