Ross, James Henderson (Jim)   (1941 -  )

After a botanical career in South Africa, Jim moved to the National Herbarium of Victoria and held the office of Government (later Chief) Botanist for Victoria from 1993 - 2005.

Excerpts from retirement speech for Jim Ross given by Neville Walsh (9/11/2005):

". . . he'd had more formal taxonomic experience than all of the staff combined, having compiled the account of the Acacias for the Flora of Southern Africa and written the Flora of Natal."

"Jim had a revulsion of the [apartheld] policy and a feeling of outrage for the treatment of the indigenous people of the country. This was at a time that life was good for white South Africans and presumably most supported the Botha regime. I think Jim's sense of the right to a fair go is one of his strongest personal traits and one that maybe pre-adapted him to life here."

"The new herbarium extension actually happened after years and years of architectural concepts and shelving's of ideas. Moving a collection of over a million specimens into temporary storage and then back into their new lodgings is not something you take on lightly, and Jim and Helen Aston's cool-headed organizational skills here made it happen with minimum of chaos and no loss of specimens."

"Around this time too was the formulation of a plan to produce a Flora of Victoria, a project that after a long planning process finally received funding in 1988. "

"Jim was someone who always really believed in this project and when Jim sees the value of something his support is rock-solid, and in his quiet persuasive way, really makes things happen. Even before the Flora got underway, perhaps because he was 'foreigner' Jim saw the need for an up to date census of the state's flora. Various states had censuses of varying age and accuracy, but Jim took on the task of making sure that Victoria had a reliable, up-to-date list of native and introduced plants that occur spontaneously in the state. The census, or Viclist as it has become known, 1s now in its 7th reincarnation [2005]. Its existence underpins a lot of botanical research and quite a bit of legislation in the state, "

"Jim would not claim to being a computer nerd, and I think it was fairly late in the piece that he reluctantly took to the keyboard, but he was certainly able to see the value of a digitized database and put his full support to the prosect. both here and as ar active and probably now the longest serving member of the host organization CHAH or the Council of the Heads of Australian Herbaria."

" Other innovations that have happened under Jim's watch have been the appointment of what many would see as non-traditional botanists to the herbarium staff.
Melbourne for a long time was the only herbarium to have any staff devoted to fungal research. As you know, we now have two mycological staft who themselves oversee many other fungal projects and post-graduate research projects.
Jim was critical too in the establishment a molecular research laboratory and taxonomic role of the institution." "He was also extremely supportive of us establishing an arm of the Millenium Seed Bank here at the RBG when the prospects seemed pretty poor. Thanks to his support and that of Kew Botanic Gardens, we now have a small, but near state-of-the-art facility and a couple of staff."

Source: Extracted from:
Walsh, N. 'Jim Ross, botanist and administrator', ASBS Newsletter, 125 (Dec 2005) p.8
Portrait Photo: ASBS Newsletter, 125 (Dec 2005) p.9.

Collecting localities for 'Ross, J.H.' from AVH (2025)

Data from 4,142 specimens in Australian herbaria