Isaac Rand

Isaac Rand (1674–1743) was an English botanist and apothecary, who was a lecturer and director at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Life Isaac was probably son of James Rand, who in 1674 agreed, with thirteen other members of the Society of Apothecaries, to build a wall round the Chelsea Botanical Garden. Isaac Rand was already an apothecary practising in the Haymarket, London, in 1700. The year of his death is given by Dawson Turner as 1743 (Richardson Correspondence, p. 125); but he was succeeded in the office of demonstrator by Joseph Miller in 1738 or 1740. Works In Leonard Plukenet's Mantissa, published in that year, he is mentioned as the discoverer, in Tothill Fields, Westminster, of the plant now known as Rumex palustris, and was described (p. 112) as "stirpium indagator diligentissimus ... pharmacopœus Londinensis, et magnæ spei botanicus.' He seems to have paid particular attention to inconspicuous plants, especially in the neighbourhood of London. Thus Samuel Doody records in a manuscript note: "Mr. Rand first showed me this beautiful dock Rumex maritimus, growing plentifully in a moist place near Burlington House" (Trimen and Dyer, Flora of Middlesex, p. 238), and Adam Buddle, in his manuscript flora (Sloane MSS. 2970–80), which was completed before 1708, attributes to him the finding of Mentha pubescens "about some ponds near Marybone", and of the plant styled by James Petiver "Rand's Oak Blite" (Chenopodium glaucum).