the university herbarium and later director of the Garden (1951–1973), the horticulturalist E. A. Bowles (1865–1954), who became his patron, Harry Godwin, then a research fellow and later professor and Tom Tutin who was working with Seward at that time. Seward gave him full research facilities in the herbarium. He continued his research, visiting the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, in 1930, at the age of 19, and also spent two weeks at the herbarium of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, with the aid of a £15 grant from the Royal Society to study Epimedium. Also in 1930, the Fifth International Botanical Congress was held at Cambridge, and Stearn was able to attend. During this time he commuted between the bookshop, the Botany School, Botanic Garden and home by bicycle, his preferred means of transportation throughout his life. Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society (1933–1952) In 1933, H. R. Hutchinson, who was the Librarian at the Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society's (RHS) in London, was due to retire. John Gilmour, now assistant director at the Kew Gardens, put forward Stearn's name, together with Bowles, a vice-president of the Society, who had discovered Stearn at the bookshop. Stearn was 22 when he began work at the library, initially as assistant librarian, before taking over Hutchinson's position after six months. He later explained his appointment at such a young age as being the result of World War I: "All the people who should have had those jobs were dead." There he collaborated with Bowles on a number of plant monographs, such as Bowles' Handbook of Crocus and their work on Anemone japonica (Anemone hupehensis var. japonica). Written in 1947, it is still considered one of the most comprehensive accounts of the origins and nomenclature of fall-blooming anemones. Stearn was one of the last people to see Bowles alive, and when Bowles died, Stearn wrote an appreciation of him, and later contributed the entry on Bowles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Much of his spare time was spent studying at the Kew Gardens. The Lindley Library, the largest horticultural library in the world and named after the British botanist John Lindley (1799–1865), was established in 1868 by the acquisition of Lindley's 1,300 volumes upon his death. It had recently undergone considerable change. In 1930, the library had been rehoused in a new floor added to the society's Vincent Square headquarters, but the