Biography

British missionary. Frederick Arundel Rogers was born in Chetnole, Dorset, and educated at Oxford University. He came to Africa as a layman to work with the South African Church Railway Mission, which was headquartered at Bloemfontein. After 1908 when the organisation extended its mission across the Zambezi, he was stationed for long periods at Bulawayo. While there he travelled extensively by bicycle visiting workmen who were constructing the Rhodesian railways, and collected plants along the lines of rail that linked Bulawayo-Elizabethville and Bulawayo-Salisbury-Beira (Mozambique). He published a Provisional List of Flowering Plants and Ferns of Albany and Bathurst (1909) and had started a history of the mission, which was destroyed in a fire at his cottage while he was away in England recovering from fever. He was head of the mission from 1911 until 1914, and in 1922 became archdeacon of Pietersburg, Transvaal, serving for two years as general treasurer of the Diocese of Grahamstown. He collected wherever he travelled, and had other people collect for him, including C.C. Harbor and W.A.H. Horbor in Botswana, Thorncroft in Barbeton, and Rev. William Smart in Plettenberg Bay and Graaf-Reinet, ultimately creating a collection of over 24,000 specimens. It contains many of the species that have been named after him, among which are African taxa such as Anisotes rogersii S. Moore, Thespesia rogersii S. Moore, Polygala rogersiana Baker f., Oldenlandia rogersii S. Moore, Huernia rogersii R.A. Dyer and Stapelia rogersii L. Bolus (= Angolluma rogersii (L. Bolus) Plowes).

Sources:
M. Gunn and L.E. Codd, 1981, Botanical exploration of Southern Africa: 289-290
H. Wild, 1960, Biographical Notes on Botanical Collections in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Comptes Rendu de la Réunion Pléniere de l'Aetfat, 4: 161-173.