Joy Adamson (1910–1980) was an Austrian who went to Kenya in 1937. She was an artist whose flower paintings earned her the ‘Grenfell Gold Medal’ by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1947. She became a wildlife conservationist with her spouse George Adamson (1906–1989) from 1944. Joy became famous for raising the lion ‘Elsa’ and her book Born Free in 1960. She discovered Euphorbia subscandens, E. sumati & E. tescorum and Monadenium nudicaule in the 1940s.
William Aiton (1731–1793) was a Scottish gardener and botanist who was trained by Philip Miller (1691–1771) at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, England in the mid 1750s. He became the first superintendent of the physic garden at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London from 1759. His 1789 Hortus Kewensis book was a catalogue of plants cultivated at Kew in 3 volumes. The botanical descriptions in the first 2 volumes (596pp & 460pp) were by Daniel Carlsson Solander (1736–1782) and volume 3 of 547pp was by Jonas Carlsson Dryander (1748–1810). Aiton described succulent genera Cyrtanthus and Pelargonium along with a number of species. Mesembryanthemum aitonis was named in his honor. His son William Townsend Aiton (1766–1849) succeeded him as curator at Kew upon his death. WT Aiton expanded his father's book into a 2nd edition of 5 volumes from 1810 to 1813.
Arthur Hugh Garfit Alston (1902–1958) was a British pteridologist and botanist who became director of the pteridophyte section of the British Museum of Natural History from 1930. He described the succulent genus Cyphostemma (from tropical and subtropical Africa and Madagascar) in 1931. The genus was originally described in 1887 by Jules Émile Planchon (1823–1888) as a section of the genus Cissus and moved up to the genus level by Alston.
Miguel Arrojado Lisboa (?–1932) was a Brazilian railway superintendent of Estrada de Ferro Central de Brazil who sent collected cacti from Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859–1934) and Joseph Nelson Rose (1862–1928). They named a cactus genus from Brazil in his honor in 1920: Arrojadoa.
