Thomas Robertson Sim

In 1878 he was appointed to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew where he received a training in botany under Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker.

In September 1894 he became a Government Forester with the Cape Forestry Department and started work at Fort Cunynghame Plantation near Döhne.

Within a few months he was promoted to Superintendent of Plantations in the Eastern Conservancy, and by 1898 to District Forest Officer with headquarters at King William's Town.

Attending one of their meetings in Rhodesia in 1920, he suffered stroke which left him partially paralysed, but despite the handicap, continued with his work.

He relinquished all his business interests and devoted all his time to finishing his opus magnum, a comprehensive study of trees in Southern Africa up to the Zambesi and Cunene Rivers.

Death intervened and the unfinished manuscript is still kept at the National Botanical Research Institute in Pretoria, which also houses his library.