Richard A. Howard, a Harvard botanist known for exotic travels and innovative lectures, died at his home in Weston, Mass. on Sept. 18. He was 86.

Howard, who was professor emeritus of dendrology, also directed the University’s Arnold Arboretum for 24 years. He was well known for his teaching—which took the study of botany to restaurants and grocery stores in Boston.

“He probably did more than any botanist I know to bring botany to the people,” said Emily Wood, manager of the systematics collections at the Harvard Herbaria, who worked under Howard.

Born in Stamford, Conn. on July 1, 1917, Howard attended Miami University of Ohio before completing his graduate studies at Harvard in 1942.

His teaching career at Harvard spanned half a century. Between 1948 and 1988, he served terms as assistant professor, director of the Arnold Arboretum and professor of dendrology.

Howard published over 300 scientific papers and 13 books in his lifetime, garnering honors from the American Herb Society, the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Denmark and the Garden Club of America.

The world was Howard’s laboratory. Over the course of five decades, he traveled to far-flung places all over the globe, but was best known for his research in the Caribbean, which produced a six-volume work entitled Flora of the Lesser Antilles, the most extensive record of plant life in the region to date.

“He was in areas that no longer exist, because of development and politics and all sorts of things,” said Donald H. Pfister, director of the Herbaria. “He might have had the last glimpse in certain parts of those islands before they were destroyed.”

His travels also involved collecting plant specimens around volcanoes.

In 1972, Howard and his son, Bruce, who was in high school at the time, took a trip to the Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat in search of a now-extinct plant.

“I remember trekking all day up the volcano. It was smoking, steaming at that point,” Bruce R. Howard said. “And he had me out front searching for this plant. I had no idea what it looked like.”

At one point during the expedition, Bruce Howard said he pointed to a plant near the rim of the volcano. To his father’s delight, the find turned out to be a new species of flowering plant.

“He was great at describing plants. He had told me what to look for, and I kind of stumbled upon it,” Bruce Howard said of his father.

Howard’s expertise in botany proved useful during World War II. Serving in the Army, Howard produced survival manuals that taught soldiers downed in the Pacific to live off the land in extreme conditions.

“Men just back from fighting in the Pacific kept bringing strange problems to Howard when they learned he was a botanist. What should they eat if forced down in the jungle?” a 1953 article published in Newsweek read.