Swinbourne, Robert Frederick George (Rob)   (1936 - 2015)

Born 31st July 1936 at Hurstville, NSW; died ? 2015

While his childhood was spent in Central Australia his schooling was firstly at Mittagong Primary School and then the Hurlstone Agricultural College in Glenfield in New South Wales.

Having originally intended being a vet he found that it was plants that were his passion and on his return to Alice Springs his first jobs were in gardening and propagating before he opened The Centre Nursery in the 1950s.

A herbarium had been established in Alice Springs by George Chippendale in 1954 and Rob joined the staff around 1960.

The NT Herbarium has 469 records of his collections, predominantly from 1961 to 1964, some of them collected with Des Nelson. There is one earlier record of an Erodium (Geraniaceae) collected from Ooraminna rockhole in 1957. Rob had a keen interest in the Geraniaceae family and was an early member of the South Australian Geranium & Pelargonium Society, but his interests clearly predated this membership.

He described and registered many Pelargonium hybrids, particulary those developed by Ted Both and commonly known as "Both's Staphs".

Rob was appointed to a new position as Technical Assistant at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens in early 1966. In this position he collected a large number of specimens for the newly established herbarium of cultivated plants, now incorporated in the general herbarium collection.

While his cultivated collections are not databased, there are c. 400 of his wild collections resulting from Botanic Gardens field trips, the major one being to the Lake Torrens area in 1968.

He also further extended his interest in growing plants and became very actively involved in a number of specialist societies, for several of which he was the Foundation President, e.g. Australian Begonia Society, Australian Carnivorous Plant Society and the Fern Society of South Australia.

Under the pseudonym 'Ptilotus', he contributed the South Australian notes for the monthly magazine Your Garden.

He left his position in the Botanic Gardens in the mid 1980s because of poor health but continued involvement in horticultural pursuits.

One of his enduring interests was in early plant and seed catalogues for South Australia and the history of the associated nurseries. This interest had eventually led to the publication of Years of Endeavour (1982) and from the notes gathered in this project, to Gardens Lost (2006), a history of some early South Australian gardens; this latter project was completed by Merilyn Kuchel and the South Australian branch of the Australian Garden History Society after Rob donated his manuscript to them in 1987 due to declining health.

Source: Extracted from: Obituary by Robyn Barker:
Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 166 (March 2016) p.34-36
Portrait Photo: 1978, George Chippendale collection held by ANBG.

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

Data from 1,488 specimens