Athelstan Hall Cornish-Bowden was a land surveyor active in South Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[1] Cornish-Bowden was the seventh of the 12 children of Admiral William Bowden and Elizabeth Anne Cornish.

[2] In 1896 he passed the survey examination set by the surveyor-general's office and was admitted to practice as a government land surveyor in the Cape Colony.

Before or in 1899 Cornish-Bowden sent some flower bulbs he found in South Africa to his mother in Newton Abbot, Devon, England.

In 1902, she sent flowers and bulbs from the plant to Kew Herbarium with a note requesting that the species be named after her son.