Ronald Melville was an English botanist, based at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. He is chiefly remembered for his wartime research into rosehips

Rose hip

The rose hip, or rose haw, is the fruit of the rose plant, that typically is red-to-orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips begin to form in spring, and ripen in late summer through autumn.-Usage:...

 as a source of vitamin C, prompted by the epidemic of scurvy amongst children owing to the reduced importation of fresh fruit. His research concluded that hips from the common Dog Rose Rosa canina held the highest concentration of the vitamin.
In later years, he challenged the two-species taxonomy of the British elms proposed by Richens

Richard Hook Richens

Richard Hook Richens was a former Director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cambridge University, and became best known for his studies of elm...

 , identifying five distinct species, several varieties and numerous complex hybrids .

Melville also compiled the world's first Red Data Book, published in 1970, listing all known threatened plants. He was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1938. The tree Acacia melvillei is named in his honour.

Publications

• Contributions to the study of British elms. 1. What is Goodyer's Elm? The Journal of Botany, Vol. 76. July, 1938.
• The Story of Plants and their Uses to Man (co-author John Hutchinson), 1948.
• Ulmus canescens: an eastern Mediterranean Elm. Kew Bulletin: 499-502, 1957.
• The Elms of the Himalaya (co-author Hans Heybroek), Kew Bulletin No. 26 (1), 1971.
• On the discrimination of species in hybrid swarms with special reference to Ulmus and the nomenclature of U. minor (Mill.) and U. carpinifolia (Gled.). Taxon 27: 345-351, 1978.

External links

• http://www.kew.org/heritage/people/melville.html Royal Botanic Gardens Kew: Botanists: Melville.