Author of Volume I
Harry Howard Barton Allan was born in Nelson on 27 April 1882. From Nelson Central School he went to Nelson College, later completing his M.A. in Mental Science, that is in Psychology, Ethics, and Logic. In 1923 he was awarded a D.Sc., chiefly for work on the vegetation of Mt Peel, Canterbury. For many years he was a successful teacher in secondary schools, with English as his principal subject, but about 1915 he initiated classes in agricultural botany at Waitaki Boys’ High School and from that date onwards his free time was devoted more and more to the study of plants wherever he went. He soon fell under the influence of Dr Leonard Cockayne who was largely responsible for his relinquishing teaching to take up an appointment as Systematic Botanist with the Plant Research Bureau in 1928. Around him developed the unit which became Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Reseearch in 1938, Dr Allan being its Director until his retirement in 1948. It was then that he set to work on the present Flora, laying down his pen only two weeks before his death on 29 October 1957.
Apart from Flora of New Zealand Dr Allan was the author of three smaller text books, one on trees and shrubs, one on grasses and one on naturalized plants, all now out of print and not easily obtained. His many technical papers include a series dealing with wild hybrids in New Zealand plants, a subject on which he worked in close association with Dr Cockayne. A comprehensive bibliography has been published.*
Dr Allan was A Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and of the Royal Society of New Zealand, was awarded the Hutton Memorial Medal and the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize for his botanical researches, and received the honour of C.B.E. For many years he was a Corresponding Member of the Swedish Phytogeographical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of Science and Letters of Gothenburg. In 1957 he was one of twelve eminent foreign biologists to be honoured during the Swedish celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Linnaeus. Thus he became Philosophiae Doctor et Artium Liberalium Magister, Honoris Causa, in the University of Uppsala where Linnaeus himself was first a student and later a teacher.
*Proc. R.S.N.Z. 87, 107–112. See also, Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 175, 1963–64, 190–191; An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966, vol. 1, 33–34; Botany Division's Triennial Report for 1957–59, 27; Bull. Wellington bot. Soc. No. 30, 1958, 3–6; photographs accompany the first and the last two of these notices.
