Harry Ardell Allard Fieldbooks, 1930-1952
By Lesley Parilla, Cataloger, Field Book Project
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Cover of H.A. Allard Field book in NMNH Dept. of Botany collection |
Calystegia sepium subsp. appalachiana.National Herbarium. Allard, H.A. 19748, 04 Aug 1950. USA. West Virginia. Tucker. |
Harry Ardell Allard (1880-1963) was a botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for 40 years, working on collections of lichens and flowering plants, tobacco varieties, and interests in ornithology and entomology. When he retired in 1946, he had more than 200 publications to his name.
Allard was independent from an early age. Just after graduating high school in 1899, he ran away to join the Boers’ fight against the British in South Africa, taking work on a steamer carrying cattle to England. He found himself stuck in England, impeded by travel restrictions. Returning home, he attended University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill graduating in 1905. To pay his way through college, Allard worked a variety of jobs, including a night watchman in two large cotton mills in Oxford. Eventually he gained the notice of one his professors, who offered him a position as a botanical assistant.
In 1906 he joined the USDA, eventually working with the Office of Tobacco Investigations. While in this office, he became one of the first to identify the effect of aphids on Tobacco plants. In 1920 while working on seed production for Maryland Mammoth Tobacco, Allard worked with Dr. W.W. Garner discovering photoperiodism, the ability of flowering plants to determine the time of the season to bloom and produce seed based on the amount of daily sunlight. Over the next twenty years, Allard continued to study this phenomenon. With Garner and others, he produced numerous publications describing its impact on a wide range of cultivated crops and wild plants.
Allard remained an active collector and independent spirit late into his life. He collected extensively in the mountains around Virginia, including the Alleghenies, Bull Run, and Blue Ridge. He continued trips on a weekly basis into his later years. He was known to take along companions, though many did not repeat the experience, due to his love of picking the steepest paths and densest foliage for their first outing. One recurring companion recalled, “He made it a point to avoid the locations of stills, to carry cigars for men with whom he had become acquainted, and to keep an eye open for awkward meetings on trails (Gurney, p. 155).”
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Page from Allard's notes for further collecting in Bull Run Region in NMNH Dept. of Botany collection |
Allard’s field book collection covers more than twenty years of work, and documents specimen collecting across the Dominican Republic and east coast of the United States. His field books contain primarily specimen lists, organized by specimen number, some with detailed entries, and others with minimal information. These lists were often carefully kept, sometimes having typed sheets of paper glued to amend entries. Materials also include summaries of specimen collections as well as notes about collecting trips, and some correspondence relating to the specimens.
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Page from Allard's Field Book 25, Identification List, 9472 – 10861 in NMNH Dept. of Botany collection |
Ashley B. Gurney. “Harry A. Allard, Naturalist: His life and work (1880-1963).” Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1964), pp. 151-164.
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. “Art Collections: Harry Ardell Allard Collection.” Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University. Created 2009. Accessed 4/1/2011. http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/hibd/departments/Art/Allard.shtml
J. E. McMurtrey, Jr. “Harry A. Allard: 1880-1963.” Plant Physiology, Vol. 38, No. 3 (May, 1963), p. 361.
Calystegia sepium subsp. appalachiana. National Herbarium. Allard, H.A. 19748, 04 Aug 1950. USA. West Virginia. Tucker. Canaan Valley, near Dolly Sods. 900 to 1200 m. US SHEET NO.: 02006934 BARCODE: 00111345
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