Biography

New Zealand schoolteacher and amateur botanist. In early middle age Harry Talbot's love of the outdoors developed into an enthusiasm for plants. He went on to explore and collect across the northern part of New Zealand's South Island, especially in the mountains.

Talbot was born near Wigan in Lancashire, England, and emigrated to New Zealand with his family before he was ten years old. His father took work managing a coal mine in Roa in the south-eastern part of the Paparoa Range. The family then moved to Wallsend on the southern bank of the Grey River and Talbot attended high school in nearby Greymouth, where in his senior year he was appointed pupil-teacher. He went on to Dunedin Training College in 1917 before enlisting in 1918 and serving in the Army of Occupation in Germany.

On his return to New Zealand he completed his teacher training in Dunedin and took charge of the Owens Valley School north of Murchison in 1922. He then moved to the Arapeti School in the hills behind Shannon. He spent 1924-1926 travelling in Australia, visiting New South Wales, Cairns and Perth, and returned to New Zealand via Melbourne. He then taught in Taranaki from 1927-1935, maintaining his passion for exploring the countryside in the school holidays. It was during one of his tramping expeditions in late 1935, to Lake Taylor, that Talbot decided to take up botany.

Taking up an appointment at Springfield School on the Canterbury Plain, Talbot began teaching himself from books and used a small microscope to study weeds and cultivated plants. In 1940 he made the acquaintance of L.W. McCaskill at Christchurch Teachers College, who recommended Thomas Cheeseman's text on native plants. He also met W.B. Brockie of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens at this time, with whom he formed a fruitful collecting partnership. Petrol restrictions during the Second World War meant that the pair began their work in earnest after 1945, when they made botanical surveys in the Upper Maruia (1945), along the length of the Doubtful River (1946), Tophouse, Lake Cobb, Mount Peel and Nelson (1948) and at Arthurs Pass (1949). He made many more excursions in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes joined by Gordon Clark. In the summer of 1967-1968 he visited the Chatham Islands with Ron Simpson.

Talbot amassed a herbarium of nearly 4,000 specimens, which was curated by Lynda Stemmer and incorporated into the Botany Division Herbarium (CHR) in the 1970s. Talbot was awarded the Senior Bledisloe Trophy of the Canterbury Botanical Society in 1979. He retired to Richmond, where he passed away in 1982. The species Bulbinella talbotii L.B.Moore is named in his honour, while Coprosma talbrockiei L.B.Moore & R.Mason commemorates Talbot and his companion Walter Brockie.

Sources:
E.J. Godley, 2000, "Biographical Notes (38): Harry Talbot (1898-1982)", New Zealand Journal of Botany, 60: 24-28.