South African botanist. Kathleen Huntley (later Gordon-Gray) was born and raised in Pietermaritzburg, where she attended Natal University, graduating with a BSc in 1934 with majors in Botany and Chemistry and a medal for top student in her degree year. She went on to obtain an MSc degree, with distinction, in 1938 for her anatomical study of Eragrostis and a Diploma in Education in 1939. During the war she taught science at Girls' Collegiate School.
She returned to Natal University as a doctoral student in the Botany Department and was appointed on a temporary basis to assist with practical work, lecturing, and herbarium curation. After the war there was a large influx of ex-military, naval, and air force personnel wishing to gain qualifications to pursue careers in ecology, conservation, and farming, and among them was her husband-to-be, who had served as an artillery officer with the South African and British forces. After their marriage in 1950, she became a housewife as well as a permanent full-time lecturer at the university.
She received a PhD in 1959 for her thesis, Revision of Fimbristylis and Bulbostylis (Cyperaceae) in southern Africa, a subject she chose in response to constantly being asked - by ecologists, conservationists, and others - questions about these plants that she could not answer. At that time, the family Cyperaceae was reputed to be "difficult" and had been much overlooked in studies of southern African vegetation; indeed one of the reasons that her thesis was slow to materialise was a lack of available literature.
Her lecture programme varied widely from year to year, so that she developed a broad botanical knowledge, which she found beneficial in later years, especially after retirement when more research time became available. For many of these years she worked in close association with C.J. Ward. She and her husband spent their limited holidays in the wilder parts of South Africa: Swaziland, Lesotho, Cape Province, and lesser-known parts of KwaZulu-Natal. During their travels they made the first South African records of Scleria griegiifolia (Ridl.) C.B. Clarke in the Cyperaceae and Oxyrhachis gracillima (Baker) C.E. Hubb. in the Poaceae, both of which were then well known in tropical Africa.
Apart from Cyperaceae and Poaceae, her collecting has been limited to unusual taxa, relating to specific teaching projects, and occasional research investigations amongst dicot genera, especially Cassia (now Senna and Chamaechrista). She has one species, Asclepias gordon-grayae Nicholas, named after her, and has produced some 60 publications, as sole or joint author, in the fields of taxonomy and fossil botany. Since retiring in 1978, she has continued to pursue botanical interests, working for some time with J.M.B. Browning, whose capabilities as an artist and investigator, as well as a secretarial assistant, made possible a series of articles on Cyperaceae.
Sources:
Personal communication, January 2007
Bothalia 42(1): 69f. 2012.
