My father-in-law, James Akers, who has died aged 85, was an skilled on the uncommon and delightful English florist tulip, which is distinguished by flamed and feathered markings that had been initially brought on by a virus however which at the moment are half and parcel of its physiognomy. The plant reached a peak in its recognition within the nineteenth century, however has since fallen out of favour, and at one time its very existence was threatened.
James wrote two books on English florist tulips, together with Flames and Feathers (2012), and likewise cultivated many specimens, exhibiting them yearly on the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society, which has the one main present specialising of their blooms. In homage to the working-class roots of the normal tulip growers, the only stems of the flower are displayed on the present in brown beer bottles.
James was closely concerned within the Wakefield society for greater than 4 many years, and helped to run its annual present, which is attended by growers from everywhere in the UK, in addition to a small coterie of fanatics from Sweden. It’s partly due to James’s work – in addition to that of the society – that the English florist tulip has lived on.
Tulips weren’t James’s solely horticultural ardour, nonetheless: he was additionally an skilled on daffodils, and for a few years travelled throughout Europe together with his spouse, Wendy, within the hope of figuring out new ones. That quest lastly bore fruit with their discovery in 2008 in Galicia, northern Spain, of a brand new kind which he named Bulbocodium akersianus. The greenhouses at his house had been at all times stuffed with daffodils that he had crossed and cultivated, and he named his most up-to-date creation, Romane Allen, after considered one of his grandchildren.
James was born in Wakefield, the one youngster of Jim, a colliery employee with a ardour for gardening, and his spouse, Kitty (nee Thorpe), a seamstress. Educated at Normanton grammar faculty, he graduated in 1959 from the College of Manchester Institute of Science and Expertise earlier than turning into {an electrical} engineer for Marconi in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
By 1969 he was again up north, working in Leeds at Yorkshire Imperial Fittings (later Yorkshire Copperworks) as a inventory and manufacturing supervisor, switching to IT within the mid-Eighties and staying there till his retirement in 1996, by which era he was the corporate’s IT supervisor for Europe.
It was James’s return in 1969 to Wakefield, and a home with an enormous backyard, that gave him the area to domesticate tulips and daffodils. However it was not till he retired that he actually had the time, and the additional power, to journey broadly looking for uncommon and attention-grabbing flowers.
He was made MBE for providers to tulip horticulture in 2008, and on the World Tulip Summit in Canada in 2017 he was offered with the Order of the Tulip, which recognises people who’ve made an excellent contribution to the promotion of the plant as a logo of world friendship.
Wendy (nee Bell), a fellow horticultural fanatic whom he married in 1956, died in 2017. He’s survived by 5 youngsters, Noel (my husband), Sarah, Kate, Charlotte and Daniel, 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
