Rupert Charles Barneby Records (RG4)

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Biography of Rupert Charles Barneby

Rupert Charles Barneby (1911-2000) has been acclaimed one of the world's leading plant taxonomists, ranked by many with the legendary nineteenth-century taxonomist George Bentham. His main areas of expertise were the Leguminosae and Menispermaceae but he made other taxonomic contributions as well. He described and named 1,160 plant species new to science. Five new genera and 25 species were named in his honor. His monumental two-volume work, "Atlas of North American Astragalus" (1964), is a highlight of his long and prolific career.

Dr. Barneby was born on October 6, 1911, at Trewyn in Monmouthshire, Wales. He went to public school at Harrow (1924-1929) and attended Trinity College, Cambridge University (1930-1932), where he received a B.A. in History and Modern Languages. In 1978, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from City University of New York.

At Harrow, the young Barneby met fellow student and nature enthusiast Dwight Ripley who was to become his lifelong partner and collaborator in plant exploration, collection, and horticulture. The two men, sometimes with Peter Davis, botanist, later at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, collected widely in Mediterranean Europe and North Africa, returning with seeds and plants to The Spinney, Ripley's home in Sussex, England, where they introduced many species to cultivation and mounted specimens for herbaria, including Kew. It was at Kew that Barneby met Noel Sandwith, botanist, classics scholar, and an important mentor in his scientific career.

Barneby and Ripley collected in America as early as 1936, emigrated three years later, and began systematically to search out and identify plants of the western United States and Mexico. Residing first in Los Angeles, they reunited with literary friends from England who had arrived earlier, among them Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley. Barneby became a permanent resident in 1941. He placed specimens at herbaria throughout the West, including Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, where he met botanist Philip Munz, and California Academy of Sciences, where he developed lasting relationships with botanists Alice Eastwood and John Thomas Howell. In 1943, he and Ripley moved to Wappingers Falls, NY, and constructed a renowned rock garden where they grew plants they had collected in the Southwest. They built an equally renowned garden when they moved to Greenport, NY, in 1959. In 1974, Barneby and Ripley received the American Rock Garden Society's Marcel Le Piniec Award for their plant explorations and introduction of new rock garden species.

Barneby became associated with The New York Botanical Garden in 1943, contributing an account, at Henry Allan Gleason's request, of the genera Astragalus and Oxytropis to his Illustrated Flora of the United States and adjacent Canada, vol. 2, 1952. Over the next 57 years, he made significant contributions to the taxonomy of Astragalus, Oxytropis, Daleae, Cassiinae (with Howard Irwin), Mimosa (with James Grimes), Calliandra, and others. He was also an accomplished artist, illustrating many of his works in precise detail until a rock garden accident in 1963 injured his right hand and precluded drawing. He retrained himself, and the illustrations in his 1977 Daleae Imagines were again his own.

Barneby held honorary positions at NYBG from 1959-1972. In 1973, he was appointed Research Associate and in 1980 Curator in the Institute of Systematic Botany. He was an editorial consultant to Brittonia and on the editorial board of Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, making considerable use of his comprehensive taxonomic knowledge, notable facility with Latin, and sharp editorial skills.

Barneby was recognized both inside and outside NYBG for his many achievements. He received NYBG's Distinguished Service Award in 1966 and Henry Gleason Awards in 1965 and 1980. Beyond NYBG, he received the Asa Gray Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists in 1989 and was acknowledged internationally with the Engler Silver Medal from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy in 1993 and the Millennium Botany Award at the XVI International Botanical Congress in 1999.

Barneby shared his expertise willingly with NYBG scientists, students, and visiting botanists by identifying plants, critiquing research projects, and preparing the proper Latin descriptions. Many took part in his "daily tea," where topics of taxonomic import, along with more casual issues, were discussed in an environment made congenial and supportive by his personable and open manner.

Barneby never lost his love of nature, in particular the landscapes and plants of the American West. For many years, he and Ripley made an annual collecting trip west, and after Ripley's death in 1973, he continued the practice in the company of trusted colleagues, frequently Patricia and Noel Holmgren. His last trip west was made alone, at 81, after which his health prevented travel. Outside his apartment, above the former NYBG stable where he lived since 1974, he planted his own daffodils - in a public garden already awash with blooms. In 1998, he moved to the nearby Kittay House, an assisted-living home, in the Bronx.

Dr. Barneby died December 5, 2000, following a stroke earlier in that year. He is buried in Smith Hill Cemetery near Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

Jacquelyn Kallunki with thanks to Frank Polach.

(For additional information see sources listed in Publications, Series 5.)

Scope and Content

The Rupert C. Barneby collection includes correspondence (1939-2000), research proposals, illustrations, photographs and articles about Dr. Barneby. His artwork has been removed to the NYBG Art and Illustrations collection and the field notebooks to that collection.

Restrictions

Access restrictions

This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.

Copyright

Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

Related Material

New York Botanical Garden

CFN--Collector's Field Notebooks

RG4--Cronquist, Arthur

RG4--Irwin, Howard S.

RG4--Maguire, Bassett

RG4--Ripley, Harry Dwight Dillon

California Academy of Sciences

Special Collections, CAS Library

Separated Material

Artwork has been removed to the NYBG Art and Illustrations collection and the field notebooks to that collection.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Records of Rupert C. Barneby (RG4), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.

Acquisition Information

This collection was transferred to the NYBG Archives.

Processing Information

Originally processed in August 2010 by Jacqueline Kallunki and Frank Polach. Converted to EAD in May 2010 by Lisa Studier.

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