Lawrence Ogilvie

Lawrence Ogilvie (5 July 1898 – 16 April 1980) was a Scottish plant pathologist.

Lawrence Ogilvie
Ogilvie in his Bermuda Department of Agriculture laboratory in the mid-1920s
Born	5 July 1898 The Manse, Rosehearty, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Died	16 April 1980 Winford Hospital, Bristol
Nationality	Scottish
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen and MSc at University of Cambridge
Known for	Plant pathology of crops in Bermuda 1923-1928 and Britain 1928-1965, entomology in Bermuda
Spouse	Doris Katherine Raikes Turnbull

From 1923, in his first job and aged only 25, when agriculture was Bermuda's major industry, Ogilvie identified the virus that had devastated the islands' high-value, lily-bulb crops in 204 bulb fields for 30 years. By introducing agricultural controls, he re-established the valuable export shipments to the US, increasing them to seven-fold the volume of earlier "virus" years. He was established as a successful young scientist when he had a 3-inch column describing his work published by the world's premier scientific-journal Nature.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Bermuda's exporting its three vegetable crops a year to the USA gave plant-pathologist Ogilvie much experience of vegetable diseases, such that on return to Britain, five years later, he became the UK expert^[7] on the diseases of commercially-grown vegetables and wheat from the 1930s to the 1960s. This knowledge was vital for Britain in World War II with severe food shortages and rationing.

In total he wrote over 130 articles about plant diseases in journals of learned societies.

Lawrence and his older brother Alan with their mother Elizabeth Ogilvie (née Lawrence) at the front door of their family home The Manse, Rosehearty, just west of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire about 1900.

Lawrence in his Ogilvie tartan kilt with his mother outside their Aberdeen house in about 1911.

Lawrence was born in Rosehearty, a fishing village on the north coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on 5 July 1898. His father, the Reverend William Paton Ogilvie, was the minister of the Presbyterian church there. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School^[8] and took his BSc and MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1921 as the Fullerton Research Scholar with special distinction in Botany and Zoology. He was also awarded the Collie Prize for the most distinguished student in botany. In Aberdeen, he lectured on the Alpine flora of China.^[9] At Emmanuel College, Cambridge University he studied plant pathology and was awarded an MSc in 1923 for his work on tree slime fluxes, particularly willow, elm, horse chestnut, and apple trees.^[10][11][12]

Career

On graduating at Cambridge University he was offered to be the first scientifically trained plant pathologist and entomologist to work in either of the then British colonies of Bermuda or Mauritius. He chose Bermuda, taking trains in September 1923 from Scotland to the port of Avonmouth near Bristol to catch the SS Changunida banana boat to Bermuda.

He was to be continuously employed from September 1923 in Bermuda, and then from 1928 in Bristol in the west of England, until he retired at the age of 65.

At age 71, working from home, he researched necessary changes and published his sixth edition of the British government's official national Diseases of Vegetables Bulletin 123 110-page guide for commercial growers^[13] – his first edition of 84 pages was published in July 1941 when food was rationed and in short supply due to WWII. The bulletin was also translated into Spanish and published in 1964 as Enfermedades de las Hortalizas.

Bermuda

 

In one of Bermuda's 204 lily-bulb fields, 1926

From November 1923 (age 24) to April 1928 he was the Bermuda Government's first plant pathologist and entomologist—the first Bermuda Government agricultural scientist. He developed agricultural laws for Bermuda; initiated seed testing; registered local seedsmen; organised the improvement of seed potatoes; established plant quarantine; studied the diseases of celery and other vegetables, maize, vines, avocados, bananas and citrus fruits; and investigated the banana losses from the Mediterranean Fruit Fly.^{[2][14][15][16][17]}

As the Bermuda delegate at the Kingston, Jamaica 8th West Indian Agricultural Conference in March 1924, he initiated West Indian plant inspections,^[18] nursery-stock export certificates, and the inspection and grading of fruit and vegetables for export.

He was acclaimed in Bermuda for identifying the virus that had increasingly damaged the commercially vital lily-bulb export trade of Lilium longiflorum Lilium Harrisii to the USA since the late 19th century.^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} Aphid damage had previously been thought to be the cause of the crop failures. He identified the virus as transmitted by the aphid Aphis lilii Takahashi. Following establishing strong government inspection in the fields and packing stations, he reported the marked improvements found during his 1927 inspections of 204 bulb fields of these lilies.

