Frank Kingdon-Ward is one of the most famous British plant collectors to have worked in south-west China and the Himalayas. Though primarily a collector of seeds and plants for introduction to cultivation in European gardens, he also gathered dried specimens which were distributed among several herbaria.

Kingdon-Ward's father was Harry Marshall Ward, a lecturer in botany at Cambridge University and Cooper's Hill, the Royal Indian Engineering College. Coming into contact with forest officers returning from India and Burma through his father, it was not surprising that the young Frank became interested in plant collecting and the romance of the East. In 1904 he joined Christ's College, Cambridge, to read Natural Science. He was forced to leave after his second year, however, when the death of his father left the family impoverished.

With the help of a Cambridge professor, Kingdon-Ward was appointed to a schoolmaster's post in Shanghai, where he arrived in 1907. The work soon palled and Kingdon-Ward left after two years, tempted away by the opportunity of accompanying the naturalist Malcolm P. Anderson on a journey across China in 1909-1910. He thus went up the Yangtze River to the borders of Tibet, where he discovered three vertebrates new to science and a passion for exploration.

Kingdon-Ward's promise as a plant collector was noted by the nursery owner A.K. Bulley, who had formerly employed George Forrest. Kingdon-Ward was thus engaged to gather plants in south-west China that might be suitable for European gardens. This was the first of many trips that Kingdon-Ward would make over the next 30 years, crossing and re-crossing his routes many times in Yunnan, Tibet and Upper Burma, as well as exploring Sikkim, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Assam Himalaya. His 1924 expedition, when he explored the Tsangpo Gorge, is one of his most celebrated, but his work in the upper Mekong and Salween River regions was also particularly worthy of note. Preferring not to cover the same areas so thoroughly worked by George Forrest, Handel-Mazetti and Joseph Rock, Kingdon-Ward concentrated on the frontier ranges between Burma and Assam and south-eastern Tibet, usually working single-handed. To Britain he brought numerous species of rhododendron, primula, berberis and cotoneaster, and seeds of the prized Himalayan poppy, Meconopsis betonicifolia Franch.

Kingdon-Ward produced detailed and fascinating accounts of his adventures. The first of these was published as In the Land of the Blue Poppy (1913), which described that most botanically rich corner of Yunnan. His various itineraries are listed in works such as E.H.M. Cox's Plant Hunting in China (1945). Kingdon-Ward was also a fine botanist and was able to describe many new taxa (sometimes in collaboration with others).

Though diligent to the last in his plant-collecting, for Kingdon-Ward it was the joy of exploring that sent him back into the field year after year. He commented that he was prouder of his medals from the Royal Geographical Society and the Scottish Royal Geographical Society than his three horticultural gold medals. His sturdy countenance helped him to overcome the many obstacles put in his way on expeditions, such as impalement on a bamboo spike (in 1937) and one of the worst earthquakes on record (in 1950). He married Florinda Norman-Thompson in 1923, but they divorced in 1937, having had two daughters. Kingdon-Ward named Primula florindae after her. His second wife, Jean Macklin, shared his sense of adventure and together they made five expeditions. Lilium macklindae commemorates her. While planning yet another trip, despite being aged 73, Kingdon-Ward died of a stroke in Wimbledon on 8 April 1958. He is commemorated in numerous species names and in the gentian genus, Kingdon-Wardia C.Marquand. He was made OBE in 1952.

Sources:
D.E. Allen, 2004, "Ward, Francis Kingdon- (1885-1958)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34327, accessed 25 August 2011
E.H.M. Cox, 1945, Plant Hunting in China: 180-190
F. Kingdon-Ward, 1913, In the Land of the Blue Poppy.