Biography

South African railway worker, mountaineer, plant collector, and photographer. Edward Dyke was the son of a cashier in Cape Government Railways and, like his father, was a lifetime railway employee, stationed at the Cape and later in Transvaal. He spent nearly all his spare time camping and mountaineering. He climbed the Peninsula mountain chain, the Hottentots Holland mountains, and later, when the railway administration was moved to Johannesburg, in various parts of the Drakenbergen. He collected on these excursions, as well as on visits to Lesotho, and sent specimens to Dr Rudolph Marloth.

While climbing the Coxcomb Mountains near Uitenhage he discovered a new species of Protea, later named Protea dykei Phill (a synonym of Protea rupicola), and on Matroosberg, a species of everlasting flower described under the name Helichrysum dykei Bolus (= Syncarpha dykei (Bolus) B. Nord.). He also grew a considerable collection of wild plants from the Karoo in his garden. Rupert Marloth, in the obituary he wrote for the Mountain Club Journal, mentions the last delivery he received from Dyke: 50 species of plants collected during a week of camping on Mont aux Sources. Marloth considered Dyke's landscape and botanical photography among the best achieved, and published a considerable number of his photographs in his Flora of South Africa (1913-1915). He has also been commemorated by Erica dykei L. Bolus (= Erica thodei Gilg) and Lessertia dykei L. Bolus.

Dyke had fought in the Second Boer War as a young man, and at the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted as a Trooper in the Imperial Light Horse Regiment. While on patrol in Walvis Bay he was mortally wounded and died shortly afterwards on 21 January 1915, aged 42, one of the first victims of the campaign in South West Africa.

Sources:
R. Marloth, 1915, Mountain Club Journal, 1915
1917, Mountain Club Journal, 1915
Rose Ferguson, Mountain Club (Cape Section), personal communication, 2006.

Biography

South African railway worker, mountaineer, plant collector, and photographer. Edward Dyke was the son of a cashier in Cape Government Railways and, like his father, was a lifetime railway employee, stationed at the Cape and later in Transvaal. He spent nearly all his spare time camping and mountaineering. He climbed the Peninsula mountain chain, the Hottentots Holland mountains, and later, when the railway administration was moved to Johannesburg, in various parts of the Drakenbergen. He collected on these excursions, as well as on visits to Lesotho, and sent specimens to Dr Rudolph Marloth.

While climbing the Coxcomb Mountains near Uitenhage he discovered a new species of Protea, later named Protea dykei Phill (a synonym of Protea rupicola), and on Matroosberg, a species of everlasting flower described under the name Helichrysum dykei Bolus (= Syncarpha dykei (Bolus) B. Nord.). He also grew a considerable collection of wild plants from the Karoo in his garden. Rupert Marloth, in the obituary he wrote for the Mountain Club Journal, mentions the last delivery he received from Dyke: 50 species of plants collected during a week of camping on Mont aux Sources. Marloth considered Dyke's landscape and botanical photography among the best achieved, and published a considerable number of his photographs in his Flora of South Africa (1913-1915). He has also been commemorated by Erica dykei L. Bolus (= Erica thodei Gilg) and Lessertia dykei L. Bolus.

Dyke had fought in the Second Boer War as a young man, and at the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted as a Trooper in the Imperial Light Horse Regiment. While on patrol in Walvis Bay he was mortally wounded and died shortly afterwards on 21 January 1915, aged 42, one of the first victims of the campaign in South West Africa.

Sources:
R. Marloth, 1915, Mountain Club Journal, 1915
1917, Mountain Club Journal, 1915
Rose Ferguson, Mountain Club (Cape Section), personal communication, 2006.