Harry Allan

He worked for many years as a teacher of English and agricultural studies at secondary schools around New Zealand. Throughout his teaching career, he became increasingly interested in and knowledgeable of botany, and wrote several articles in academic journals. He often collaborated and spoke with botanists, such as Alfred and Leonard Cockayne. For his lengthy botanical study of Mount Peel, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1923. He became a member of the Linnean society and the New Zealand Institute, and was appointed a systematic botanist for the Plant Research Station in 1928. He spent twenty years working there, becoming head of the botany division when the research institute was split up in 1936 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D.S.I.R). Allan oversaw and contributed to vast amounts of research surrounding New Zealand's plants—particularly on grasses, pollen, and genetics. He retired in 1948 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E) for services to botany in New Zealand in the King's Birthday Honours that year. In retirement he worked on volume one of Flora of New Zealand, the first in a series of books describing the introduced and endemic plants of New Zealand. He died before it was published in 1957, aged 75.

Harry Allan studied at University of Auckland and Nelson College. The field of work recorded is botany. Residence is recorded at New Zealand. Positions recorded include President of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Distinctions recorded are Hector Medal, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

• Name — Harry Allan • Birth Name — Harry Howard Barton Allan • Born — 27 April 1882 • Birthplace — Nelson, New Zealand • Died — 29 October 1957 • Place of death — Wellington, New Zealand • Fields — Botanist • Workplaces — Waitaki Boys' High School Ashburton High School Feilding Agricultural High School Department of Scientific and Industrial Research • Education — Auckland University College • Thesis Title — Vegetation of Mount Peel, Canterbury, N.Z. • Thesis Year — 1923 • Awards — Hutton Memorial Medal (1941) Hector Memorial Medal (1942) • Author Abbrev Bot — Allan

Harry Allan was born on 27 April 1882 in Nelson, New Zealand. He was the youngest of Robert Allan, a draper, and Emma Maria Lewis' six children, and initially attended Nelson Central School. The headmaster there, Frederick Gibbs, introduced him to botany and he later won a town scholarship to Nelson College. There Allan excelled both academically and athletically, playing for the college in cricket and football, as well as winning prizes for literature and gymnastics. He also began part of his university degree (BA) there.

Allan began working at the newly established Plant Research Station, an organisation formed by the Department of Science and Industrial Research (D.S.I.R), in August 1928. He worked as part of a committee, which included Cockayne and others, to research New Zealand agriculture, particularly fungi and grasses. Cockayne said of the institute: "there should develop an ever increasing stream of information of the highest value to the farming community." As part of his work there he published many articles on weeds, grasses, and naturalised plants in the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, as well as writing two handbooks on those topics. His work often involved travelling around New Zealand to describe and collect species of plants. Biographer Ross Galbreath describes his focus on economic botany as being what allowed him to avoid the "factional disputes between scientists", which consumed the Research Station at the time. Through artificial selection of grasses, the Plant Research Station made the "grassland revolution", the turning of large areas of New Zealand to pasture, possible. In 1930 Allan was made head of the botany section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science and was sponsored by the Empire Marketing Board to travel to London. He attended the fifth International Botanical Congress, held that year in Cambridge, representing the New Zealand Institute, D.S.I.R, the State Forestry Service and the Research Station where he worked. At the conference, which had representatives from around 35 countries, he discussed hybridism in the New Zealand flora, the subject of his grant from the Royal Society. Allan also gave a talk at the Linnean Society, where he formally received his fellowship, and attended a conference of the British Science Association in Bristol. He visited Kew Gardens and the South Kensington Museum to study New Zealand plant specimens, and also paid special attention to various grass species, such as Sporobolus × townsendii (syn. Spartina × townsendii), visiting the Essex coast where it grows rapidly. In 1936 D.S.I.R took full control over the Research Station, turning it into the "Grasslands Division", (or the Botany Division) one of five newly created departments. Allan was made head of this department and was relocated in 1937 to Wellington where it became based. His work to create and administrate a robust botany division led the way to many important institutions and pieces of research. When World War II began in 1939 the division began large scale tests and cultivating of drug plants, predominately fox gloves and seaweeds, which they expected would be quickly in short supply overseas. The division also helped develop and expand large library and herbarium collections, which supported a plant identification service. Specific topics of study by the division included, as summarised by the botanist Lucy Moore: "New Zealand grasses their breeding systems and population genetics; a cytological survey of New Zealand plants; the study of pollen grains and spores and the peats and other organic deposits where they are preserved." His collections of lichens—for him a pastime—were used by the German lichenologist Alexander Zahlbruckner to help write his monograph of New Zealand lichens in 1941, which described 141 new species. He retired in 1948, after more than a decade as head of the botany division.

After retiring as head of the division in 1948, Allan continued working on his flora, which describes all of the plants of New Zealand. This still required collecting, identifying, and describing plants, and so in 1949 he took part in an expedition to Fiordland, which supplemented an earlier trip in 1946. He travelled to London again in 1950 to view herbarium specimens held at Kew Gardens, also attending the seventh International Botanical Congress in Sweden, and visiting Lapland with lichenologist Gustaf Einar Du Rietz.

Allan married Hannah Louise Arnold on 7 September 1909 and had two children: one daughter and one son. Moore described Allan as a man "quietly happy" with his life and satisfied in his work. He was a lover of books of many genres and could also speak Swedish, which he learnt to keep up with botanical news from the country. Shy and reserved, when he did speak he was "listened to with well-earned respect."

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Harry Allan is recorded with the occupation scientific collector. Recorded as having received Hector Medal, Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Recognition and collections. Allan received Hector Medal, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.