Leslie Edward Wostall Codd (16 September 1908 Vants Drift,
Dundee District,
Natal - 2 March 1999
Pretoria), was a South African plant taxonomist.
He attended the
Natal University College where he obtained an
M.Sc in 1928. He continued his studies at
Cambridge University in 1929, and the
Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in
Trinidad in 1930, where he met his future wife, Cynthia. He worked with the Department of Agriculture in
British Guiana between 1931 and 1936. In 1937 he was appointed to the Pasture Research Section of the Department of Agriculture in
Pretoria. In 1941 he was awarded a
D.Sc degree by the
University of South Africa.
In 1945 he assumed the post of Officer-in-Charge at the
Prinshof Experiment Station in the
Division of Botany, where he was involved with the selection, growing and testing of pasture grasses. At the same time he was in charge of the
Botanical Survey of South Africa.While stationed at Prinshof he frequently visited the
Kruger National Park on plant collecting trips. He saw the need for an informal botanical guide to the reserve and in 1951 produced "Trees and Shrubs of the Kruger National Park", one of the most popular items in the series
Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa. With librarian Mary Gunn, he co-authored
Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa in 1981, a history of the country's plant collecting, collectors and early botanical illustrations.
He succeeded
Robert Allen Dyer as director of the
Botanical Research Institute from 1963 until his retirement in 1973, and worked in the
Flora Research Section thereafter.
Codd is commemorated in numerous specific names including
Brachystelma coddii Dyer,
Agapanthus coddii Leighton etc. His specimens number more than 10 000 (PRE, K, SRGH) and are mainly South African, with about 500 having come from
Caprivi and
Barotseland in 1952.