Harold Frederick Comber

Harold Frederick Comber (* 1897 in Staplefield ( Sussex ), † 1969) was a British botanist, plant hunter and plant breeder. The focus of his work was on the lilies ( Lilium ), to whose research he made significant contributions. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ HFComber ”. His son James Boughtwood Comber (1929-2005) was also a botanist.

Comber was the son of the head gardener at Nymans Garden in West Sussex, and that was how early on he came into contact with plants and gardening. As a teenager he then worked for Henry John Elwes , who was working on his work A Monograph of the Genus Lilium at the time, since then Comber has been particularly interested in the genus of lilies. On Elwes' advice, Comber studied for three years at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh .

Comber then spent two years as a plant hunter in the Argentine and Chilean Andes and returned with numerous new plants. In his honor, a new genus from the nightshade family (Solanaceae) Combera was baptized in 1936 . Immediately afterwards he traveled to Tasmania , where he collected seeds from 147 plant species, some of which he described himself, partly together with Victor Samuel Summerhayes . After another trip through South America, Comber took up a managerial position in a nursery specializing in lilies in Buckinghamshire , where he was also active as a breeder. Two of its varieties ('Mary' and 'Susan') received awards from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1949 . In the same year Comber published in the RHS Lily Yearbook his work A New Classification Of The genus Lilium . The system of the genus that he presented there, which was already trying to trace a family tree, established itself immediately and is still in use today.

In 1952 Jan de Graaff offered him a job at Oregon Bulb Farms , which Comber accepted. Until 1962 he was responsible for the crossing, propagation and selection of the lilies.

The North American Lily Society presents the HFComber Award annually .

proof

• Edward Austin McRae: Lilies , Portland / Oregon, 1998, pp. 345-346, ISBN 0881924105

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Harold Frederick Comber at the IPNI