Charles Carmichael Lacaita, botanist and Liberal politician, was born in Edinburgh and attended Balliol College, Oxford. Following in the footsteps of his Italian father (Sir James Lacaita) he entered the legal profession, being called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1879. In 1885 he was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to the Liberal statesman Earl Granville and was elected MP for Dundee. He also married his wife, Mary Doyle, in this year. He retired from politics two years later.

Being a gentleman of independent means, Lacaita was then able to devote much of his time to botany and collected plants in many places including Sikkim (1913), Spain (1925-1928) and Italy. He published an account of his botanical gatherings in Sikkim in the Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany, in 1916. He regularly visited his father's estate in Taranto, southern Italy, and published a series entitled Piante italiane critiche o rare (1910-1925) in the journal of the Societá Botanica Italiana (of which he was a member from 1902).

Lacaita lived at Horsley, near Leatherhead, Surrey, and from the late 1880s at Selham, West Sussex, where he developed a fine garden. He was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1882 and served as vice president in 1921-1922. After the death of his first wife, he married again in 1929. About 20 plants were named in Lacaita's honour, including the genus Lacaitaea Brand. His papers are held in the Botany Department at the Natural History Museum, London.

Sources:
Anon., 1933, Journal of Botany, 71: 238
H.W. Pugsley, 1934, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 146: 160-162
A.J. Wilmott, 1933, Journal of Botany, 71: 259-262.