Second World War, a number of major publications ensued, including Lilies of the World in 1950. The RHS also imposed two major tasks on their librarian. In 1950, Frederick Chittenden, a previous director of RHS Wisley and Keeper of the Library, died leaving unfinished the four volume RHS Dictionary of Gardening that the society had commissioned from him before the war. The war had interrupted the work as many of the expected contributors were unavailable. Stearn, together with Patrick Synge, the RHS Publications Editor, undertook to complete the work, particularly volume IV (R–Z), a task he completed within six months, with 50 new articles. The finished work was published in 1951 and not only did he undertake the role of editing this large work but his contributions covered 50 genera, 600 species and complex identification keys such as Solidago and Viola. Since Stearn's entries in volume IV extended from Soldanella to Zygotritonia, he would jest that he was but "a peculiar authority on plants from 'So-' onwards". He issued a revised version in 1956 with Synge in which he added a further 86 articles. His recollection of this task was that he acquired "that occupational hazard of compilers of encyclopaedias", encyclopedic knowledge. Many of Stearn's collaborative works used his bibliographic skills. While his genus monographs largely concentrated on Mediterranean flora, notably Epimedium, Allium and Paeonia, he was also the author of species articles both popular and technical as well as a number of classical treatises. In addition he produced floristic treatments of a number of regions such as Jamaica and Nepal. He also contributed to many national Florae as diverse as Bhutan and Greece, as well as major regional florae including the Flora Europaea and European Garden Flora. While his output covered a wide range of topics, he is best known for his contributions to botanical history, taxonomy, botanical bibliography, and botanical illustration. Botanical Latin (four editions 1966–1992), is his best known work, having become a standard reference and described as both the bible of plant taxonomists and a philological masterwork. It was begun during the war years and the first edition was basically a guide to Latin for botanists with no or limited knowledge of the language, which he described as a "do-it-yourself Latin kit" for taxonomists. Later, the work evolved into an etymological dictionary, but then Stearn learned that such a work had already been published in the