William Rickatson Dykes

William Rickatson Dykes (4 November 1877 – 1 December 1925) was an English amateur botanist who became an expert in the field of iris breeding and wrote several influential books on the subject. He was also interested in tulips, amaryllis, and other plants.

Early life and education William Rickatson Dykes was born on 4 November 1877 at Bayswater in London, the second son of Alfred Dykes. He was a clever student and a talented athlete who attended City of London School and then Wadham College, Oxford. In 1900, he obtained an M.A. in classics. He taught Greek and Latin and occasionally football. Dykes took over this study and completed it, a process that formed the basis for his first book, Irises (1909), a volume in the series Present-Day Gardening.

By 1910, Dykes was being interviewed by Garden Life magazine as an expert amateur and recognised authority on iris cultivation. In his own garden, he had developed an extensive collection embracing most known species. He had several bulb frames.

In 1911, Dykes travelled to the South of France, in Hyères in Var, in search of irises that he had read about, where he discovered Iris spuria var. maritima. It was later published in his 1913 book The Genus Iris. During this period, he also worked with retired engineer and plant breeder Arthur J. Bliss (1862–1931) to breed several hybrids.

Dykes undertook a formal study of the iris genus at the botanical library at Kew Gardens Herbarium. He also examined hundreds of iris species specimens at other collections, including the British Museum, Oxford Botanical Garden, Cambridge Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Botanic Garden, Berlin Botanical Garden, Vienna Hofmuseum and Jardin des plantes. in which he created the first classification of irises according to Linnaeus's botanical system. In 1924, he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal in recognition of the importance of this book in the field of horticulture. Dykes knew Round because he was an assistant drawing master at Charterhouse. Round later commented that, during iris season, Dykes would show up "in his dressing gown" at 5 in the morning with an iris in hand, expecting the painting to be made immediately while the bloom was still fresh. He said that the drawings for Dykes "were easy and comfortable to do." The following year, he was appointed to the Secretaryship of the Royal Horticultural Society, a position he devoted himself to until 1925.

In 1924, Dykes married Elsie K. "Katherine" (née Kaye),

That same year, Dykes was killed only a week after receiving the Victoria Medal of Honour from the RHS. On 27 November 1925, his car skidded on a slippery road and he crashed into a truck. The impact ejected him from his vehicle and he was so severely injured that he died a few days later on 1 December. Since then, it has become highly coveted by all iris hybridizers. It was sold by Orpington Nurseries and was used by other iris breeders to create new hybrids. She died in Raynes Park on 25 May 1933 after a train accident. Dykes on Irises (edited by G. Dillistone) was a reprint of Dykes's contributions to various journals and periodicals during the last 20 years of his life.

In 1932, Otto Stapf from Kew Gardens found a hybrid between Iris chrysographes and Iris delavayi in Dykes's garden and named it Iris dykesii in his honour. In 1935, Alexei Vedenski named a tulip Tulipa dykesiana in Flora of USSR; this too has since been reclassified, in this case as a synonym of Tulipa kolpakowskiana (Regel).