Biography

British soldier and amateur botanist born at Eton College, Buckinghamshire where his father Rev. Charles Wolley-Dod was a master. He joined the British Army and trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, receiving a commission to the Royal Artillery in February 1881. He was promoted to Captain (1889) and later to Major, serving as Assistant Inspector of Ordnance at Cape Town (1896-1898) before retiring in 1901. In the First World War he was recalled and served as Lieutenant Colonel. During his training and military postings he used his spare time pursue his interest in natural history and to collect plants. He collected in South Africa (1900-1901), partly with Harry Bolus, and co-authored with him "A List of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Cape Peninsula" (Trans. S. Afr. Phil. Soc. 14: 207-373 (1904)). An account of his collections of Characeae from the Cape was published by Henry and James Groves (1906). He also collected in Gibraltar (1913-1914) and California (1921). A.H. Wolley-Dod collected widely in the United Kingdom but mainly in the south-east and edited A Flora of Sussex (1937). He was also a specialist in British taxa of the genera Rubus and Rosa. Several thousand South African specimens were donated by him to BM from 1898, and his herbarium was later bequeathed in 1948. He is commemorated by a number of South African plants including Erica dodii Guthrie & Bolus, Hebea dodii G.J. Lewis (= Tritoniopsis dodii (G.J. Lewis) G.J. Lewis), Lobelia dodiana E. Wimm. and Serruria dodii E. Phillips & Hutch.