Amos William Howard

Amos William Howard (1848 to 1930) was an English-born nurseryman who pioneered subterranean clover as a fodder plant in Australia. The son of a gardener, he migrated to South Australia with his wife and three children in 1876, worked as a gardener, and wrote an essay for the Agricultural Society committee in 1880 on packing fruit for export to England. He later ran a nursery at Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills, where around 1889 he noticed the clover growing wild, found it on his own land and saw that stock ate it eagerly and that its roots carried nitrogen-producing nodules. From 1906 he collected, selected, promoted and sold the seed. Two cultivars, Howard and Mt Barker, carry his name, and a memorial trust, a medal for pasture work and a walkway honour him.