David McClintock

Life Early life McClintock was born in 1913, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the eldest of six children, with five younger sisters. His father, Edward Louis Longfield McClintock, then a curate, came from the Irish ascendancy (going back to the plantations of Ulster), and McClintock was to have a strong link to Ireland and Irish plants all his life. His mother, Margaret Katherine née Buxton, came from a long line of humanitarian evangelical Christians and Quakers, including Fowell Buxton and Elizabeth Fry.

McClintock was educated from age eight at West Downs Preparatory School in Winchester. From there he went to Harrow School and on to Cambridge, where at Trinity College he read German, French and Modern History.

Uncertain what career to follow, he took an uncle's advice and became a chartered accountant, being paid nothing for his first two years and a pittance for the third. There were surprising changes of direction in his life: in one vacation from Cambridge he had, in the absence of her governess, to teach his younger sister botany, and found that the names of the plants stuck in his mind – a bent much developed later and accelerating after the war. Newly qualified in 1937, he worked for The National News Letter, run by Stephen King-Hall, who was particularly concerned about the German threat; at the same time, with war looming, one of his cousins who lived in Hertfordshire persuaded him to join the Territorial Army, the Hertfordshire Yeomanry.

War and marriage

When war came in 1939, McClintock was mobilised at once (though King-Hall continued to pay him). After an inactive winter he joined, in early 1940, a battalion of the Scots Guards recruited (largely of officers who had to resign their commissions) to fight with the Finns against the Russians.

On 23 November 2001 he died at home, aged 88 and having never travelled outside Europe, and having never moved house after his demobilisation in 1945. His wife, Anne, had pre-deceased him, in 1993. He and his wife had four children.

Honours 1968: La Société Guernesiaise: Membre d'honneur 1991: RHS Gold Veitch Memorial Medal for scientific and practical contribution to botany and horticulture 1993: Linnean Society: H H Bloomer Award for his contribution to natural history 1994: Made honorary member of the BSBI for his contribution and service to the society 1995: RHS Victoria Medal of Honour – its highest accolade in horticulture 2001: MBE 'for services to botany' (the award of which McClintock was informed shortly before he died)

Society membership McClintock was a systematic man, and kept this record of his offices and publications:

1952: Kent Ornithological Field Club (now Kent Ornithological Society) founder member 1955: Kent Field Club founder member 1958: Kent Trust for Nature Conservation (now Kent Wildlife Trust) founder member 1961–96: BSBI Recorder for the Channel Islands (excluding Jersey) 1963: Kent Trust for Nature Conservation Vice-president 1966: Garden History Society: founder member 1971–73: BSBI President 1972–74: Linnean Society Vice-president 1972: International registrar for heathers 1974–78: Linnean Society Editorial Secretary and Editor of Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 1976: Kent Field Club President 1976–95: BSBI referee for garden plants and bamboos 1978–82: Wild Flower Society Treasurer 1980–83: Ray Society President 1980–84: National Trust council member 1981–92: RHS Scientific Committee 1984–92 Vice-chairman (66 times in the chair) 1981–93: Wild Flower Society chairman 1982–87: RHS Publications Committee 1983–2001: BSBI referee for Erica, to which was added Calluna and Daboecia in 1995 1985: Bamboo Society founder member 1989: Heather Society President 1989–2001: Holder of National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens (NCCPG) collection of Sasa, & allied genera of bamboo 1990–2000: International Dendrological Society Vice-president 1997–2000: Wild Flower Society President 2001: London Natural History Society President

Achievements 2,750 book reviews 900 magazine articles, in 90 journals (including the various journals of the BSBI, the Heather Society and the Wild Flower Society as well as intermittently in, amongst others, The Plantsman/New Plantsman, The Garden, Report and Transactions of the Société Guernesiaise, Bulletin of the Kent Field Club, Irish Naturalists’ Journal, Country Life, The Countryman, Year Book of the International Dendrology Society, Deutsche Baumschule, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Glasra, Kew Bulletin, Bamboo Society Newsletter, Gardeners’ Chronicle, Taxon, Karaca Arboretum Magazine, Glasgow Naturalist, Moorea, Hortus, Zahradnictiv and De Levende Natuur) 25 books contributed to 100 genera written up 26 heather cultivars found, and named (incl Erica erigena ‘Irish Dusk’, Erica erigena ‘Irish Salmon’ and Erica ciliaris ‘David McClintock’, one of two heathers named after him) 100 TV and radio broadcasts