We are pleased to advise visitors to this web site that Graham Avery, Vice-Chairman of the Clarence Bicknell Association, has written a new online paper on Botanists in the Book of Guests in Esperanto. This was triggered by, and accompanies, the publication in July of The Book of Guests in Esperanto in print form (you can purchase one on Amazon). You can download the paper here: https://clarencebicknell.com/wp-content/uploads/botanists_in_the_book_of_guests_in_esperanto_g_avery_2022.pdf
Graham has identified another of Bicknell’s botanist friends. Since first publishing the list of people whose signatures appear in the Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book in 2010, we had interpreted the signature of a companion of Correvon on 16 July 1914 as ‘Ratz’. However, in Graham’s work on Mader he discovered in July 2022 cfrom the memoirs of Elise Berger that in 1914 Correvon visited Hanbury Gardens with Théodor Katz. A closer look at the signature in the Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book shows that it is indeed written with a sprawling initial letter K which can easily be read as R.
The signatures are opposite Clarence’s watercolour of Biscutella in yellow and green.