Richard Arnold Dümmer was a South African botanist who collected in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

 and Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

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Dümmer worked in the Cape Town municipal gardens before joining Kew as a gardener in 1910. In 1911 he became assistant to Prof. Augustine Henry

Augustine Henry

Augustine Henry was an Irish plantsman and sinologist. He is best known for sending over 15,000 dry specimens and seeds and 500 plant samples to Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom. By 1930, he was a recognised authority and was honoured with society membership in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland,...

 and had a hand in preparing Elwes

Henry John Elwes

Henry John Elwes, FRS was a British botanist, entomologist, author, lepidopterist, naturalist, collector and traveller who became renowned for collecting specimens of lilies during trips to the Himalayas and Korea. He was the first person to receive the Victoria Medal of the Royal Horticultural...

 and Henry's "The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland" for publication. Dümmer worked in the herbaria and libraries of Kew, the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, the Linnaean Society, Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh Universities. He published taxonomic notes on Agathosma

Agathosma

Agathosma is a genus of about 135 species of flowering plants in the family Rutaceae, native to the southern part of Africa. Common names include Buchu, Boegoe, Bucco, Bookoo and Diosma. Buchu formally denotes two herbal species, prized for their fragrance and medicinal use...

, Eugenia

Eugenia

Eugenia is a genus of flowering plants in the myrtle family Myrtaceae. It has a worldwide, although highly uneven, distribution in tropical and subtropical regions. The bulk of the approximately 1,000 species occur in the New World tropics, especially in the northern Andes, the Caribbean, and the...

, Bruniaceae

Bruniaceae

Bruniaceae is a family of shrubs native to the cape region of South Africa. They are mostly restricted to the Cape Province, but a small number of species occur in KwaZulu-Natal....

, Alepidea

Alepidea

Alepidea La Roche is a genus of about twenty species in the botanical family Apiaceae , all of which are endemic to Africa. They occur mainly in southern Africa are found as far north as Ethiopia....

, Lotononis

Lotononis

Lotononis is a genus of legume in the Fabaceae family and in the Crotalarieae tribe. This is a partial list of species that belong to the genus:* Lotononis adpressa N. E. Br.* Lotononis angolensis Welw. ex Baker...

, Pleiospora, Combretaceae

Combretaceae

Combretaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Myrtales. The family includes about 600 species of trees, shrubs, and lianas in 18 genera. The family includes the leadwood tree, Combretum imberbe. Three genera, Conocarpus, Laguncularia and Lumnitzera, grow in mangrove habitats ....

, Adenandra

Adenandra

Adenandra is a genus of evergreen shrubs of the family Rutaceae, commonly known as Buchu . The genus is native to South Africa. The plants are related to the citrus family, and have oil glands in the leaves which give off a distinctive aroma. The name Adenandra derives from Greek aden, a gland;...

 and Acmadenia

Acmadenia

Acmadenia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rutaceae. The species are mostly from the western Cape Province of South Africa, including:*Acmadenia alternifolia Cham.*Acmadenia argillophila I.Williams...

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He was employed by the Kivuvu Rubber Company of Kampala

Kampala

Kampala is the largest city and capital of Uganda. The city is divided into five boroughs that oversee local planning: Kampala Central Division, Kawempe Division, Makindye Division, Nakawa Division and Lubaga Division. The city is coterminous with Kampala District.-History: of Buganda, had chosen...

 in 1914, using the opportunity to collect flowering plants and fungi. He also arranged botanical expeditions to Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon is an extinct shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya, north of Kisumu and west of Kitale.- Physical features :It is the oldest and largest solitary volcano in East Africa, covering an area of around 3500 km²....

 and Mount Longonot

Mount Longonot

Mount Longonot is a dormant stratovolcano located southeast of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa. It is thought to have last erupted in the 1860s. Its name is derived from the Maasai word oloonong'ot, meaning "mountains of many spurs" or "steep ridges".Mount Longonot is...

crater. Dümmer then spent a year back in Cape Town identifying and processing his collections.

His life and career were cut short by a motor-cycle accident on the Jinji road in Kampala. He is commemorated by the Kew Guilds annual award of "The Dümmer Memorial Prize" to the student submitting the best collection of British plants. His specimens number over 20 000 and are housed at PRE, SAM, NH, BM, E, K, MO, P and US.