[1][2] Holttum was born 20 July 1895 in Cambridgeshire, England, to English store owners of Quaker faith.
[3] He served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit on the Western Front during World War I, for which he was awarded the Croix de guerre.
When the war finished, Holttum and Corner got approved to release Dr. Kwan Koriba from a prisoner camp.
Returning from Great Britain, where he departed to in 1925, Holttum continued his job as the Garden's director, until he moved to the University of Malaya in Singapore to serve as its first Professor of Botany.
[11] Then in 1964, Holttumochloa which is a genus of Malaysian bamboos also in the Poaceae family and native to the hill forests of Peninsular Malaysia.
[14] Spending some time at the Kew Gardens to work, Holttum died 18 September 1990 in Roehampton, London,[3] aged 95.