Thomas Pearson Stokoe, lithographer, mountaineer and plant
collector, was the son of Thomas Young Stokoe and his wife Sarah Matthews Brown. He completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer in Leeds and also
attended art classes. He came to South Africa in 1911 and was employed by the
printing firm Cape Times, Ltd in Cape Town. In his spare time he climbed
extensively in the mountains of the Western Cape, collecting plants in relatively
little-known areas. He became a member of the Mountain Club of South Africa in
1913 and was later elected an honorary life member. His plant specimens totaled about 16 000, collected mainly in the region of Kogelberg and the
Hottentots Holland Mountains and including many new species and plants known
only from the work of early collectors at the Cape. About 30 species were named
after him, including Protea stokoei
and Brunia stokoei (by E.P.
Phillips*), Erica stokoei and Watsonia stokoei (by H.M.L. Bolus*), Mimetes stokoei (by Phillips and J.
Hutchinson*) and Gladiolus stokoei
(by G.J. Lewis). Unfortunately his collections were seldom numbered and he often
failed to document his localities adequately. He made competent water-colour
paintings of some of the specimens he sent to herbaria, including one of the
now apparently extinct Mimetes stokoei.
In 1959, on his ninety-first birthday, he and Professor H.B. Rycroft went collecting
in the Hottentots Holland Mountains. Stokoe contracted pneumonia during this trip
and never fully recovered.
Stokoe wrote several articles for the Journal of the Botanical Society of South Africa, including 'Some
impressions and reflections of a plant collector' (1954). Volume 5 of Flowering plants of South Africa (1925)
was dedicated to him. Most of the specimens he collected are in the Bolus
Herbarium, University of Cape Town; Compton Herbarium, National Botanical Institute,
Cape Town; Selmar Schonland Herbarium, Albany Museum, Grahamstown; and the National
Herbarium, Pretoria. Some of his water colours can be seen at Kirstenbosch, in
the Bolus Herbarium, and at Kew Gardens, England. He became a member of the
South African Biological Society in 1920 and a member of the Cape Natural
History Club in 1922.
As a mountaineer Stokoe was a well-liked companion, though
he preferred to explore the mountains on his own. He was married in 1895 to Lilian Downs and had a daughter.
