Harry Bolus

Harry Bolus (28 April 1834 – 25 May 1911)

His business flourished so he was able to acquire many fine botanical books. Complete sets of the Botanical Magazine, Botanical Register, Refugium Botanicum, and the large folios of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Ferdinand Bauer and Francis Masson formed part of his collection. He founded the Harry Bolus Professorship at the University of Cape Town and left a large trust for scholarships. He also donated his extensive herbarium and library to the South African College. He was one of the founding Members of the South African Philosophical Society.

Harry Bolus loved visiting England and made a total of 28 voyages (14 each way) to and from South Africa. He died of heart failure at Oxted, Surrey, on 25 May 1911. His youngest son Frank married Harriet Margaret Louisa Kensit, William Kensit's granddaughter, the following year. She had worked as Harry's assistant in the herbarium while she was in college, was appointed curator of the Bolus Herbarium in 1903, and retired from that position in 1955.

Correspondence Harry Bolus corresponded widely with his contemporaries, including a number of famous people such as the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, ) and Bolusiella Schltr., as well as numerous other specific names.

Publications A Preliminary List of the Cape Orchids 1881

Descriptions of the 117 Cape Peninsula Orchids illustrated by 36 plates drawn and coloured by himself. A Sketch of the Flora of South Africa 1886

Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanum Extra-tropicarum Volume 1 Part 1 comprising 50 plates 1893. Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanum Extra-tropicarum Part 2 1896. Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanum Extra-tropicarum Volume 2 comprising 100 plates 1911 (shortly after his death). Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanum Extra-tropicarum Volume 3 edited by his grand-niece Miss H. M. L. Kensit, and containing 9 plates painted by his son Frank 1913. A List of Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Cape Peninsula with Wolley-Dod "Ericaceae" for Flora Capensis with Francis Guthrie and N. E. Brown