Ronald Keay was a forest botanist who was an authority on the trees of West Africa. He served as Director of the Federal Department of Forest Research in Nigeria, and as Executive Secretary of the Royal Society (1977-1985).

Among Keay's publications were Trees of Nigeria (1960-1964), a revision of the Flora of West Tropical Africa, An Outline of Nigerian Vegetation (1949) and Vegetation Map of Africa, south of the Tropic of Cancer (1959). He was also co-author of Human Ecology in the Tropics (1970, with J.P. Garlick) and 80 further forestry related publications

Born in Richmond, Surrey, Keay attended school in Wimbledon and took up a scholarship to study botany at Oxford University in 1939. Following his graduation he was recruited by the Colonial Office and posted to Zaria, northern Nigeria, in 1943. After passing exams in the Haura language, he was sent to the Forest Department's headquarters in Ibadan, shadowing the Acting Chief Conservator of Forests, D.R. Rosevear, who proved to be an early mentor.

Keay left Nigeria in 1944-1945 to study forestry at Oxford, and in the same period married his wife, Joan, who joined him in Ibadan following the end of the Second World War. Keay was appointed head of the Forest School at Ibadan, and was also put in charge of the Forest Herbarium following the death of the Forest Botanist A.P.D. Jones in 1946.

Under his direction, some 3,000 specimens were added to the Ibadan herbarium in the next two years, with duplicates sent to Kew, the British Museum and the Forestry Institute, Oxford.

A revised forestry policy was issued in Nigeria in 1945, stressing the importance of managing the savannah woodlands and high forest patches of inhabited areas. Keay's early publications Forest vegetation in the savannah regions of Nigeria (1947) and An outline of Nigerian vegetation (1949) were significant in contributing to the understanding of these landscapes.

Keay was officially appointed Forest Botanist in 1950. He was seconded to Kew the following year to prepare a revised edition of the Flora of West Tropical Africa (originally published in 1927-1936, by J Hutchinson and J.M. Dalziel). He remained in England until the first volume was completed (1954) and the next was underway.

In 1957 Keay was appointed Principal Research Officer with the Department of Forest Research and began work on Nigerian Trees with research officer Charles Onochie. Published between 1960 and 1964, it catalogues nearly a thousand species of tree, with illustrations, descriptions and vernacular names. (A revised edition appeared in 1989.)

Keay was soon promoted to Assistant Director, and then Director in 1960, presiding over the new series of the Nigerian Forestry Information Bulletin and the expansion of the research programme into fields such as physiology and forest soils, undertaken in a new herbarium and laboratory building.

After Nigerian independence in October 1960, the Federal Department of Forest Research played host to the first session of the Food and Agriculture Organization's African Forestry Commission. The establishment of a Savannah Forest Research Station in Nigeria was proposed, and the construction of a new forest products research laboratory was initiated.

Keay retired in 1962, but not before publishing a perceptive development plan for Nigeria's forest resources, in light of an increasing population and need to increase living standards. His achievements in integrating forestry and forest products research into schemes for economic development in Nigeria were lauded in the next Annual Report of the Department.

Keay's work continued in London, where he served as Deputy Executive Secretary and Executive Secretary of the Royal Society. After stepping down from this post in 1985, he prepared a revised version of the Trees of Nigeria, working at Kew and visiting his old colleagues in Nigeria as part of the process.

Keay had been active member of the Nigerian Field Society throughout his time in the country and he became its vice-president in 1987. He was also Treasurer of the Linnean Society from 1989-1995. In addition to these and other contributions in the world of biology, in London he served as church warden for St. Martins-in-the-Fields, playing a key role in a successful renovation appeal that raised half a million pounds. He was a longstanding member of the Commonwealth Forestry Association. Keay died of cancer on 7 April 1998, survived by his wife and three children.

Sources:
N. Hepper, 1998, Journal of the Kew Guild, 13(103): 301
R.W.J. Keay, 1952, "Revision of the 'Flora of West Tropical Africa' I", Kew Bulletin, 7(2): 149
R. Kemp, 1998, The Commonwealth Forestry Review, 77(3): 238-239 J. Marsden, 1998, The Linnean, 14(2): 52-53

D. Okali, 1999, " Ronald Keay and Nigerian biodiversity", The Nigerian Field, 64(3-4): 91-106.