Career

Collections

Literature

Biographical data

 

Ward, Frank (or Francis) Kingdon

 

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 1: Cyclopaedia of collectors)

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 8: Cyclopaedia of collectors, Supplement II)

 

Born: 1885, Withington, Lanc., England. 

Died: 1958, London, ashes buried at Grantchester, England.

 

career:

Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge (England), went to Shanghai in 1907 as a schoolmaster. In 1909 he left, to make a journey across China during 1909/10; in 1911 he was engaged by the Nursery firm of Bees Ltd, Liverpool, as a collector in NW. Yunnan. In subsequent years, till the present, he made numerous expeditions in China, Indo-China, Burma, and British India.1

Numerous plants have been named after him, e.g. the genus Kingdon-Wardia, and several species.

 

collections:

He collected specimens of plants in Lower Siam in 1941; material in Herb. Sing. [SING].

 

literature:

(1) Author of several books and some papers, e.g.: ‘The land of the blue poppy: travels of a naturalist in Eastern Tibet’ (Cambridge 1913); ‘A plant hunter in Tibet’ (London 1934); ‘Plant hunter’s paradise’ (1937); ‘A sketch of the geography and botany of Tibet, being materials for a flora of that country’ (Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. 50, 1935, p. 239-265, 2 maps).

 

biographical data:

Curtis’ Bot. Mag. 162, April 1940, dedicated to Kingdon Ward, w. portr. frontisp.; E.H.M. Cox, Planthunting in China, 1945, p. 180-190; Who’s who 1946; Everybody: Weekly, Nov. 1, 1952, with photogr.; in F. Kingdon-Ward: ‘Pilgrimage for Plants’, 1960, p. 11-18, incl. summary on Travels and Collections, and bibliogr. (l.c. p. 181-186).