Scotch College

Bob Withers’ name graces plants

Dr Robert Withers OAM (’40) was a medical general practitioner, and had a second career as a horticulturalist, in which field he was an esteemed author, researcher and plant breeder.

He promoted the growing of liliums, camellias and rhododendrons in Australia, and the development of cultivars (cultivated varieties developed by selectively breeding in order to enhance or minimise traits common to other members of a species). On Australia Day 1995 he received the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to horticulture.

He is commemorated by the Camellia reticulata hybrid ‘Dr Bob Withers’, and by a hybrid rhododendron named ‘Bob’s Crowning Glory’.

Greater prominence, however, went to the flower he named in honour of his wife Hari. In 2003 Australia Post issued a set of four 50-cent stamps celebrating Australian cultivars that were specifically bred to produce spectacular blooms on hardy, disease resistant plants suitable for home cultivation. One of the four was the camellia ‘Hari Withers’. Ethereal in its beauty, rhapsodised Australia Post, its flowers are very pale pink grading to a deeper pink rosebud at the centre. They average nine centimetres in diameter and appear mid-season on a fast-growing, upright and spreading plant. GS