Welsh Journals

MARY RICHARDS, M.B.E., R.R.C., M.Sc. WILLIAM CONDRY When my wife and I called on Mary Richards in the spring of 1974 we congratulated heron looking so fit. "Yes", she said, "I've got to keep going for another year because the family are banking on a big splash for my ninetieth birthday". We stood in her sun-filled garden (wherever she has lived she has made gardens) on a gently sloping, fertile shelf above Dolgellau. All around us her beautiful shrubs and trees; and beyond we looked to her beloved Merioneth hills, a beckoning half-circle of shapely heights standing round from south to north Cadair Idris, Diffwys, Y Llethr, Y Garn, Moel Offrwm and Rhobell Fawr. These have been her friends from the beginning for she was born at Dolserau, her grandmother's house, barely a mile from her present cottage. But though born in Wales, Welshness is only a part of Mary Richards. It has to share her blood with Scottish and Spanish as well as with English (her parents lived near Lichfield). If you ask her what made her into a botanist she takes you back to her earliest years when she explored the Staffordshire countryside in the care of a nature-loving German governess. So she got the habit of looking at wayside plants, naming birds, finding little creatures in ponds. When still a young girl she was urged to keep up her interests in plants by a kinsman who was Professor of Botany at Glasgow University. And a friend of her parents was none other than Claridge Druce, one of Britain's leading field botanists. He made her a life-member of the Botanical Society of the British Isles (sound investment indeed!) Urged on by such influences how could she not have become a botanist? Yet to do so she had to go against the wishes of her mother. Those were not days when young ladies were encouraged to go off to universities to make careers for themselves. "But", she says, "I was always a rebel, always different". So she defiantly put in a few terms at botany under Professor Hillhouse at Mason College which later became the University of Birmingham. In 1907 came her marriage to Major Harry Richards of Caerynwch, an estate close to where she was born. And soon after they went off on a leisurely journey round the globe India, Malaya, some of the Pacific Islands, China, Japan, Canada, the United States with Mary studying the flora wherever they went. Her years of married life, spanning two world wars, were years of devotion to many causes. She worked hard in World War I when Caerynwch became a military hospital. Then followed many years as a county councillor and an organiser of the Nursing Association and the Girl Guides, services for which she received due honours. Her Royal Red Cross Medal is her most cherished award. A thread through all these years was her passion for British natural history. Her interests were wide birds, mammals, fish, butterflies and moths as well as plants and she kept in touch with naturalists in many places. But her first love was always Merioneth and its flora and whenever she could she would take time off to go plant-seeking on the mountains, up the valleys or down on the coast, often in the company of kindred spirits.