George Claridge Druce

George Claridge Druce JP FRS FLS (23 May 1850 – 29 February 1932)[1][2] was an English botanist and a Mayor of Oxford.

Claridge Druce served on Oxford City Council from 1892 until his death, and was Chairman of the Public Health Committee.

He presented the City of Oxford with the Sheriff's gold chain and badge, kept in the Town Hall, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.

A stone marking the city boundary at the top of Cuckoo Lane in the east Oxford suburb Headington was erected at the time and is engraved with his name.

Among his discoveries, Druce was the first to recognise (1907–11[6][7][8]) as a distinct variety of Field Elm a rare narrow-leaved form, unique to the English Midlands, that he had noticed at Banbury and Fineshade, Northamptonshire, which he named 'Plot's Elm' after the Oxford botanist Robert Plot.