Biography

English merchant banker and former colonel in the army, awarded the Military Cross in the First World War, and knighted in 1956. Treasurer of the Linnean Society (1941-1958) and Chairman of the John Innes Horticultural Institute (1947-1961), he created a famous garden at Highdown, near Worthing, Sussex.

Stern subscribed to the expedition of R.J. Farrer (1880-1920) from which he cultivated some of the novelties collected in Yunnan and Gansu. Several other contemporary collectors sent material to Stern, and he purchased a great deal of stock from Veitch & Son's sale in 1912, which included material from earlier Chinese collections.

Stern introduced many new garden plants and bred hybrids in the genera Berberis, Eremerus, Galanthus, Helleborus, Lilium, Magnolia and Rosa. He is best known as an enthusiast and expert on the genus Paeonia who published A Study of the Genus Paeonia, richly illustrated by by Lilian Snelling and Stella Ross-Craig.

Specimens at BM are of cultivated origin and sometimes labelled 'Col. F.C. Stern'. The species Paeonia sterniana H.R. Fletcher (Paeonia emodi subsp. sterniana (H.R. Fletcher) Halda), based on a Ludlow, Sherriff & Elliot holotype at BM collected in Xizang in 1947, is one of a number of taxa that commemorate this Paeony enthusiast.