A J E Smith, M.A., D.Phil., D.Sc. (1935–2012)

Anthony John Edwin (Tony) Smith was born on 8 May 1935 at Bath, Somerset and died in hospital at Rhyl, Denbighshire, 27 November 2012. He was one of the leading bryologists of the twentieth century having joined the British Bryological Society (BBS) in 1956 and made an Honorary Member in 1994. He was Editor of Journal of Bryology from 1978 to 1992 and instrumental in setting up the Society’s Bryophyte Mapping Scheme in 1960 which culminated in the publication of the Atlas (Hill et al., 1991, 1992, 1994). He published The moss flora of Britain and Ireland (Smith, 1978a) with a second edition and reprint (Smith, 2004, 2006) as well as The liverworts of Britain and Ireland (Smith, 1990). His moss flora and the atlas stand as lasting memorials to his life which contributed greatly to both British and European bryology.

Early Personal and School Life

Tony foresaw that some of his personal information might be needed after his death and provided Mr Roy Perry and Mr John Cartwright with what Tony called his ‘Potted Autobiography’. The authors have drawn on this for particulars of his life before 1956 when PES first knew him when PES was still at school.

Shortly after he was born, his family moved to Godalming, Surrey. At the age of about 3, he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and was diagnosed with diabetes which was to affect much of his life.

In June 1940, the family went to Singapore, but in January 1942, and shortly before Singapore fell to the Japanese, he and his mother fled the island. Fortunately, in the confusion, they boarded the wrong ship and ended up in Jakarta, Java. The ship they were supposed to board for India was never heard of again after it had sailed.

He and his mother subsequently had a short stay in Australia and then sailed for England in a convoy that was bombed and attacked by submarines in the Mediterranean. On arrival in January 1944, they lived with his grandmother in Enfield (London) and were joined in September 1945 by his father who had been a prisoner of war in Singapore. Shortly afterwards, he took and failed his Eleven-plus exam and in June 1946, with his mother he returned to Singapore where in 1951, he took the Cambridge School Certificate and passed with five distinctions and four credits. The next year they again returned to England where he attended the Northern Polytechnic in London, studied and passed A-levels and with his family’s support he applied and was accepted for a degree in horticulture at Wye College, University of London. In August of 1953 and 1954, he worked in a commercial nursery to obtain the required experience for his degree. In his notes, he said he was becoming ‘obsessed’ with flowers and botany and attended two field courses at Flatford Mill Field Centre in 1954 and subsequently joined the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI).

Academic Life

In October 1954, he started at Wye College, but soon decided he had chosen the wrong degree and against family advice he applied for, and was accepted, to do a degree at Lincoln College, Oxford and started in the Botany School in October 1955. In March 1956, he attended a course on bryophytes run by Dr E. F. Warburg at Staunton, Gloucestershire and was immediately bitten by the subject. He joined the BBS in 1956.

While at Oxford he obtained a first class degree in botany (June 1958) and started a D.Phil. in August on Melampyrum pratense (Smith, 1961, 1963). In 1960, he applied for an assistant lectureship at University College of Swansea. He was accepted and moved to Swansea in September 1960. During what turned out to be his short stay there he worked on, and subsequently published, A bryophyte flora of Glamorgan (Smith, 1964b). During his first decade or so in the BBS, Tony became very active in the society’s affairs and reported on a number of excursions (Smith, 1960, 1964c, 1965, 1966, 1971; Figure 1).

Figure 1 . Tony Smith (left) with Dr E. F. Warburg inspecting Grimmias beside the River Dee during the BBS Meeting at Oswestry, Shropshire, 1960. Photo courtesy of Mr Roy Perry.

Life and Work at Bangor

At Swansea, he did not feel at home among a very ‘physiological’ department and in 1963, applied for and was accepted as lecturer in botany at the Department of Botany at University College of North Wales, Bangor, where bryologist and rain forest botanist Paul Richards (Stanley et al., 1998) had been professor since 1949.