Exports of Bermuda Easter lilies increased from 823 cases in 1918 to 6043 cases in 1927.^[19][20] Due to this success being published in the renowned Nature magazine, and while still in his 20s, Ogilvie was made a vice-president of the British Lily Society.^[21]

Ogilvie wrote The Insects of Bermuda,^[22][23] published in 1928 by the Department of Agriculture, Bermuda. He identified and described 395 insects;^[24] in particular the Aphid ogilviei discovered by him on Lilium Harrisii in Bermuda.^[25][26]

Bermuda had three crops of vegetables each year for export to New York: this gave him the experience to later pioneer the European study of vegetable diseases.^[27]

England

In the winter of 1928 he was appointed Advisory Mycologist at Long Ashton Research Station near Bristol, England. The Vale of Evesham, Cornwall, and other West Country areas grew and grow much of Britain's vegetables.^[28] He pioneered the European study of commercial fruit^[29][30] and particularly vegetable diseases^{[31][32][33][34][35]} with 44 scientific papers between 1929 and 1946 at Long Ashton Research Station. He wrote the government's official national Diseases of Vegetables^[13] practical guide for trade growers: the six editions from 1941 to 1969 (in 1969, retired and aged 71) were full of photos of wilting crops.^[7][36]

Ogilvie was influential in the World War II and post-war challenge of feeding Britain: he was the leading British expert^[27] on the diseases of cereal crops^[37] and vegetables. By the 1940s, wheat varieties had not been sufficiently bred to resist the rust and other diseases in the damp climate prevalent in Britain and particularly in the south west where he was responsible for advising farmers. Before the war, Britain imported half its food, but by 1941 relied on home-grown crops because German submarines were sinking about 60 merchant ships per month, and the priority for shipping was to carry matériel to resist the impending invasion. The 1940s varieties of wheat were still unable to resist disease, with long stalks prone to lodging in the heavy rains of the west of England.

Ogilvie was also consulted about willow diseases during World War II. Surprisingly, willows were a strategic material throughout the war. Everything dropped by parachute was dropped in a basket – light and strong, they bounced on impact and could be made to any shape. Home production of willows was about 2000 tonnes per year. There were 630 manufacturers employing 7000 basket makers.^[38]

He was the international authority on the diseases of wheat that flourished in these British damp, warm conditions – particularly Black Stem Rust^{[39][40][41][42][43]} and Take All.^[44][45]

Ogilvie and his team of scientists advised growers and farmers in the south-west of England through the war years and until his retirement age 65 in 1963.^{[46][47][48][49]} This was particularly important to Britain during the war and the continued food rationing period to 1954^[50][51] – bread for instance was rationed from 1946 to 1948, even though it was not rationed during the war.

Ogilvie was elected a vice president of the British Mycological Society in December 1956.^[52]

Personal life

On 10 January 1931 in the Unitarian Meeting House, in Bessels Green, Sevenoaks, Kent, England, Lawrence married landscape-architect Doris Katherine Raikes Turnbull, whom he had met within three months of starting work in Bermuda: a letter to his mother within six months included "I am all for her ... Miss T is a great one for gadding about".

After Bermuda and their wedding, they lived happily together through WWII and the rest of their lives in the hilly agricultural hamlet East Dundry, close to the southern side of Bristol.></ref>Ch^[53]

 

Lawrence's wife Doris and son Duncan by their window taped for enemy-bomb protection, December 1940.

 

A few hours before the church was bombed, this is the christening bible for their son (William) Duncan. (Peter Ogilvie, the church Minister was not a relation.)

Doris was born on 14 November 1898, the same year as Lawrence – but in Nowgong (now Nagaon), Assam, India, the daughter of Alexander Duncan Turnbull, manager of a tea plantation; and granddaughter of the eminent 1850s Indian-railways-construction civil engineer George Turnbull.

Doris complemented Lawrence's botanical knowledge, having studied horticulture in Swanley, Kent in England; teaching gardening (and becoming fluent in French) 1921 to 1923 at La Corbière école horticole pour jeunes filles in Estavayer-le-Lac on the east shore of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland; studying from 1924 at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts (one of the first colleges to teach women landscape architecture); meeting her future husband while working for the public gardens in Bermuda; and from April 1925 establishing the three-acre garden of Ilaro Court which later became the official residence of the Prime Ministers of Barbados.^[54]

Their son and only child (William) Duncan Ogilvie was born 1 November 1940 in their East Dundry home. About midday on Sunday 24 November, he was the last to be christened in Bristol's St James' Presbyterian Church. That evening 148 long-range bombers of Germany's Luftflotte 3 bombed Bristol.^[55] The church was bombed, never to be used again. The church tower remains (about 100metres south of the east end of Bristol bus station): the nave was destroyed, with its area now having an office block.></ref>Ch^[56]

Slightly stronger than her husband, Doris developed and maintained their garden in East Dundry. She often coped with their 40-foot-deep well (losing her left thumb in its diesel-engine pump, and nearly dying of then appropriately-called Lockjaw, while then having a small baby): after 28 years in their house, mains water arrived in 1957.

