PRIMULA MENZIESIANA

Isaac Bayley Balfour was Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh from 1888 to 1922 and also Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). As a tribute to the RBGE staff who served in the Great War, and those who lost their lives, he selected four of the names on the war memorial and named a plant in their honour.

The plant named in Alan Menzies’s honour is the Primula menziesiana, now renamed as Primula bellidifolia,

In 1901 the Menzies family were living at 71 Strathmore Street, Kinnoull, Perth: Father, James (Dyer’s Finisher, Silk) (46); Mother, Elspet (45); Daughter, Lizzie (Draper’s Assistant) (17); Daughter, Jane (Clerkess, Dyeworks) (15); Daughter, Elspet (13); Daughter, Margaret ((10); and Son, Alan (7).

As a schoolboy, Alan Menzies was a junior member of the Perthshire Society of Natural History. On leaving school he served for a period of two and a half years as an assistant forester on the Atholl Estates. With very positive references from the Head Forester of the Atholl Estates, and the Curator of the Natural History Museum in Perth, he joined the staff of the Botanical Garden Edinburgh as a Probationer Gardener/ Forester on the 5th August 1913. Alan had passed courses on surveying, meteorology, nursery work, physics and chemistry by the time war was declared a year later.

Alan enlisted with the 5th Cameron Highlanders on the 29th August 1914, along with eight of his colleagues and died alongside three of them at the Battle of Loos.

Alan Menzies is also commemorated on the War Memorial at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh; and the Wilson United Free Church War Memorial, Perth.