For the rest of Howard’s life, botany and international affairs often seemed to cross paths. When opportunities for exchange between American and Chinese botanists opened up around 1980, Howard was among the first 20 delegates to travel there, according to David Boufford, assistant director for collections at the Harvard Herbaria, who also worked with Howard.

Professor of Biology Noel M. Holbrook ’82 traveled with Howard on his trip to Cuba in the late 1990s to visit a famous botanical garden which Harvard managed prior to the Cuban Revolution.

“He walked around the garden he hadn’t been [to] in 40 plus years,” Holbrook said. “We stood in a bamboo grove, and he remembered when it had been planted.”

On campus, Howard’s lectures were popular for both the subject matter and his teaching style.

Wood said that Howard’s main fields—plant morphology and anatomy—were “big subjects” during his time as a professor.

But those close to him said Howard’s lecture style was also engaging and unique.

“There are some people who walk into a room, and they’re there, and you feel their presence,” Wood said. “I think Dr. Howard was like that.”

Howard’s lectures, many of which were open to the public, included field trips to grocery stores and restaurants. In a lecture entitled “Botany in Boston Restaurants,” Howard described plants as they were served to his audience.

Boufford said that Howard also incorporated his collection of about 65,000 slides—most of which he photographed himself during his travels to exotic islands in the Caribbean and across the globe—into his lectures.

“He just had tons of stories,” said Holbrook, who took Howard’s graduate level class on plant anatomy in the 1980s. Holbrook said Howard had the class over to his house for dinner at the end of the course.

“All the foods were listed botanically. Instead of the menu using culinary terms, it was describing the type of plant,” she said.

Holbrook said she ate some unusual plants that night, including a fruit that could only be found in the Caribbean.

“If you ate it when it wasn’t exactly ripe, it could kill you,” she remembered. But she said “there was never any question that he would know when to pick it correctly.”

Howard is survived by four children—Barbara Howard, Bruce Howard, Philip Howard, and Jean Howard Rodriguez, and eight grandchildren.