Collingwood Ingram

Collingwood Ingram (1880–1981), ornithologist, plant collector and gardener, was an authority on Japanese flowering cherries and is still widely known as ‘Cherry’ Ingram.

Personal life

Collingwood was a grandson of Herbert Ingram, founder of the Illustrated London News, son of Sir William Ingram, who succeeded Herbert as the owner of the paper, and brother of Bruce Ingram, editor from 1900-1963. On his mother’s side, he was descended from Edward Stirling, the son of a creole mother (a slave or a freed slave) and a Scottish plantation owner in Jamaica.[1] Edward Stirling made a fortune as pastoralist and owner of copper mines in Australia. Collingwood’s uncle, Sir Edward Charles Stirling, was a noted anthropologist, physiologist and museum director, with a great interest in the natural world. Collingwood married Florence Maude Laing in 1906 and they had four children. He was a Compass Officer with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I and Commander of his local Home Guard in Benenden, Kent, in World War II. He was a collector of Japanese art, especially netsuke, and left his collection to the British Museum.

Ornithology

In the early 1900s, Sir William Ingram employed Wilfred Stalker to collect bird skins in Australia for Collingwood to identify and catalogue at the London Natural History Museum, resulting in his first major publication.^[1] In 1907 he collected in Japan and for his work there ^[2] he was made an Honorary Member of the Ornithological Society of Japan. However his main interest was in the field study of birds; he made the first record of marsh warblers breeding in Britain.^[3] He was an accomplished bird artist. A planned book on the birds of France was interrupted by the War and never completed, although part emerged as Birds of the Riviera in 1926. His 1916-18 journals record his war experiences and also his off-duty bird observations and sketches behind the lines in northern France. He interrogated pilots, including Charles Portal, on the height at which birds fly, resulting in a short paper after the War.^[4] He was member of the British Ornithologists Union for a record 81 years. On return from one of his trips to Japan he gave a cherry tree seed to each of the Walkhurst cottages on Walkhurst Road, Benenden. One of the resulting cherry trees still stands along this road today.

Plant collecting and gardening

After World War I, horticulture took over from ornithology as Collingwood Ingram’s dominant interest. He created his famous garden at The Grange in Benenden and collected plants across the world. His outstanding plant-collecting trips were to Japan in 1926 and South Africa in 1927. By 1926, he was a world authority on Japanese cherries and was asked to address the Cherry Society in Japan on their national tree. It was on this visit that he was shown a painting of a beautiful white cherry, then extinct in Japan. He recognised it as one he had seen in a moribund state in a Sussex garden, the result of an early introduction from Japan. He had taken cuttings and so saved for the world the Great White Cherry, ‘Tai Haku’. He introduced many other Japanese cherries to this country as well as a number of his own hybrids. His 1948 book Ornamental Cherries is a standard work. Ingram introduced many other new garden plants, the best known of which are probably Rubus X tridel ‘Benenden’ (Rubus deliciosus X Rubus trilobus) and the Rosemary ‘Benenden Blue’, a natural variant of Rosemarinus officinalis which he collected in Corsica. He also raised numerous other new garden plants, including many Rhododendron and Cistus hybrids.

Bibliography

Birds of the Riviera. 1926. Witherby, London. Isles of the Seven Seas. 1936. Hutchinson, London. Ornamental Cherries. 1948. Country Life, London. In search of Birds. 1966. Witherby, London. Garden of Memories. 1970. Witherby, London. The Migration of the Swallow, 1974. Witherby, London.

References

1. ^ On the birds of the Alexander district, Northern territory of South Australia, Ibis, 387-415, 1907
2. ^ Ornithological notes from Japan, Ibis, 129-169, 1908
3. ^ On the nesting of the marsh warbler in Kent, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 15, 96, 1905
4. ^ Notes on the height at which birds fly, Ibis, 321-325, 1919

Persondata
Name	Ingram, Collingwood
Alternative names
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Date of birth	1880
Place of birth
Date of death	1981
Place of death