John Phillip Harison Acocks

Who was John Phillip Harison Acocks?

John Phillip Harison Acocks, was a South African botanist noted for his publication "Veld Types of South Africa" and his extensive botanical collection of some 28 000 specimens from South Africa and Namibia. In 1938 he was seconded to go on a joint collecting trip of four months with Swedish botanist Adolf Hjalmar Frederick Hafström between Cape Town and Victoria Falls.

He was born in Cape Town to John Martin Acocks and Sarah Phoebe Petty. Matriculated from the South African College Schools and attended the University of Cape Town between 1929-35 obtaining a B.A. and M.Sc.. He studied under Robert Stephen Adamson and Margaret Levyns.

His first appointment was in January 1936 as pasture ecologist at the Pasture Research Section, part of the Division of Plant Industry. He set out to do botanical surveys of new pasture research stations. In 1945 he was transferred to Estcourt to the Botanical Survey Section of the Division of Botany and Plant Pathology which later became the Botanical Research Institute. From 1948 he was permanently posted at the Grootfontein College of Agriculture in Middelburg.