Frank Kingdon-Ward
Encyclopedia
Francis Kingdon-Ward, born Francis Kingdon Ward (6 November 1885 in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 - 8 April 1958) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 botanist, explorer, plant collector and author. He published most of his books as Frank Kingdon-Ward and this hyphenated form of his name stuck, becoming the surname of his wives and two daughters. It also became a nom-de-plume for his sister Winifred Mary Ward
Winifred Mary Ward
Winifred Mary Ward She was one of the founders of modern creative drama.Ward was born in Eldora, Iowa on October 29, 1884. She never married, She completed a Ph.D. in Education at the University of Chicago and immediately went on to teach at Northwestern University in the School of Oratory as a...

 by default.

Biography

He went on around 25 expeditions over a period of nearly fifty years, exploring Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

, North Western China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Burma (Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

) and Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...

 (now part of North Eastern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

). In Burma he met and conducted some research into foresty and plants in the country with native botanist Chit Ko Ko
Chit Ko Ko
Chit Ko Ko was a noted Burmese botanist. He produced a number of papers into botanical research he conducted in Burma, Laos and Cambodia. His 1961 paper on List of Trees and Shrubs, co-written with H. G Hundley, identified some 7,000 angiosperms in Burma....

.

Among his collections were the first viable seed of Meconopsis betonicifolia
Meconopsis betonicifolia
Meconopsis betonicifolia, also known as Meconopsis baileyi and the Himalayan blue poppy, was first discovered in 1912, by Lt. Col. Frederick Marshman Bailey.M...

(Himalayan blue poppy, first discovered by Pére Delavay), Primula
Primula
Primula is a genus of 400–500 species of low-growing herbs in the family Primulaceae. They include primrose, auricula, cowslip and oxlip. Many species are grown for their ornamental flowers...

 florindae
(giant cowslip, named after his first wife Florinda, née Norman-Thompson) and Rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...

 wardii
, a yellow flowered species.

He is also commemorated in Ward's Trogon
Ward's Trogon
The Ward's Trogon is a species of bird in the Trogonidae family.It is found in Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, and Vietnam.Its natural habitats are temperate forests and subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests....

, Harpactes wardi.

He survived many accidents on his expeditions including being impaled on a bamboo spike, falling off a cliff (stopped by a tree growing from the cliff), lost for two days with no food, tent crushed by a tree in a storm, and he was close to the epicentre of an earthquake (registering 9.6 on the Richter scale) on 15 August 1950 during an expedition in Assam.

In addition to his professional activities as a botanist, in the 1930s Kingdon-Ward also served as a spy for the British India Office. According to Lamb, Kingdon-Ward was arrested by Tibetans after he crossed the Indian border into a disputed area called The Twang in the region of Assam. This was a region the British thought they had acquired via a treaty negotiated by Sir Charles Bell with the Tibetans in 1914. The British sent numerous botanists into The Twang, including Kingdon-Ward, both to collect specimens and to gain a better understanding of The Twang's political status. Kingdon-Ward informed the India Office that there was a danger to the British claim to The Twang. After Kingdon-Ward's arrest and subsequent release, the British sent a military force under Captain G.S. Lightfoot into The Twang to reassert British claims.

He was married twice, first to Florinda Norman-Thompson on 11 April 1923; later, to Jean Macklin, on 12 November 1947, to whom he remained married until his death.

Jean Kingdon-Ward had a brief political career which included standing as a Liberal Party candidate for Parliament at the 1950 UK General Election in Lewes.

Even towards the end of his career he was still active, his greatest "swansong" plant was probably Lilium mackliniae
Siroi Lily
Shirui Lily or Siroi lily, Lilium mackliniae, is found in the upper reaches of the Siroi hill ranges in the Ukhrul District of Manipur, India, at an elevation of 1730m–2590m above sea level....

, found jointly with his second wife after whom it is named. At age 68 he climbed to over 11,000 feet in Myanmar (Burma) and was still discovering new species of plants on his last expedition in 1956.

Frank Kingdon-Ward died on 8 April 1958 aged 72. He had suffered a stroke and went into a coma from which he never recovered.

Published works

He wrote 25 books, mostly accounts of his expeditions. The titles, dates and publishers are as follows:
  • On the Road to Tibet (1910) Shanghai Mercury Ltd. Shanghai
  • Land of the Blue Poppy (1913) Cambridge University Press
  • In Farthest Burma (1921) Seeley Service and Co (reprinted by Orchid Press, Thailand; 2nd rev edition (Jan 2005) ISBN 978-9745240629)
  • Mystery Rivers of Tibet (1923) Seeley Service and Co (reprinted by Cadogan Books, 1986 ISBN 0-946313-52-0)
  • From China to Hkamti Long (1924) Edward Arnold and Co
  • The Romance of Plant Hunting (1924) Edward Arnold and Co
  • Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges (1926) Edward Arnold and Co
  • Rhododendrons for Everyone (1926) The Gardener's Chronicle Ltd
  • Plant Hunting on the Edge of the World (1930) Victor Gollancz (reprinted 1974, Theophrastus)
  • Plant Hunting in the Wilds (1931) Figurehead (Pioneer series)
  • The Loom of the East (1932) Martin Hopkinson Ltd
  • A Plant Hunter in Tibet (1934) Jonathan Cape (reprinted by White Orchid, Thailand (2006) ISBN 978-9745240872)
  • The Romance of Gardening (1935) Jonathan Cape
  • Plant Hunter's Paradise (1937) Jonathan Cape
  • Assam Adventure (1941) Jonathan Cape
  • Modern Exploration (1945) Jonathan Cape
  • About This Earth (1946) Jonathan Cape
  • Commonsense Rock Gardening (1948) Jonathan Cape
  • Burma's Icy Mountains (1949) Jonathan Cape (reprinted by White Orchid, Thailand; 2nd edition (2006) ISBN 978-9745240841)
  • Rhododendrons (1949) Latimer House
  • Footsteps in Civilization (1950) Jonathan Cape
  • Plant Hunter in Manipur (1952) Jonathan Cape
  • Berried Treasure (1954) Ward Lock and Co. Ltd.
    Ward Lock & Co
    Ward Lock & Co was a publishing house in the United Kingdom that started as a partnership and developed until it was eventually absorbed into the publishing combine of Orion Publishing Group.-History:...

     London and Melbourne
  • Return to the Irrawaddy (1956) Andrew Melrose
  • Pilgrimage for Plants (1960) George C. Harrap and Co. Ltd

Famous relatives

His sister, Winifred Mary Ward
Winifred Mary Ward
Winifred Mary Ward She was one of the founders of modern creative drama.Ward was born in Eldora, Iowa on October 29, 1884. She never married, She completed a Ph.D. in Education at the University of Chicago and immediately went on to teach at Northwestern University in the School of Oratory as a...

, became the mother of "creative dramatics" the field of classroom teaching methods that place a heavy emphasis on self-expression, literature appreciation, and proficiency in spoken English for children.

Sources

  • Frank Kingdon-Ward's own works, as listed above
  • Frank Kingdon-Ward - Last of the Great Plant Hunters, Charles Lyte (1989), John Murray Publishers Ltd, ISBN 978-0719547355

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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