He was a good communicator as well as correspondent by phone and letter. During his time at Bangor, he ran lecture modules on every plant group including algae as well as on taxonomy, and postglacial vegetation change in the British Isles. In addition to undergraduate teaching, he figured strongly in Bangor’s world renowned M.Sc. course in ecology. Nigel Brown says ‘His wide botanical interests included contributing specimens to the University’s Botanic Garden just outside Bangor by the Menai Strait at Treborth which he used for teaching and practical sessions with students. His tutorials were popular and he installed a real sense of enquiry and wonder in botanically minded students some of whom carried their new found passion for “lower plants” on into far reaching careers in taxonomy, botanical survey and conservation. Tony’s lectures were widely regarded as some of the most “student friendly” learning experiences, so lucid and well paced was his delivery and so clipped and relevant the content’.

GCGA joined the department at the same time as Tony. In that first year, Tony was bright and quite sociable, going to student parties where he was considered a very eligible bachelor. He and GCGA were both interested in and working on bryophytes and it was not long before they were going out regularly at weekends looking for plants. It was Tony’s aim to see every species of bryophyte known in Britain in the wild — something he must have come very close to achieving. He drove all over Britain rather fast in his Triumph Herald and was proud to compete with Bill Lacey (another contemporary on the Bangor staff) with ‘smart’ times to various parts of Wales on the convoluted roads. Tony was a good and patient teacher with a sound knowledge of British plants, but he did not suffer fools gladly and he bitingly suggested that an ecologist working on foxgloves should know better than to put them in high pH John Innes compost where they were struggling feebly.

Tony supervised several doctoral students. One worked on Rhinanthus, extending Tony’s earlier doctoral work in Oxford. Another student worked on cytotypes of Atrichum undulatum (Abderrahman & Smith, 1982, 1983). His student Keith Lewis demonstrated that elongate bulbils were produced not only by Pohlia proligera and P. andalusica, but confusingly also under some environmental conditions by P. annotina and P. flexuosa (Lewis & Smith, 1977, 1978). There was also important early work on bryophyte chromosomes (Smith & Newton, 1966, 1967, 1968).

In his early days at Bangor, most people were unaware of Tony’s diabetes, particularly on field excursions, and thought it odd when half way up a mountain or strenuous route that Tony would sometimes reach for a Mars bar and chew it furiously. In 1965, the diabetes caused a slight haemorrhage in the macula of his left eye causing some loss of vision. He never directly alluded to the problems that this condition caused him, but it gradually became known in the department and people would ‘look out for him’ and on occasion, he was discovered collapsed and had to be taken to hospital for treatment. Tony never complained of the limitations that his diabetes imposed, but in 1973, he had a haemorrhage in and lost the sight of his right eye. Thereafter, he would pass friends in the street and not recognize them. As a result, people not knowing him well sometimes thought him rather rude and dour. In fact, he remained remarkably cheerful. He moved to a house on Anglesey. It had a Welsh name which he insisted be changed to something ‘English’. This caused some rancour with the local villagers and was not approved by the postman. He then moved to a new bungalow at Benllech, which was not quite so steeped in Welsh tradition and where he developed a garden on the natural limestone pavement. Eventually, he could no longer drive and had to move into Bangor.

He had a rather wicked sense of humour which manifested itself in odd ways. If he did not train his Shih Tzu dogs to attack Professor Paul Richards when he entered his room, he certainly did not discourage them and was highly amused at Paul’s discomfiture at being savaged around the ankles by the tiny mop-like creatures. Tony boasted that they attacked no one else.

Journal of Bryology

He was Editor of the Journal for 14 years (1978–1992) and took over from Dr Harold Whitehouse at a time when the BBS was growing quickly and the number of publications and range of papers in the Journal were expanding rapidly. Prefessor John Birks was a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Bryology and wrote ‘It was a real pleasure to work with Tony as he always had a cheerful and positive attitude, even towards some really dreadful manuscripts and/or troublesome authors!’ and GCGA comments that he also took a firm line with publishers who sometimes wanted to interfere with the content.

