Edmund Gilbert Baker, British botanist, was the son of the Kew botanist John Gilbert Baker*. Edmund was employed at the British Museum (Natural History) from 1887 to 1924, first as an assistant and later as assistant keeper in the Department of Botany. He published many botanical papers and was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society. An early monograph by him, Synopsis of Malvaea, appeared in 1894. His first direct contribution to southern African botany was his "Report on some South African species of Indigofera in the Albany Museum Herbarium", published in the Records of the Albany Museum (Vol. 1, 1903-1906, p. 279). Some of these species were used for medicinal purposes by the Dutch settlers. His interest remained focused on the same family (Leguminosae) for many years. He discussed the African species of Crotularia in 1914, and in 1923 published his "Revision of the South African species of Rhynchosia" in Bothalia (Vol. 1(3), pp. 113-138). His major work, published in three parts in 1926-1930 and totalling some 950 pages, dealt with The Leguminosae of tropical Africa.
Baker also published "Rhodesian Polypetalae" (Journal of Botany, 1899) and "A contribution to our knowledge of the flora of Gazaland" (an area on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique, now mainly the Chimanimani National Park) in An account of the plants collected by the Ruwenzori Expedition (1910), a volume edited by A.B. Rendle, E.G. Baker, and S.L. Moore.
