Welsh Journals

PROFILE PAUL WESTMACOTT RICHARDS, C.B.E., M.A., Sc.D. (CANTAB.), F.L.S. WILLIAM S. LACEY Paul Richards is known internationally for his studies in tropical ecology; in this Profile 1 trace his career and connections with Wales, especially his contributions to Welsh botany and wildlife conservation. Born in Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, in December 1908 his early boyhood was spent in South Wales, where his father held a medical post in Cardiff. He attended Cardiff High School and soon came under the influence of Arthur Wade, who in 1920 had moved from Leicester to take up an Assistantship in the Herbarium of the Botany Department of the National Museum of Wales (see Gwynn Ellis on Arthur Wade, Nature in Wales, 1976, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 22-23). With Wade's benign and able guidance his youthful interest in plants was fostered and his experience greatly widened. From this tutelage also stems his life-long interest in mosses and liverworts. I remember well Paul Richards recounting to me the story of how he made a special pilgrimage to consult that great Welsh bryologist, Daniel Jones of Harlech, and how surprised that worthy was to be confronted by a young lad so well-versed in the study of bryophytes. In 1924, while still a school-boy, he joined the Moss Exchange Club, later to become the British Bryological Society, of which body he was President in 1970 and is now its longest-standing member.