flidgetjerome:

botanyshitposts:

i was gossiping with some botanists on the back of the bus on the way back from the fern campout and one brought up a dude named george r. proctor. apparently dr. proctor is remembered in the fern community for three reasons: 

1. writing an apparently fantastic book called “Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands” which is still read and admired to this day, along with publishing a shitton of other pioneering work recording the plants of the region

2. loving butter. like hed just keep a collection of butter and eat like sticks of it raw

3. hiring a hitman to kill his wife bc he hated her. the murder failed and he got deadass arrested as he was trying to flee the island. he was 86 

apparently in the later years of his career he was off his fucking rocker and hed just like stumble around the jungle, a future criminal, eating sticks of butter out of his bag and looking at ferns like this is just how other botanists remember this dude 

I was typing up something about fictional mad scientists, who are mostly really just mad engineers, vs real mad scientists, who apparently wander the jungle collecting ferns and eating butter, but couldn’t find it in me to be witty or concise enough.

Instead I wandered off to read up more on this dude and the first thing I hit was an obituary that opened with “He was one of the so-called “Four Horsemen” of West Indian botanical taxonomy”.

SHIT GUYS THIS MEANS THERE’S THREE MORE OF THEM OUT THERE.