Biography

Canadian taxonomist who came to botany relatively late but soon emerged as an authority on the Solanaceae family. D’Arcy is also recognised for his work managing the Flora of Panama project at Missouri Botanical Garden. William D'Arcy (known as Bill) was born in Calgary, Alberta. He grew up there and in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where his interest in natural history led him to build up an impressive collection of bird eggs, later donated to a museum. He also studied taxidermy and collected moss, which he sold to a local florist. A businessman by inclination, he studied economics at the University of Alberta and at Toronto after winning a scholarship. Graduating in 1954 he had distinguished himself sufficiently to gain a place as a trainee in the Canadian Foreign Trade Service in Ottawa. He served as deputy trade commissioner in Chicago for two years and then became vice president of the Oppenheimer Sausage Casing Company, also in Chicago, where he married Jeanette J. Vast in 1957. After a stint in New York as vice president of the American Can Company, D'Arcy decided to set up business on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, a place that had captured his heart while on holiday. Taking his wife and two children with him, he took over a soft drinks factory on the island and began his new life away from the city.

A mixture of success and problems followed, with the most significant event being an explosion at the factory that sent a piece of steel into D'Arcy's skull. Surviving this potentially lethal accident, he began to re-evaluate his latest move while on the mend. The islands had reawakened his interest in natural history, especially their fascinating flora, and with a little encouragement from Roy Woodbury at the University of Puerto Rico, D'Arcy was prompted to reinvent himself as a taxonomic botanist. He began by embarking on a flora of Tortola based on collections prepared with a homemade plant dryer together with information garnered from the library and from experts further afield. It was published after he moved to Gainesville, Florida, to take his master's degree at the University of Florida. Completing this qualification in 1968 he enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis to work on his PhD. His doctoral thesis, The Solanaceae of Panama, led him to be recruited in 1972 by Missouri Botanical Garden where he managed the Flora of Panama project to completion, taking over from Tom Croat. Rising to a senior curatorship, he also maintained his affiliation with Washington University as an adjunct professor in the biology department. D'Arcy was also an associate professor at the University of Missouri, during which tenure he undertook 25 field expeditions, including numerous trips to Panama in the 1970s. He wrote many of the treatments for the Flora of Panama (completed in 1980 under his direction) and while continuing to specialise in Solanaceae research, he also dealt with a host of other topics in his 144 publications.

In 1975 he took a year off from Central American botany to take up an invitation from Dian Fossey in Rwanda, where he worked on her mountain gorilla project, looking at their eating habits. Unfortunately he left the project under a cloud as his plant dryer caused a fire that burnt his quarters to the ground, greatly displeasing Fossey. He left distraught, having lost his clothes, passport and voucher specimens. To add insult to injury, when he returned to St. Louis he and his wife separated. D'Arcy filled his evenings by developing property which he rented out to tenants. He later fell back on his economics training and successfully managed investments to stay comfortably off, and remarried in 1981 after meeting Nancy Speed, a teacher involved in the Botanical Garden's education programme. Continuing to develop his expertise in the Solanaceae through the 1980s and in the 1990s, he completed treatments of the important family for the Flora of China and for Madagascar, as well as taking over the late Alwyn Gentry's Bignoniaceae project. He also co-edited the volume The Anther: Form, Function and Phylogeny (1996, with R.C. Keating), demonstrating his keen interest in how adaptations work.

After being diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s, D'Arcy fought the disease valiantly. Believing himself to be somewhat better, he travelled to Taiwan. After the trip, however, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer that had spread to the liver. His driven nature extended the 12 months he was given to live to 18 months, and he passed away at the end of 1999. He had published 186 plant names and had 20 plant species named in his honour, and is remembered for his great breadth of knowledge in systematics.

Sources:
Anon., 2000, "In memoriam: William G. D'Arcy, Ph.D", Bulletin of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 88(3): 18
R.C. Keating, "William Gerland D'Arcy, 1931-1999", in R.C. Keating, V.C. Hollowell and T.B. Croat (eds), 2005, A Festschrift for William G. D'Arcy: the legacy of a taxonomist: 3-1.