Doreen Court (nee Morris), the author of Succulent Flora of Southern Africa was born in the Little Karoo, a centre of intense succulent variation. She obtained her B.Sc. degree in Botany and Zoology at Rhodes University in 1948, followed in 1949 by a scholarship to the Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch to study plant taxonomy. In 1951 she returned to Rhodes to do her U.E.D. and met her future husband, Jack Court. They settled in Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) and had two sons; the younger, Michael, subsequently did two degrees at Rhodes.
In 1979, Doreen returned to Rhodes to do an M.Sc. in taxonomy, and to see the first edition of Succulent Flora of Southern Africa (A.A.Balkema, Cape Town 1981) through to press, and stayed on as a lecturer in systematics in the Botany Department for a further five years. The Courts relocated to Robertson in the Western Cape during the 90s and it was while attending a Botanical Congress in Cape Town that Doreen was approached by overseas delegates with a request to update her book. The second edition was published in 2000.
In 2003, the couple moved to George where Doreen was appointed curator of the Southern Cape Herbarium George (SCHG) at the Botanical Gardens. She resigned in 2006 to work on the third edition of Succulent Flora. Her contribution through Succulent Flora is the remarkable number of species that have been included and the detail of the descriptions and illustrations. The distribution of the groups selected extends from southern Angola eastwards to Mozambique and southwards to the southern coastline of South Africa. The families included are Mesembryanthemaceae (vygies), Portulacaceae, Crassulaceae, Geraniaceae (Sarcocaulon), Euphorbiaceae, Passifloraceae (Adenia), and the popular Asphodelaceae (Aloes, Gasterias and their smaller relatives).
The design of the latest edition, which includes recent research and new species, has been done in a new and fresh manner, with much extended colour illustration. Details of the fantastic survival strategies of these extraordinary plants are given full description.
The book has long served as an authoritative guide to the identification and study of our succulent plants by botanists and lay persons alike. With these three editions of Succulent Flora of Southern Africa, Doreen Court joins the formidable list of Rhodes female botanists such as Lilian Britten, Mary Peacock, Eily Gledhill and Amy Jacot-Guillarmod in making her mark in the study of our flora.
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