Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pbritti (talk | contribs) at 05:18, 12 December 2024 (+). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Harold David Harrington (1903 - 1981) was an American botanist who specialized in flora of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. He worked on the faculty of Colorado State University (CSU) and collected over 10,000 botanical specimens from across the state. His 1954 book, Manual of the Plants of Colorado, the first comprehensive coverage of Colorado's flora in nearly 50 years that remains an authoritative work. With his wife and fellow botanist Edith, he traveled around the United States, Europe, and Pacific, bringing back photographs for use in teaching. He published 17 books while at CSU, where the majority of his collection of specimen's are kept as part of the university's herbarium that he had previously curated.

He is the namesake of two species of flowering plants endemic to Colorado: Oenothera harringtonii and Penstemon harringtonii. In the case of P. harringtonii, Harrington was credited with the first collection of the species when it was first described.

Early life and education

Career

In 1954, Harrington's Manual of the Plants of Colorado was published after years of research.

Later life and death

In 1968, Harrington retired as professor emeritus. He continued writing on botany and included a work of his poetry in the introduction of his book How to Identify Grasses and Grasslike Plants in 1977.

He and his wife performed a final round trip through the Colorado Rockies during the summer of 1980. Harold Harrington died on January 22, 1981.

Legacy

Two species of flowering plants endemic to Colorado are named for Harrington: Oenothera harringtonii and Penstemon harringtonii. In the case of P. harringtonii, Harrington was credited with the first collection of the species when it was first described by C. William T. Penland in 1958. Penland pointed to a specimen Harrington collected in Routt County, Colorado, on June 7, 1951, as the first of two collections of the species that month.

In 1991, botanist James L. Reveal identified Harrington as part of a tradition of botanists collecting specimens in the Colorado Rockies from Thomas Say and Edwin James on Long's Expedition of 1820 through to William Alfred Weber that saw the region's close as a "botanical frontier".

Selected bibliography

References

1. ^ Ackerfield, Jennifer. "Harold Harrington's Legacy as Curator of the Colorado State University Herbarium". biology.colostate.edu. Colorado State University. Archived from the original on June 24, 2024. Retrieved December 9, 2024.
2. Wilken, Dieter H. (1982). "In Memoriam: Harold D. Harrington (1903-1981)". Brittonia. 34 (1): 11. JSTOR 2806392.
3. "Deaths". Taxon. 31 (3): 613. August 1982. JSTOR 1220711.
4. Ladyman, Jaunita A. R. (February 1, 2005). "Oenothera harringtonii Wagner, Stockhouse & Klein (Colorado Springs evening-primrose): A Technical Conservation Assessment" (PDF). Species Conservation Project. Centennial, CO: United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Center for Plant Conservation. pp. 11–12.
5. Penland, C. William T. (January 1958). "Two new species of Penstemon in Colorado". Madroño. 14 (5): 154. JSTOR 41422929.
6. Reveal, James L. "Botanical Explorations in the American West-1889-1989: An Essay on the Last Century of a Floristic Frontier". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 78 (1): 71. doi:10.2307/2399591. JSTOR 2399591.

• Biography
• Biology
• Colorado
• Plants

Category:1903 births Category:1981 deaths Category:People from Palo Alto County, Iowa Category:Colorado State University faculty