Harold Harrington

Harold David Harrington (March 14, 1903 – January 22, 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, was the first comprehensive flora of Colorado in nearly 50 years and remains an authoritative work.

With his wife and fellow botanist Edith, he traveled around the United States, Europe, and Pacific, bringing back botanical photographs for use in teaching. He published 17 books while at CSU, where the majority of his collection of specimens 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.

Early life and education Harold David Harrington was born on March 14, 1903, in De Motte, Indiana. He moved with his family from De Motte to Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1909 and then to Graettinger, Iowa, in 1911. Harrington would remain in Graettinger for most of his childhood, growing up on a farm there with seven siblings. Due to financial strains spurred by the Great Depression, Harold and his older brother Elbert alternated years in college so that one could work while the other was in school. Harrington completed two years of college before returning to Graettinger as a high school teacher. He would also coach the school's basketball and football teams.

In 1954, Harrington's Manual of the Plants of Colorado was published after years of research. The production of such a flora had been the reason Harrington was brought to Colorado in 1943. The Harringtons also traveled, visiting Europe in 1964 and taking photographs of various plants for educational use back on the Front Range. Their travels led them to visit every state in the continental U.S. During trips to collect specimens with students, he would play the ukulele at the campfire after the day's work. He could also play the Spanish guitar and violin, the latter of which he had taught himself to play while in college and had played to supplement his income while in school. He and his wife performed a final round trip through the Colorado Rockies during the summer of 1980. The same year, the couple visited a variety of Pacific islands, including Hawai'i, and Australia.

Legacy Penstemon harringtonii is named for Harrington, who collected the first specimen of the species. 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.

Harrington's collection of roughly 10,000 specimens remains part of the Charles Mauer Herbarium at CSU. Edith created the Harold David Harrington Graduate Fellowship at CSU in his memory to fund students in the field of plant taxonomy. was a student of Harrington who Maurer found "a large, gentle man who was easy to talk to". Maurer recalled using Harrington's Manual of the Plants of Colorado as a textbook. the CSU herbarium's curator.

Selected bibliography