BBS Mapping Scheme

In the early 1960s, together with Harold Whitehouse (Preston, 2001), Tony started the Britain and Ireland Bryophyte Mapping Scheme and was a moving force behind the project until publication of the resulting Atlas (Hill et al., 1991, 1992, 1994). It was fitting that he wrote the Preface to the first volume. Participants in the project recorded the presence of British and Irish bryophyte species (approximately 1038) in 10 km squares (hectads) designated on the Ordnance Survey National Grid in Great Britain (2876 hectads) and Ordnance Survey Grid in Ireland (about 1012 hectads). The Mapping Scheme resulted in 761 011 records, mostly made by about 900 recorders after 1950, but also including pre-1950 records from about 1200 recorders. Among the post-1950 recorders, 61 individuals contributed more than 1000 records and a further 97 individuals contributed between 100 and 999 records. Tony reported on the progress of the scheme on a number of occasions (Smith, 1964a, 1980, 1982a) and early on, with others, published groups of maps in the Transactions and Journal (Whitehouse & Smith, 1963; Smith et al., 1971, 1972, 1973). In a separate publication, he provided 105 distribution maps in the so-called Provisional atlas of the bryophytes of the British Isles (Smith, 1978b). He contributed text to accompany more than 80 species maps in the Atlas itself (Hill et al., 1991, 1992, 1994).

Taxonomic Work

He contributed a paper entitled ‘Towards an experimental approach to bryophyte taxonomy’ at the Systematics Association meeting at Bangor in 1978 (Smith, 1979). In it, he reviewed and discussed the poor state of bryophyte biosystematics compared with that of flowering plants. As a taxonomist, he worked on several difficult species and genera and in Appendix 1, we list the species names for which he is an authority. He helped many bryologists by revising the Hypnum cupressiforme group. He also wrestled with Grimmia trichophylla Grev. and the Schistidium apocarpum group as well as describing new species or recording species new to Britain and Ireland. John Birks says ‘We returned [from Scotland] with masses of specimens including what Tony identified for us as Grimmia agassizii (Schistidium agassizii), new to the British Isles. In characteristic generosity, Tony declined our offer to be a co-author on our 1967 note (Birks & Birks, 1967)’.

The genera Hypnum, Grimmia and Schistidium remain some of the most intractable in northwest Europe, with expert opinion divided on several issues. In spite of Tony’s efforts, problems in the Hypnum cupressiforme (Smith, 1995, 1997) and Grimmia trichophylla complexes (Smith, 1992) are unlikely to be solved without genetic analysis. Many other species of Grimmia are more distinct, though they can be fiendishly difficult to distinguish without capsules. Schistidium has proved tractable to conventional taxonomic methods (Smith, 2000). For the second edition of his moss flora, Tony sought out world experts Jesús Muñoz (Grimmia) and Hans Blom (Schistidium), introducing their ideas and checking hundreds of specimens in herbaria. In Appendix 2 we list his publications not included in the References.

Work with Mark Hill

MOH went to Bangor in 1969 and investigated methods of multivariate analysis. Tony was interested to find out whether these numerical methods could be applied to the distinction between Ulota bruchii and U. crispa. Based on the quantitative and qualitative characters then available, there was no clear distinction. Some Ulota specimens were apparently intermediate between the two taxa, which were accordingly demoted to subspecies (Smith & Hill, 1975). This was the wrong conclusion. Subsequent work, this time with Dr Michael Proctor, demonstrated subtle peristome differences that are qualitative and not quantitative (Smith & Proctor, 1993). On the other hand, a methodological collaboration on a variant of principal component analysis (Hill & Smith, 1976) was successful, and has been increasingly cited since 2010.

