Charles Bagge Plowright

Charles Bagge Plowright
Born	3 April 1849(1849-04-03) King's Lynn, Norfolk, England
Died	24 April 1910(1910-04-24) (aged 61) North Wootton, Norfolk, England
Nationality	United Kingdom
Occupation	Surgeon
Known for	mycology

Charles Bagge Plowright (born King's Lynn, Norfolk, 3 April 1849; died North Wootton, Norfolk, 24 April 1910) was a British doctor and mycologist.

Plowright trained as a doctor at the West Norfolk and Lynn Hospital, eventually becoming a surgeon there. He was also a Medical Officer for Health for many years in Freebridge Lynn, and was the Hunterian Professor of Comparitive Anatomy and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1890-1894. While a professor he gave lectures on ergot and fungi in the human body which were noted in the British Journal of Medicine.^[1]

Plowright's most significant contributions were in mycology. In 1872 he published a list of 800 Norfolk fungi in the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society and was elected an honorary member. Starting in 1873, Plowright published a series of fasciculi (pamphlets intended to be collected into a book) entitled Sphaeriacei Britannici describing members of the fungal genus Sphaeria (species modernly placed in Pseudovalsa, Macrospora, Homostegia, and others). With his collaborator W. Phillips, Plowright published a series of papers entitled New and Rare British Fungi (1871-1884) which described almost 300 new species. Plowright contributed to The Gardeners' Chronicle for over thirty years, writing principally on fungal diseases of plants; he was an early advocate in England of the use of Bordeaux mixture. Early in his career he made a special collection of Pyrenomycetae (now Sordariomycetes) and published several papers on them; he later moved on to the Uredinaceae, in 1889 publishing A Monograph of the British Uredinaea and and Ustilaginaea. He was one of the early organizers of the British Mycological Society and served as president 1898-9.

Plowright had an interest in archaeology and published a number of articles on the subject, including several works on woad.^[2]

Plowright also was active in his local community, serving as a local magistrate, director and vice-chairman of a local girl's high school, and governor of the Lynn Grammar School.^[3]

Family

Plowright married Mary Jane Lovie Robb, daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, and they had two children: Edith Mary (b. 1875) and Charles Tertius Maclean Plowright (1879-1935). Charles was also a surgeon and became a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps.^[4] Edith Mary married Thomas Petch, also a mycologist, in 1908.^[5]

The standard author abbreviation Plowr. is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[6]

References

1. ^ Australian Postal History & Social Philately, article on Plowright
2. ^ Transactions of the British Mycological Society, Volume 3, #3, 1910, p. 231-2
3. ^ British Medical Journal, May 7, 1910, p. 1149, obituary for Charles Bagge Plowright
4. ^ Peerage entry for C. T. M. Plowright
5. ^ Pharmaceutical Journal, Volume 80, Jan. to June 1908, p. 45
6. ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do.