Arthur Hugh Garfit ALSTON [3915]

  General Notes:

Arthur was an esteemed botanist.

British Museum (Natural History): Department of Botany: Fern Section Correspondence and Papers Ref DF 424 Ref National archives.gov.uk
The series consists of the correspondence of A H G Alston, J A Crabbe and various other sectional papers, reports etc. . Scope and Content The series consists of the correspondence of A H G Alston, J A Crabbe and various other sectional Date range: 1930 - 1965.

1939 Register
British Museum , Kensington, London, England
Arthur H G Alston 04 Sep 1902 Civil Service Botanist

The Times
Obituary
28 Mar 1958 pg 13 col E
Mr A. H. G. ALSTON
A LEADING AUTHORITY ON FERNS
Mr. Arthur Hugh Garfit Alston, whose death in Barcelona in his fifty sixth year has been announced, was the youngest son of the Rev. F. S. Alston, Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire, and was educated at Marlborough and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he took an honours degree in Botany in 1924.
after a few months study at the Kew Herbarium, he was appointed Systematic botanist to the Department of Agriculture Peradeniya, Ceylon, where he remained for several years, preparing a supplmentary volume to Trimen's Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon and The Kandy Flora published in 1931 and 1938).
In 1930 he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Herbarium of the British Museum (Natural History) to take charge the Pteridophyta. He quickly acquired world-wide knowledge of ferns and their allies, particularly the genus Selaginella, of which he was the leading specialist, and improved the museum's collection of ferns to a remarkable degree, not only encouraging botanists and explorers of all nations, but also by incorporating photographs of type specimens deposited in the many foreign herbaria which he had visited.
He published many botanical papers, especially on Selaginella, and just before his death had completed his account of the ferns of West Tropical Africa.
Alston was an enthusiastic traveller and collector himself: in 1938-39 he made a very large collection on the Andes of Venezuela and Colombia, and in 1953-54, at the invitation of the government of Indonesia, he was exploring in Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes. Nearer home, he made large collections in southern Albania, Greek Macedonia, Algeria, Spain, and Sweden, and shorter holidays were always spent botanizing in the British Isles. During the late war he was seconded to the Ministry of Home Security and in 1946 he was given the important task of reporting on the state of taxonomic botany and the botanical collections in some areas of Germany on behalf of the Allied administration. Alston put his scholarly mind and profound knowledge of ferns and the history of botanical collectors at the disposal of countless visitors to London. He was a member of the Savile Club and of the Athenaeum, and had been a vice-president of the Linnean Society of London and of Botanical Society of the British Isles. He was unmarried.
Ref Alstoniana Pg. 402A