Tony also encouraged MOH with his studies of Sphagnum, inviting him to write an account of the genus for his flora. This was enormously stimulating for his guest author, who has retained a lifelong interest in the genus

Personal Later Life

In 1968 and after some 5 years in the department at Bangor, Tony rather suddenly introduced Ruth (Miriam Ruth Williams) to the departmental membership. He had met her in Chester early that year and they got married after a short courtship (Figure 2). They were a devoted couple, but in many ways were opposites. She was bubbly, while Tony was rather quiet. Tony was impressed with Ruth’s artistic gifts, while Ruth was (at least to start with) rather in awe of Tony’s intellect and academic connections. Sometime in the late 1980s, they moved from their bungalow in Bangor to Llandudno.

Figure 2 . Tony at his wedding in 1968. Source not known.

From about 1990 or earlier, the effects of diabetes on his vision meant that Tony was unable to attend many BBS Meetings and as a result many younger members of the BBS did not get to know him. PES assisted him on several occasions by driving him to BBS Summer meetings in Scotland and Ireland that he particularly wanted to attend. PES remembers taking him to Ben Bulben, Co. Sligo, where we climbed the very steep north face to see Barbula maxima (now Didymodon maximus) in this classical locality.

In 1990, Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer having helped with his next major publication The liverworts of Britain and Ireland (Smith, 1990). Then in 1999, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. Tony retired from the university to care for her and she died the following year. They had done everything together and worked as a wonderful team to produce a fine moss flora.

Sometime in the late 1990s, he met John Cartwright, partner to Ruth’s younger sister. John was to play an important part as carer in the later years of Tony’s life particularly after Ruth’s death in 2000. John was able to help with transport and often took him for visits to gardens such as Secret Gardens of Heligan, Eden Project (both in Cornwall) and Ness Botanic Garden (Wirral) and also for holidays in Majorca. He also provided the necessary transport links to airports which allowed Tony to join organized garden tours in Andalucia, Greek Peloponnese, Madeira, Nice, Sicily, Crete, and Iceland. John kept a friendly eye on Tony (Figure 3) and helped with his many episodes of diabetic hypoglycaemia which often needed to be dealt with by paramedics and sometimes required specialized attention in hospital. Sarah Stille (BSBI Recorder for Merioneth) also helped him during this time by driving him to various local botanical and garden events and excursions (Stille, 2013).

Figure 3 . Tony Smith, 1997. Photo courtesy of Mr John Cartwright.

Tony loved his garden which was packed full with a wide variety of tender shrubs and trees particularly from the southern hemisphere and he had a wonderful collection of Pelargoniums. In 2011, John got a call from him asking for help with planting a 4 feet tree-fern, Dicksonia antarctica. It was far too heavy for the two of them to manipulate and eventually with the help of four strong men they managed to plant it. At the time of writing this obituary (October 2013), the fern had been moved to a new home at the Treborth Botanic Garden by the Menai Strait where it is part of a collection of ferns and bamboos and bryophytes located in a semi-shaded section of damp woodland fed by a calcareous spring. A plaque with Tony’s name has been made and will be fixed adjacent to the Dicksonia.

Tony had been admitted to hospital in 2006 for what was incorrectly diagnosed as a heart attack, but 2 years later, was again admitted and this time had surgery for a double coronary artery bypass and aortic valve replacement. After recuperation for 6 months, he took a botanical holiday in the Dolomites. Over the next few years, he looked after his garden as best he could. But in 2011, he had a serious accident at home which caused a major injury to his foot. John helped by taking him to hospital three times a week for treatment over many months. However, in November 2012, Tony developed a pneumonia which in turn caused his death. He had no next-of-kin. He donated his herbarium, comprising some 1200 hepatics and 9500 mosses, to the National Museum of Wales.