Through 77 Nazi bombings of and around Bristol, Doris coped briefly with two Bristol boy evacuees, with her baby, digging the large kitchen garden, an apple- and plum-tree orchard, a dozen or so hens (trying to keep foxes away), two goats, three bee hives, and cycling to the one small Dundry shop. Food and much else was rationed during the war, with some still rationed to 1954. Their manual pre-dial phone had the number Chew Magna 81. The hamlet had candles and Aladdin lamps until electricity and gas, also delayed by WWII, came in 1953 and the 1960s. The house had a black-and-white TV from 1959.

Lawrence was a member of the wartime Dundry Home Guard and the night East Dundry fire-watching team. His duties, with his education and typist-work-availability, included the publishing of their responsibilities and shifts.

He was a founding member and a chairman of the Friends of the Bristol Art Gallery, giving the Jacob Epstein bronze Kathleen to the gallery. He was on the founding committee of Bristol's modernist Arnolfini Gallery. The two built a collection of 1930s to 1970s modern art and enjoyed water-colour painting on holidays, often driving and camping with their son in Scotland and across Europe after WWII.

Doris died of colon cancer in their East Dundry home in September 1965, with Lawrence and son in and out from working in the garden. In 1980, Lawrence broke his hip when he fell in their garden: the surgeons muddled his operation, sadly moving him after a second operation non-compos mentis to Winford hospital where he died months later on 16 April 1980.

References

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lawrence Ogilvie.

