British mining manager and botanist who published a flora of Cornwall, his home county, in 1909. Born in Ponsanooth, Frederick Davey became interested in zoology and botany at school. In 1891 he was awarded a silver medal by the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society for one of his first publications, a monograph of the rushes, sedges and grasses of Kennal Vale. Davey worked in mining and eventually became manager of the Cornwall Arsenic Works at Bissoe, spending his spare time compiling a list of the flora of Cornwall. By 1902 he was able to publish A Tentative List of the Flowering Plants, Ferns, &c., of Cornwall. Printed only on one side of the paper, it was meant to encourage fellow botanists to send in material and notes of their own to aid him in producing a complete flora. The following year Davey was made the youngest Fellow of the Linnaean Society. His Flora of Cornwall was published in 1909, adding 42 species to the Tentative List, and dedicated to his father for instilling in him a love of flowers.

Teaching natural sciences at the Central Technical School, Davey worked as an examiner in agricultural botany for the Cornwall County Council. He also contributed regular botanical reports to the Royal Cornwall Institution and prepared a botanical section for the Victoria History of Cornwall. In later life he joined the Botanical Exchange Club (1911) but by this time his health had begun to deteriorate and he had retired to a cottage in Perranarworthal. In 1912 he suffered a cerebral seizure and from that time until his death (from a similar seizure in 1915) he was unable to leave the house. Fortunately during this time he still managed to read and write. At the time of his death Davey's herbarium consisted of 4,000 mounted specimens.

Sources:
G.C. Druce, 1915, "Obituaries: Frederick Hamilton Davey", Botanical Exchange Club Reports, 4(3): 251-253
J. Britton, 1916, "Frederick Hamilton Davey", Journal of Botany, 54: 29-31.