Floras

In the early 1960s and perhaps earlier, Dr E. F. Warburg (Richards, 1967; Smith, 1967) and Mr A. C. Crundwell (Perry & Long, 2001), then leading members of the BBS, talked about the importance of having and writing a new and up-to-date moss flora — the last edition (third) of Dixon’s flora had been published nearly 40 years earlier (Dixon, 1924). With Warburg’s untimely death in 1966, the matter of a new moss flora was all but abandoned. However, with the encouragement of the head of his department, Paul Richards, the mission passed to Tony, and this he relished.

Tony’s wife Ruth was an excellent artist and made most of the drawings in the publication of his important and comprehensive The moss flora of Britain and Ireland (Smith, 1978a). Next year Tony was awarded D.Sc. Oxon. and promoted to Reader at Bangor.

Tony was a tyro when it came to computers and word processing. In the early to mid-1980s, he had started to learn WordPerfect (then the word processing software package of choice) to draft the second edition of his moss flora. PES assisted him during these early days and recalls Tony was less than impressed when the world started to move to Microsoft Word as the standard word processer and Cambridge University Press wanted the manuscript of the second edition in Word. During these next few years, Tony worked on the second edition of his moss flora (Smith, 2004) with a reprint (Smith, 2006).

His liverwort flora (Smith, 1990), a lesser publication, was the first such flora since Macvicar (1926). It served for nearly 10 years until Mrs Jean Paton’s magnum opus The liverwort flora of the British Isles was published (Paton, 1999). He also edited an excellent volume on bryophyte ecology (Smith, 1982b).

Some Recollections by Members

Mrs Jean Paton and PES remember that at the BBS Lewes spring meeting in 1961, Tony gave several of us a lift in his car on excursion days. On one of these an oncoming car came around a blind corner and side swiped us. Local cottagers treated Tony for shock and fortunately, no one was hurt, but the car needed some body and paint work repairs and a couple of hours of that excursion day were spent dealing with the local constabulary.

Jean Paton and PES recollect the BBS 1986 summer meeting at Fort William (Figure 4), which will be remembered as the meeting when we nearly lost Tony. One day high up on Ben Nevis, Tony had lagged behind the main party. He had indicated that he was happy to find his own way down the somewhat simple descent. However, when the main group returned to the meeting point late in the afternoon, Tony was nowhere to be seen despite some searching and waiting. However, he did turn up very much later having come down the wrong side of the hill and which necessitated a very long walk back to the hotel.

Figure 4 . Some BBS members who attended the 1986 Fort William meeting (left to right) Harold Whitehouse (standing), Gordon Rothero, Richard Fisk, John Port, Tom Blockeel, Jean Paton, David Long, Philip Stanley and Tony Smith. Photograph, source unknown but probably taken by Pat Whitehouse.

John Birks says that he unexpectedly met Tony in November 2009 on a botanical trip to the Greek Peloponnese to see autumn-flowering bulbs such as Crocus and Sternbergia), Even though Tony was very frail and had limited vision, he retained his wonderful youthful humour and enthusiasm, his kindness and thoughtfulness, and his love of plants. He was planning to go on further trips to the Mediterranean in 2010 and 2011 and he discussed with us which trips he could manage physically and went on to say ‘It was always a pleasure to be with Tony either in the field or in his university office. He was wonderfully generous, thoughtful, and encouraging to bryologists, young and old. Hilary and I learnt much from Tony and he contributed greatly to the warm welcome we received as beginners at our first BBS meetings [in the early 1960s]’.

We are pleased to acknowledge the following people who helped us in various ways, while we were preparing this obituary: Mr Roy Perry (Cardiff), Mrs Jean Paton (Truro), Dr Ken Adams (London), Professor John Birks (Bergen, Norway), Ms Sarah Stille (Llandrillo, Corwen), Dr Ray Tangney (NMW, Cardiff), Mr Nigel Brown (Bangor), Mr John Cartwright (Llandudno) and Mr Graham Hardy (RBGE, Edinburgh).