Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley papers

Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley, noted linguist, plantsman, artist and author, was born in London on October 23, 1908. He began his plant explorations in the 1920s in Northern Africa and Spain with Rupert Barneby whom he met at Harrow where they both attended school. They collected plants to grow at the Spinney, Ripley’s home in Sussex, as well as specimens for herbaria. The 1,138 species in their garden are identified in A List of Plants Cultivated or Native at the Spinney, Waldron, Sussex (1939). In 1939, the two men moved to California and traveled extensively in Mexico and the western United States, again collecting plants for their garden and for herbaria. Ripley wrote numerous articles about these collecting trips that were originally published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society (U.K.). Excerpts are reprinted in Impressions of Nevada: the countryside and some of the plants as seen through the eyes of an Englishman, an occasional paper of the Northern Nevada Native Plant Society (1978). Ripley and Barneby moved to New York in 1943 and they did not return to Sussex. Their plant collection at the Spinney was auctioned in 1951 with most of the rarities going to botanic gardens at Cambridge and Kew.

A respected artist, Ripley exhibited his drawings at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York. He was the major financial contributor to the establishment of the Tibor de Nagy Art Gallery and had five one-man shows there. Ripley and Barneby built two large rock gardens at their homes in New York. first at Wappingers Falls, Dutchess County and subsequently in Greenport, Long Island. In 1974, Ripley and Barneby were honored with the American Rock Garden Society’s Marcel Le Piniec Award for their plant explorations and introduction of new rock garden species. Index Kewensis lists six species named after Ripley: Cymopterus ripleyi, Aliciella ripleyi, Astragalus ripleyi, Eriogonum ripleyi, Omphalodes ripleyana and Senna ripleyi, the first three of which he co-discovered with Rupert Barneby. Ripley, a cousin of the long-time Smithsonian director, S. Dillon Ripley, was fluent in more than 15 languages and dialects.

The extensive manuscript held in the archives of the NYBG, the Etymological Dictionary of Vernacular Plant Names, was nearing completion at the time of Ripley’s death on December 17, 1973.