Charles Edward Moss

Charles Edward Moss (February 7, 1870 Hyde, Cheshire – November 11, 1930 Johannesburg), was an English-born South African botanist, the youngest son of a nonconformist minister, and is noted for being the editor of the first two parts of The Cambridge British Flora published in 1914 and 1920. The Cambridge British Flora, under the editorship of Moss, was intended to be a ten-volume survey of the flora of Britain, with contributions by specialists in particular genera. The two volumes that saw publication were of a very high standard, but the project was subsequently abandoned.

Moss developed an interest in botany in 1893 when, recovering from a pulmonary abscess, he was advised to go on long outdoor rambles. These took place over the Halifax moors, sometimes in the company of botanists belonging to the Halifax Scientific Society, a society in which he soon became a prominent member. He enrolled as a Queen's Scholar, at Yorkshire College, Leeds in 1895, which at that time was still part of Victoria University, Leeds, and was a part-time editor of the Halifax Naturalist, publishing a number of his own botanical papers. 1898 saw him working at Fairweather Green School, though still keeping in touch with Yorkshire College by assisting William Gardner Smith (1866-1928) in mapping the vegetation of West Riding. In 1901 he was appointed assistant master at Sexey's School in Bruton, where he started studying the vegetation of the area. 1902 found him lecturing in biology at Manchester Municipal Training College. He became a member of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation which had been started by Arthur Tansley and Smith in 1904, making invaluable contributions.

In 1907 Moss received his doctorate from the University of Manchester and a back bequest from the Royal Geographical Society for a report on the vegetation of the Pennines which he had done during his spare time. He took up the post of Curator of the Herbarium at the University of Cambridge in January 1908. This was the point at which his interests turned to taxonomy. At Cambridge he headed field expeditions and lectured, his lectures being described as "not brilliant ... but full of sense and philosophy". It wasn't long before he conceived the idea of writing a new 'student's Flora' of the British Isles.

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