Rob Wood
Rob Wood has always been interested in nature, having spent part of his childhood in rural areas of South Africa. During his schooldays he worked in the home garden, growing flowers, vegetables and trees. After finishing school, and a few years of work and university study, he travelled overseas. While hiking in the English countryside, he met a fellow hiker, Janet. The following year, they were married in South Africa, and have since jointly pursued their interests in the natural world. On his retirement from the banking world, he undertook voluntary work in the herbarium of the University of the Witwatersrand. While there, he studied the rich collection of old and new botanical volumes in the Herbarium library, and other libraries of the University. It was here that he met Millicent Frean and they set out to write and illustrate South African Flowering Trees – a botanical adventure through history. Rob’s publications include an introductory and explanatory discussion of an early Herbal, De Materia Medica by Pedanios Dioscorides, and a catalogue of botanical works written before the twentieth century held in the libraries of the University of the Witwatersrand.
