 He has been described as " one of the most distinguished and productive amateur
botanists of his generation".McClintock was born in 1913, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the eldest of six children, with five younger sisters.His father, Edward Louis Longfield McClintock, then a curate, came from the Irish ascendancy (going back to the plantations of Ulster), and McClintock was to have a strong link to Ireland and Irish plants all his life.