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Gigi Crompton | |
---|---|
Born | Irmingard Emma Antonia Richter April 16, 1922 Feldafing, Germany |
Died | January 12, 2020 97) Swaffham Bulbeck, UK | (aged
Nationality | American then British |
Occupation(s) | art curator; botanist |
Gigi Crompton (1922-2020) was an American-British art conservator, botanist and author. She restored paintings for the Fogg Museum at Harvard in the USA and National and Walker art galleries in Britain. She later became involved with botany and plant conservation and compiled the Catalogue of Cambridgeshire Flora Records since 1538. [1]
Irmingard Emma Antonia Richter [2] was born on 16 April 1922 in Feldafing near Munich in Germany. Her parents were an American art historian and dealer Georg Richter and German aristocrat Amalie (née Baroness Zündt von Kenzingen). She was initially an American citizen and later a naturalised British citizen. The family moved to Italy in 1924 and then to Britain in 1929. While in the UK she attended Hayes Court boarding school in Kent and then the Westminster School of Art in London, followed by a short time studying art in Berlin. In 1939, she moved with her parents to the USA, where she trained in art conservation at the Brooklyn Museum and then worked at the Fogg Museum. [3] In 1945, she returned to London and remained in the UK for the rest of her life. [4] [5]
She was part of an artistic circle in London, knowing people such as Henry Moore. She had an affair with the artist Roland Penrose between 1945 and his marriage to Lee Miller in 1947. [3] In 1946, Penrose gave her his painting Le Grand Jour. This was purchased from her in 1964 by the Tate Gallery for its collection. [6] In 1949, she married an American town planner, David “Buzzy” Crompton (died 2007). They lived in Liverpool while her husband was a lecturer at the University of Liverpool's Department of Civic Design and from 1952 on his sister's estate at Thriplow, Cambridgeshire. In 1965, they moved to Swaffham Bulbeck. She died at home on 12 January 2020. [3]
Following her training in New York, she moved to London in 1945 and began working in art restoration. She also wrote about art for magazines such as Art in America. In 1947-1948 she was employed on artworks of the National Gallery in London and between 1958 and 1962 part-time at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. [2] She became interested in plants and gardening, especially the history of plant distributions. She studied through attending lectures at the University of Cambridge, communication with Max Walters, then Curator of the University of Cambridge Herbarium, and gardening staff on the estate where she lived. She was employed to assist Max Walters for a short time on a monograph about the genus Silene and learnt how to use herbaria, specialist books and plant records. [4] [5]
By around 1955, she had become a field botanist and was recording plant distributions in her local area. She was a founding member of the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust in 1956 and had a role in its organisation for many years. From 1972 until 1986, she worked on the Eastern England Rare Plant survey for the Nature Conservancy Council, including developing what has now become the standard method for surveys of rare plants. She worked with historic records, books, card indices and personal papers to compile information about the plants found in Cambridgeshire in an accessible form, which led to the Catalogue of Cambridgeshire Flora Records since 1538. The presence of the University of Cambridge and early plant taxonomists such as seventeenth century John Ray means that there is a greater depth of information for this county than others. The catalogue was published in two printed volumes in 2001 and 2004 and subsequently made into an on-line searchable version. [1] [4] [5]
Crompton also became a member of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. From 1972 to 2002, she was the BSBI Recorder for Cambridgeshire. She was involved in long-term monitoring of a local population of lizard orchids, a rare plant in the UK, as well as other plants in the Devil's Dyke, Cambridgeshire Site of Special Scientific Interest. [3]
Crompton was the author or co-author of several botanical publications from 1959 onwards about the Thriplow estate, the Breckland, especially Lakenheath Warren and the flora of Devil’s Dyke and Wicken Fen, all in East Anglia, as well as a book about the Cambridgeshire flora. These included:
In 2011, Crompton was made an honorary member of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. [3]
Ulmus minor subsp. minor, the narrow-leaved elm, was the name used by R. H. Richens (1983) for English field elms that were not English elm, Cornish elm, Lock elm or Guernsey elm. Many publications, however, continue to use plain Ulmus minor for Richens's subspecies, a name Richens reserved for the undifferentiated continental field elms. The name Ulmus minor subsp. minor is justified by the existence of at least one other distinctive U. minor subspecies, U. minor subsp. canescens. Dr Max Coleman of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh argued in his 2002 paper 'British Elms' that there was no clear distinction between species and subspecies.
