British cryptogamic botanist, Ursula Duncan was amongst a select few dedicated to the study of lichens in Britain in the mid 20th century, publishing A guide to the study of Lichens (1959) and Introduction to British Lichens (1970).
Born in Kensington, London she grew up on the Duncans family estate at Parkhill, near Arbroath in Scotland. From the age of ten she demonstrated an interest in studying and classifying plant life, particularly the mosses, and her father encouraged this trait by buying his daughter a dissecting microscope and a copy of H. N. Dixon's Handbook of British Mosses.
Privately educated by a governess, Duncan passed the Entrance School Certificate for Cambridge and obtained a distinction in Greek. She joined the British Bryological Society in 1938 but her botanical activity was interrupted by the Second World War during which she worked at the Censorship Department in Inverness. This job ended at the death of her father when she was required to return to Parkhill in order to manage the estate, a job she undertook successfully until the day she died. Also a talented musician, Duncan excelled at musical theory and became a licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music as well as undertaking a degree in classics as an external student of London University which she completed in 1952.
Returning to her bryological research she published an illustrated key to the Sphagnum in 1961 and wrote bryofloras for Wigtownshire (1956) and Angus (1966). Although working extensively with the mosses, her greatest contribution was certainly to the field of lichenology: her Introduction to British Lichens almost certainly played a part in the revival of lichen study in the UK and she was a founding member of the British Lichen Society.
Her zeal was not just confined to the cryptogams though, and Duncan surveyed the general flora of both Mull and Ross-Shire, publishing a Flora of East Ross-Shire in 1980. She was interested in the taxonomy of the genera Potamogon, Hieracium and Taraxacum as well as the grasses. Never content to sit on committees she was happiest when in the field and led many of her botanical companions, both amateur and profession, on expeditions throughout the British Isles. Duncan left all of the bryophytes and lichens in her personal herbarium to the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, and the vascular plant specimens to the University of Dundee, which, in 1969 named her an honorary doctor of law.
Sources:
P.W. James, 1986, "Obituaries: Ursula Katherine Duncan (1910-1984)", Lichenologist, 18: 383-385
M. Lawley, Ursula Katherine Duncan (1910-1984), The British Bryological Society:
http://rbgweb2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Learning/Bryohistory/Bygone%20Bryologists/URSULA%20KATHARINE%20DUNCAN.pdf, accessed August 2010
M. Lawley, "A social and biographical history of British and Irish field bryologists", The British Bryological Society:
http://rbgweb2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Learning/Bryohistory/History%20of%20British%20Bryology.pdf, accessed August 2010.
