Peter René Oscar Bally (9 May 1895, in Schönenwerd, Switzerland – 26 July 1980, in Nairobi) was a Swiss botanical illustrator, botanist and taxonomist.[1]The standard author abbreviationP.R.O.Bally is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[2]
Peter Bally received formal training in neither taxonomy nor botanical illustration, but studied chemistry at first, a position with the League of Nations taking him to Albania and Bombay in 1923/24 in order to test a possible antidote for malaria. By 1930 he was working in Tanzania for an oil company, and studying medicinal and poisonous plants of the region. His botanical interests led to a study of plants, with an emphasis on succulents, in the semi-desert areas of eastern Africa. By 1938 he had been appointed government botanist at the herbarium of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi. He bought a small piece of land on the outskirts of the town and busied himself with constructing a house and establishing a garden of indigenous plants. By 1943 he undertook botanising expeditions to Eritrea, Ethiopia, SomaliaGhana, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In 1960 he relocated to Swaziland and worked on the genus Aloe accompanied at one time by Gilbert Reynolds, the Aloe specialist.
Returning to Kenya in 1969 Peter Bally indulged in his botanical interests, becoming a familiar visitor at the Coryndon Museum Herbarium renamed the East African Herbarium, and holding more than 700,000 plant specimens with field notes.
