Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, KBE, FRS, FRSE (31 March 1853 – 30 November 1922) was a Scottish botanist.

He was the son of John Hutton Balfour, also a botanist,[1][2] and Marion Spottiswood Bayley, and was born at home, 27 Inverleith Row, Edinburgh.

Though the stated aim of the mission was to observe Venus, Balfour used the opportunity to investigate the local flora, and on his return, the fieldwork he had carried out permitted him to gain his doctorate in botany in 1875.

Of greater significance was Balfour’s success, shared with his friend Charles Walker Cathcart, in persuading the War Office to adopt sphagnum moss bandaging in military hospitals and in identifying the best species to use and where to find them.

These undoubtably saved many lives and towards the end of the war over one million such dressings a month were being used by British hospitals.

Their effectiveness relied on the acidic antiseptic properties of dried sphagnum (first recognised in Germany in the late 19th Century) and its capacious ability to absorb up to twenty times its own volume of blood and other bodily liquids.

His only son, also named Isaac Bayley, or ‘Bay’, was killed in 1915 while serving in the First World War at Gallipoli.

It was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer, with wooden panels using every variety of timber grown at Benmore.

In 1968 the Bayley Balfour Memorial Hut was restored, and moved to a new site in the walled garden of Benmore House.