Ulmus laevisPall., variously known as the European white elm, fluttering elm, spreading elm, stately elm and, in the United States, the Russian elm, is a large deciduous tree native to Europe, from France northeast to southern Finland, east beyond the Urals into Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and southeast to Bulgaria and the Crimea; there are also disjunct populations in the Caucasus and Spain, the latter now considered a relict population rather than an introduction by man, and possibly the origin of the European population. U. laevis is rare in the UK, although its random distribution, together with the absence of any record of its introduction, has led at least one British authority to consider it native. NB: The epithet 'white' elm commonly used by British foresters alluded to the timber of the wych elm.
Sir Roland Algernon Penrose was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World War he put his artistic skills to practical use as a teacher of camouflage.
Thriplow is a village in the civil parish of Thriplow and Heathfield, in Cambridgeshire, England, 8 miles (13 km) south of Cambridge. The village also gives its name to a former Cambridgeshire hundred.
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Ellen Hutchins (1785–1815) was an early Irish botanist. She specialised in seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts. She is known for finding many plants new to science, identifying hundreds of species, and for her botanical illustrations in contemporary publications. Many plants were named after her by botanists of the day.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Hunnybunii' was originally identified as U. nitens var. HunnybuniiMoss by Moss in The Cambridge British Flora (1914). 'Hunnybunii' was reputed to have been commonly planted in the parklands and hedgerows of Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire before the advent of Dutch elm disease. Melville considered the tree a hybrid of 'Coritana'.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Sowerbyi', commonly known as the Sowerby Elm, was described by Moss in The Cambridge British Flora (1914). The tree, once referred to as the 'Norfolk Elm' by Smith, was commonly found in the hedgerows and woods of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire in the early 20th century before the advent of Dutch elm disease. Melville considered it a hybrid of 'Coritana'.
Selinum carvifolia is a flowering plant of the genus Selinum in the family Apiaceae. The specific name carvifolia signifies 'having leaves resembling those of Caraway'. It is a plant of fens and damp meadows, growing in most of Europe, with the exception of much of the Mediterranean region, eastwards to Central Asia. Its common name in English is Cambridge milk parsley, because it is confined, in the UK, to the county of Cambridgeshire and closely resembles milk parsley, an umbellifer of another genus, but found in similar habitats. The two plants are not only similar in appearance, but also grow in similar moist habitats, although they may be told apart in the following manner: P. palustre has hollow, often purplish stems, pinnatifid leaf lobes and deflexed bracteoles; while S. carvifolia has solid, greenish stems, entire or sometimes lobed leaf-lobes and erecto-patent bracteoles. Also, when the two plants are in fruit, another difference becomes apparent: the three dorsal ridges on the fruit of S. carvifolia are winged, while those on the fruit of P. palustre are not. Yet a further difference lies in the respective leaflets of the plants : those of Peucedanum palustre are blunt and pale at the tip, while those of Selinum carvifolia are sharply pointed and of a darker green. S. carvifolia used also to occur in the English counties of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire but is now extinct in both. Growing in only three small Cambridgeshire fens, it is one of England's rarest umbellifers. It is naturalized in the United States, where it is known by the common name little-leaf angelica.
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Oenanthe pimpinelloides is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae known by the common name corky-fruited water-dropwort. It is a plant of tall, lightly grazed or infrequently mown grassland and coastal meadows in Europe and neighbouring parts of Asia and North Africa.
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