OBITUARY

Our Honorary Member Martha Newton, who passed away on 4 January 2020, had an extraordinary and highly contrasting bryological career marked by world-leading publications, benchmark conservation reports and unforgettable experiences for all those whom she taught. It is beyond question that Martha made an indelible impression on every bryologist she ever met: she was a remarkable though paradoxical woman. Martha’s bryological roots were almost certainly laid down from childhood. She was born on 11 November 1941 at Lumm Farm, Littlemoss, Limehurst, which her parents ran, and which was then in a rural district of Lancashire but is now in the Metropolitan District of Tameside in Greater Manchester. Appropriately for a future bryologist and implicit in its name, Littlemoss lies to the west of a former moss west of Ashton-under-Lyne which was drained for agriculture and is now crossed by the M60. Since Lumm Farm was accessed by a swing bridge on a branch of the Ashton-underLyne Canal, one of Martha’s regular excursions to Whixall Moss next to the Shropshire Union Canal, during her Preston Montford field courses, must have brought back vivid childhood memories. Martha went to Littlemoss School and continued there even after her parents moved to Stalybridge, Cheshire. There followed one year at the co-educational Hyde County Grammar School before she and her sister moved to the newly built Astley County Grammar School, Dukinfield, where she played hockey for the school team and the violin in the orchestra. The moorland around Stalybridge provided Martha with an ideal environment for developing her interests in Natural History. These were much encouraged by her parents and further enriched by family outings into the varied countryside landscapes within easy access in the counties adjacent to Cheshire. Throughout her life her botanical interests remained deeply wedded to the north of England and, though her bryological research extended south to Antarctica, there is no evidence that she had any desire to travel outside the British Isles From Astley County Grammar School Martha went to Manchester University where she read Botany, Zoology and Chemistry, specialising in Botany and Zoology in her final year. One of her most influential tutors, and a person who certainly stimulated her taxonomic interests, was Clive Stace whose ‘New Flora of the British Isles’ became established the standard work on the identification of the wild flowering plants, ferns and conifers of the British Isles (Stace 1991). After graduation in 1964 she became a research assistant in the School of Plant Biology, University College of North Wales, Bangor, at a time when this was probably the epicentre of bryological research in Britain. Whilst the former head of department Paul Richards supervised George Argent and Sean Edwards, Tony (AJE) Smith supervised Keith Lewis on bulbifeous Pohlia (Lewis and Smith 1977, 1978) and Martha on bryophyte chromosomes, initially on British mosses but then extending to liverworts. In addition, a 1-year sabbatical by the Australian bryophyte cytologist, Helen Ramsay coincided with Martha’s period in Bangor. Martha had a real dedication and gift for microscopy. Lasting testimony to the remarkable accuracy of her chromosome counts is that they have now been cited in floras worldwide for over half a century. For example, the huge number of chromosome counts in Jean Paton’s ‘Liverwort Flora of the British Isles’ (Paton 1999) are attributed to Martha. Her favourite genus was Pellia because of its particularly large chromosomes. Whilst Martha’s first three moss chromosome papers were co-authored with Tony Smith (Smith and Newton 1966, 1967, 1968) and her first on liverworts with Jean Paton (Paton and Newton 1967) thereafter all her chromosome publications are single author, in contrast to the prevalence of multiple authorship works in the present century. This highly distinctive publication record highlights the singular rather than collaborative nature of microscope work and that Martha liked to work alone.