Background
Charles Edward Hubbard was born on 23 May 1900 in Appleton, a hamlet on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, where his father, also named Charled Edward Hubbard, was the head gardener at Appleton House to the queen of Norway.
Charles Edward Hubbard was born on 23 May 1900 in Appleton, a hamlet on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, where his father, also named Charled Edward Hubbard, was the head gardener at Appleton House to the queen of Norway.
He is indicated by the author transcript C.E.Hubb. when citing a botanical name. He was schooled at Sandringham, and at King Edward VII Grammar School in King"s Lynn, before joining the staff of the Royal Gardens at Sandringham in 1916. During his time there, he also spent five months at the Bygdøy Royal Estate near Oslo, and served for seven months in the Royal Air Force.
In April 1920, Hubbard left the Sandringham Estate to join the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, initially working in the temperate house and arboretum.
In September 1922, he gained a position in the herbarium, working at first under Stephen Troyte Dunn, and later under Otto Stapf. Hubbard published his first scientific paper in 1925, describing two new species in the genus Stipa.
At the request of the Government of Queensland, Hubbard travelled to Australia in 1930, in exchange for the Australian botanist West. Doctorate. Francis, who spent a year at Kew. He visited the herbaria in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, as well as examining every grass specimen in the Queensland Herbarium in Brisbane.
He carried out field work around Rockhampton and the Fitzroy River in central Queensland, accumulating 15,000 specimens.
During the Second World War, the Kew herbarium was evacuated to Oxford and Hubbard moved with it, keeping his British herbarium at 9 Crick Road, the former residence of George Claridge Druce, while the Kew herbarium was housed in the basement of the Bodleian Library. On 1 October 1957, Hubbard was promoted to Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at Kew, and rose to Deputy Director in April 1959. On 30 November 1965, he retired and moved to Hampton, Middlesex, close to Kew.
He died on 8 May 1980.
Hubbard was the recipient of a number of awards, including the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1954), Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1965), the Linnean Gold Medal (1967) and the Veitch Memorial Medal (1970). He was also awarded a Doctor of Science degree honoris causa by the University of Reading (1960). A number of botanical names commemorate Hubbard, including Acacia hubbardiana, Digitaria hubbardii, Hubbardochloa (and thus also the subtribe Hubbardochloinae), Hubbardia (and thus also the tribe Hubbardieae) and Pandanus hubbardii.
