Black, Raleigh Adelbert   (1880 - 1963)

Born on 11 March 1880 in Bothwell, Tasmania; died on 2 July 1963 in Mont Albert, Victoria.

Resident in Tasmania from 1880-1926, thereafter in Victoria and (briefly) in Sydney, New South Wales.

Black worked at first in a printing works, spent 26 years with the Tasmanian Council of Agriculture, and finally, worked as a travelling representative for a fertiliser company in country Victoria.

He was a close associate of Leonard Rodway.

J.H. Willis described Black as "a remarkable, largely self-taught and many-sided man who was undoubtedly the most important collector of Tasmanian vascular flora during the first half of the present century".

In 1952 Black estimated that his collection amounted to about 15,000 specimens, of which 9,000 were mounted numbers and about 6,000 were unmounted duplicates.

Although the majority of the collections are Tasmanian the herbarium contains specimens from Victoria, New South Wales, the Kimberley Ranges, Britain, Belgium and America, particularly Canada.
With the exception of ferns and clubmosses no cryptogams are included.

Willis recorded that negotiations for the herbarium's disposal commenced in 1946 with the Arnold Arboretum, Massachusetts. Offers were also sought from Canberra (CANB), Hobart (HO) and Kew (K) but Black's evaluation was deemed to be too high.
It was eventually purchased by MEL in August 1957 for £300.

A few duplicates are also in HO, K and the US.

Source: A.E.Orchard (1999) A History of Systematic Botany in Australia, in Flora of Australia Vol.1, 2nd ed., ABRS.
Short, P. S. (1990). "Politics and the purchase of private herbaria by the National Herbarium of Victoria". in Short, P. S. (ed.). History of systematic botany in Australia. ASBS. p.6.;
NOTE: place of birth corrected from Aberdeen, Scotland and dates of residence in Tasmania corrected from 1890-1963 based on information provided by Helen Black (grand-daughter) in January 2014.
Portrait: none found, seeking.

Collecting localities for 'Black, R.A.' from AVH (2021)

Data from 6,946 specimens