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Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 
With LJ's encouragement the Flora of New South Wales was planned and work started 
in 1982, with funding and encouragement from the Trust. This four-volume work, 
edited and co-ordinated by Gwen Harden, was completed and published during 
Professor Chambers' directorship. 
The Pyramid Glasshouse had been planned during the directorship of Knowles Mair 
but opened while LJ was Director. A further large display glasshouse in the Sydney 
Gardens was now also planned and a substantial private donation towards its cost 
obtained, but construction did not occur until after LJ had retired. It now forms the 
greater part of the Tropical Centre. 
During this very busy time of major expansion, LJ greatly regretted that the resources 
of the organisation were spread so thinly that horticultural standards in the Sydney 
Gardens suffered. He hoped that consolidation and remedying such problems would 
follow the period of major expansion. Resources have continued to be limiting but 
new developments since his retirement have added features of quality, adding greatly 
to the interest of the Gardens to visitors. 
An advocate for a brief after-lunch siesta, followed by work late into the evening, 
he managed to 'protect' a siesta time most days (helped by secretaries and 
colleagues) even in his very busy years as Director, a daily program he has continued 
to the present. 
In retirement 
LJ did not intend to retire in 1985 but Government policies of that time strongly 
favoured youth employment and he found that retirement at age 60 years (rather 
than the expected 65) was demanded. This was in sharp contrast to policies opposed 
to age-discrimination in employment implemented only a few years later. Retiring 
when so many developments he had started were yet to come to fruition was a 
bitter matter, and this coloured his view for some years. 
Among the gifts from his colleagues when he retired was a large dictionary of 
Anglo-Saxon, a strange but appreciated gift for an Australian scientist. This reflects his 
intense interest in comparative languages. He delights in comparing the processes of 
development, modification and migration of languages with the processes of biological 
evolution. Respect for other languages, for him, includes correct pronunciation, and he 
perseveres in trying to improve his less informed colleagues' expression of foreign 
words, as well as of botanical names. The guide to pronunciation of botanical names, 
included in Hall & Johnson (1993), took these efforts to a wider audience. 
On retirement LJ was appointed by the Royal Botanic Gardens Trust as Director 
Emeritus and as an Honorary Research Associate. To continue effectively in research 
LJ required access to the collections at the National Herbarium of NSW, collections he 
had helped to build up. His successor as Director, Professor Garrick Chambers, actively 
supported LJ's continued role as a researcher here in retirement, when — somewhat 
later — others queried an ex-Director continuing at an institution he no longer directed. 
LJ s time as Director is in the past, his role as scholar and researcher continues. 
Most of the groups with which he has been concerned remain as active research 
interests, and a major study in the eucalypts jointly with Ken Hill has been completed 
(Hill & Johnson 1995). Other active projects are in Juncus and Casuarinaceae with 
Karen Wilson, and in Restionaceae and allied families with myself, Carolyn Porter, 
Simon Gilmore, Barbara Wiecek and previously Vivian Shanker, Anna-Louise Quirico 
and Siegfried Krauss. 
