Jean Tsushima, an enthusiastic supporter of Plant-lore Archive, died in December 2020.  She was a woman of tremendous energy, who claimed to be an active member of 21 learned  and other societies.  At one stage she was the Folklore Society’s Publicity Officer, and would tramp around London’s independent bookshops asking them to display posters promoting the Society’s lectures and other events.

Jean always considered herself to be something of a rebel, and perhaps this partly explains her marriage to a Japanese journalist shortly after the end of the Second World War.  She would also proudly announce that she was an atheist, long after people were likely to be shocked by such admissions (and, indeed, when it might have taken more courage to admit to being a believer).  However, she did not approve of the writer  W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) because of his homosexuality.

Jean contributed her vivid memories to P-LA, and often sent photocopies of  extracts from biographies and obscure publications, with her handwritten notes and interpretations scrawled along the margins.  As she got older her sight deteriorated, and regrettably  we lost contact; her last contribution to the Archive was in 2013, thirty years after her first contribution in 1983.

An obituary by George Monger can be found in FLS News 94: 6 (2021).