Leo H. Grindon
Leopold Hartley Grindon. Born in Bristol on the 28th of March 1818 and died in Manchester on the 20th of November 1904 (aged 87). A self-taught naturalist. He became interested in Botany and other areas of science from an early age [he sounds just like me!] and at the age of 13, started collecting specimens. By 18, his ambition gew to attempting to fill his herbarium with all the plants (wild and cultivated) to be found in Britain. Many of his specimens were grown from seed he obtained from the wild but for those which were difficult to cultivate or find he made up for by collecting writings and drawings. He is credited with discovering Black Bog-rush (Schoenus nigricans) - new to Somerset in July, 1842 on the channel shore near Clevedon. It wasn't until 64 years later that the precise spot was rediscovered - by Miss Livett.
At the age of 20 he moved to Manchester to take up the job as an apprentice in a warehouse before working as a cashier for a cotton business - John Whittaker & Company's. In 1860, he and Joseph Sidebotham founded the Manchester Field-Naturalists' Society.
He was a prolific writer. Over his life time he published many books and contributed to many more journals and news items for his local Manchester City News.
Flora of Bristol:
At this period it is necessary to refer in succession to several botanists who were contemporaneous. We speak first of one who attained a greater age than the others; a genuine naturalist and plant-lover whose name was long and intimately associated with botanical literature. Leo H. Grindon (1818-1904), a prolific writer, and author of many popular books on natural history, was born in Bristol, where his father was sometime Coroner. He did much to spread a knowledge of botany, and to make the subject attractive to the general reader: his writing, like his conversation, being interesting, suggestive and original.
At an early age he removed to Manchester, where he spent the rest of a long life, and became widely known and esteemed. But, besides carrying out professional engagements as lecturer in this neighbourhood, he often paid visits to relatives and connections in Bath and Bristol; and delighted in taking rambles with members of the Clifton Shakespeare Society and other friends, charming them with a poetic and fanciful commentary upon the flowers gathered on such occasions.
There was nothing that he seemed to enjoy more than a day’s outing in pursuit of his favourite study, preferably in a district remote from Manchester, where he could meet with things unknown at home. He, too, hated the "splitters," and made no pretence of having critical knowledge: still, when folk brought plants for him to name, as they constantly did, he could generally give an accurate determination. One or two of his most gleeful anecdotes recounted the instruction he had thus afforded to learned people - teachers of botany - who were puzzling over some common grass or flower.
Grindon made some interesting finds in our district, the most notable being the discovery of Schoenus nigricans, in July, 1842, at a curiously secluded spot on the Channel shore of North Somerset. He published in the old Phytologist a fair description of the place where he saw the plant; yet more than sixty years went by before it was sighted by another botanist, although many of us in searching for it had actually passed within a yard or two of the spot. I possess some fronds of Asplenium marinum gathered by Grindon on that day. A few other things were recorded by him which are not yet satisfactorily accounted for, but the more important of them have been confirmed.
We can well believe that he himself realised the ideal set before us in his Country Rambles. He wrote: "Life measures not by birthdays, but by capacity for noble enjoyments; and he who would be a Man must never forget to be a Boy. It avails nothing for a man to live sixty or seventy years, unless he carry along with him the freshness and cheerfulness of his youth; and nothing so powerfully contributes to keeping the heart green as simple and true love of country pleasures and country productions. This is the true old age, and that which we should set ourselves to attain. Our first desire may be to live as long as we can; but our chief wisdom, after the fear of God, is to cultivate those tastes which make youthful spirit last till birthdays come no more.”
Flora of Gloucestershire:
L. H. Grindon (1818-1904), a genuine naturalist and plant lover, and a prolific writer of popular books on natural History, lived during his early days at Bristol, where he did much to spread a knowledge of botany. Though a non-critical botanist, he knew his plants well. He published notes on Orobanche Hederae and Veronica montana at Bristol.