English headmaster of Polperro Primary School who specialised in Cornish taxa of Rubus. Francis Rilstone was born in Penhallow, Cornwall, and was the elder son of a mining blacksmith. After attending Penwartha School where he was a pupil teacher, he continued his education at Treleigh near Redruth. Moving to London he completed his studies at Westminster College before beginning a career as a teacher and headmaster. It was around this time that Rilstone started botanising in the Penhallow region and, although interested in flowering plants, he particularly enjoyed collecting moss specimens.
His first teaching position was at St. Mary's in Truro, before he became the first headmaster at St. Agnes Boy's. From 1914 Rilstone was based in Polperro where he was head of the Country Primary School until his retirement in 1934. Throughout these years his bryological work continued and he was an active member and distributor of the Moss Exchange Club, being present in 1922 when it became the British Bryological Society. Also interested in micro-fungi, it was from about 1911 that Rilstone developed his love of brambles, a subject in which he would become a national expert.
Collecting extensively in Cornwall he also gathered specimens from the commons of London, from Wiltshire, the Cotswolds and Wales. From his findings he was able to produce a bramble flora of Cornwall and later of the British Isles.
Retiring to a cottage between Penhallow and Perranzabuloe he continued his botanical work and, although he rarely spent time in the field, he maintained extensive correspondences. In 1948 his bryophyte flora of Cornwall was published. At this time Rilstone became fascinated by place names and colloquial terms, publishing some works of this nature in local journals and magazines. In 1949 he compiled a vocabulary of the countryside. In his personal life Rilstone was a freemason and a Methodist preacher. He never married. His herbarium, including 10,000 flowering plant specimens and 10,000 packets of mosses and hepatics, was donated to BM around 1952 and the bramble species Rubus rilstonei W.C. Barton & Ridd. was named in his honour.
Sources:
E.S. Edees, 1954, " Obituaries: Francis Rilstone (1881-1953)", Proceedings of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, 1(1): 110-114.