1. Ogilvie, Lawrence (April 1927). "An Important Virus Disease of Lilium longiflorum and its Varieties". Nature. 119 (2997): 528. doi:10.1038/119528b0. ISSN 1476-4687. S2CID 8937999.
2. Annual reports of the Bermuda Department of Agriculture 1923-26
3. Page 4 of the January 1929 Royal Botanic Society of London: Quarterly Summary
4. Ogilvie, Lawrence (1928). "A Transmissible Virus Disease of the Easter Lily". Annals of Applied Biology. 15 (4): 540–562. doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.1928.tb07776.x.
5. October 1968 Monthly Bulletin of the Bermuda Department of Agriculture and Fisheries article by Lawrence Ogilvie
6. Kosmix.com^{[permanent dead link]}
7. Newsletter of the Federation of British Plant Pathologists No 6, Winter 1980, pages 47-48 Obituary notices: Lawrence Ogilvie by H Croxall
8. Aberdeen Grammar School "Excellence" medals "EX Laurentio Ogilvie III Class MCMXIII" and "Ex Laurentio Ogilvie V Class MCMXV"
9. The Garden magazine July 1919
10. Transactions of the British Mycological Society Volume IX part III, pages 167-182, 31 March 1924 Observations on the "Slime Fluxes" of trees Lawrence Ogilvie
11. Ogilvie, Lawrence (1924). "Observations on the "slime-fluxes" of trees". Transactions of the British Mycological Society. 9 (3): 167–182. doi:10.1016/S0007-1536(24)80019-0.
12. Nature magazine number 2845, volume 113, May 10, 1924, page 91
13. Ogilvie, Lawrence (1969). Diseases of vegetables (6th ed.). London: H.M.S.O. ISBN 978-0-11-240423-1.
14. Bulletin of Entomological Research Volume XVIII part 3, February 1928 pages 289-290 and plate XIII Methods employed in breeding Opius Humilis, Silv., a parasite of the Mediterranean fruit-fly (Ceratitis Capitata, Wied) L Ogilvie Bermuda Department of Agriculture
15. Ogilvie, Lawrence (February 1928). "Methods employed in Breeding Opius humilis , Silv., a Parasite of the Mediterranean Fruit-fly ( Ceratitis capitata , Wied.)". Bulletin of Entomological Research. 18 (3): 289–290. doi:10.1017/S0007485300020010.
16. Swirski, Eliahu; Ben-Dov, Yair; Wysoki, Manes (1997). "Mango". World Crop Pests. 7: 241–254. doi:10.1016/S1572-4379(97)80087-5. ISBN 9780444828439.
17. Seaver, F. J.; Waterston, J. M. (March 1946). "Contributions to the Mycoflora of Bermuda: IV". Mycologia. 38 (2): 180. doi:10.2307/3755060. JSTOR 3755060.
18. Fungus Diseases of Tropical Crops Paul Holliday
19. Page 223 of 22 September 1928 The Gardeners' Chronicle
20. Articles by A Grove on page 82 of the 2 February 1929 The Gardeners' Chronicle and page 10 of the 6 July 1929 issue
21. The Lily Year Book 1957 pages 45 to 59
22. Valentine, Barry D. (1 March 2003). "A Catalogue of West Indies Anthribidae (Coleoptera)". Insecta Mundi.
23. Nakahara, Sueo; Hilburn, Daniel J. (1989). "Annotated Checklist of the Thysanoptera of Bermuda". Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 97 (3): 251–260. ISSN 0028-7199. JSTOR 25009769.
24. "Collections received". Bulletin of Entomological Research. 16 (4): 407–408. March 1926. doi:10.1017/S0007485300028741.
25. The Insects of Bermuda by Lawrence Ogilvie, published 1928 by the Department of Agriculture, Bermuda
26. Wetterer, James K.; Wetterer, Andrea L. (June 2004). "Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Bermuda". Florida Entomologist. 87 (2): 212–221. doi:10.1653/0015-4040(2004)087[0212:AHFOB]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 55002304.
27. Foreword by M. Cohen, Director of the British Plant Pathology laboratory: page iii of the 1969 sixth edition of the HMSO Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's Diseases of Vegetables SBN 11-240423-5
28. The Annals of Applied Biology Volume XXVI, number 2, pages 279-297, May 1939 Lettuce mosaic G C Ainsworth and L Ogilvie
29. Journal of Pomology and Horticultural Science Volume XI, no 3, pages 205-213, September 1933 Canker and die-back of apples associated with Valsa Ambiens L Ogilvie
30. Journal of Pomology and Horticultural Science Volume XIII, no 2, pages 140-148, June 1935 The fungus flora of apple twigs and branches and its relation to apple fruit spots L Ogilvie
31. Annual Report of the Long Ashton Research Station 1933 The effect of Formalin on potato "sickness" L Ogilvie
32. Transactions of the British Mycological Society Volume XXII, parts III and IV, 1939, pages 308-9 Vegetable disease investigations at Long Ashton L Ogilvie and C J Hickman
33. Transactions of the British Mycological Society Volume XXIII, part II 1939 Root rot of hardy vegetables L Ogilvie
34. Nature volume 160-page 96, 19 July 1947 Occurrence of Botrytis Fabæ Sardiña in England L Ogilvie and M Munro
35. 1946 Annual Report of the Agricultural and Horticultural Research Station, Long Ashton, Bristol [England] Chocolate Spot of field beans in the south west L Ogilvie and M Munro
36. Six editions (each edition revised) July 1941-1969 of the British Ministry of Agriculture's 100-page Bulletin 123: Diseases of Vegetables by Lawrence Ogilvie. The first edition was expanded from Ogilvie's Vegetable Diseases: a brief summary Bulletin 68 1935.
37. (British) National Agricultural Advisory Service Quarterly Review Volume XIV, Winter 1962, number 58 Relation of disease control to successful continuous cereal growing L Ogilvie and I G Thorpe
38. Willow diseases. http://www.wringtonsomerset.org.uk/archive/stottwillow.html Wringtonsomerset.org.uk
39. 6th Commonwealth Mycological Conference, London 1960 Black Rust of wheat: co-operative investigations in western Europe and northern Africa L Ogilvie and I G Thorpe
40. Science Progress Volume XLIX number 194, April 1961 pages 209-227 New light on epidemics of Black Stem Rust of wheat L Ogilvie and I G Thorpe
41. 2nd European Colloquium on Black Rust of Cereals, Madrid April 1961 Studies of Black Rust Epidemiology in England L Ogilvie and I G Thorpe
42. International Cereal Rust Conferences June and July 1964 Black Stem Rust of wheat in Great Britain L Ogilvie and I G Thorpe
43. Hunt, Willis R. (September 1927). "Miscellaneous Collections of North American Rusts". Mycologia. 19 (5): 286–288. doi:10.2307/3753715. JSTOR 3753715.
44. Plant Pathology volume 4, number 4, December 1955, pages 111-113 Effect of ley grasses on the carry-over of Take-All Valerie M Wehrle and L Ogilvie
45. Sciencedirect.com
46. BSPP.org.uk
47. Sciencedirect.com
48. HBCI.com 9 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine
49. Hollings, M. (1958). "Anemone Brown Ring?a Virus Disease". Plant Pathology. 7 (3): 95–98. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3059.1958.tb00839.x.
50. Report of the 13th International Horticultural Congress, 1952: Recent developments in vegetable diseases in Great Britain Lawrence Ogilvie
51. Plant Pathology Volume 2, number 4, December 1954 New or uncommon plant diseases and pests in England and Wales: "Net blotch" of field and broad beans Moira C D Justham and L Ogilvie
52. "The British Mycological Society".
53. W Duncan Ogilvie (myself) was their child there
54. Volume LV, December 2009 pages 21-22 of The Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society
55. Pages 84-86 of 978-0-946771-89-9 Blitz over Britain by Edwin Webb and John Duncan
56. W Duncan Ogilvie (myself) was the child there