Roman Kobendza (1886–1955) was a Polish botanist associated with the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and the University of Warsaw. He specialized in dendrology and the biology of woody plants (in the early 1930s, he established the Department of Dendrology at the Faculty of Horticulture, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and at the end of that decade, he began conducting lectures on forest botany at the Faculty of Forestry). From 1917 until the end of his life, he worked at the Botanical Garden of the University of Warsaw. Kobendza was also a promoter of nature conservation, contributing to the creation of the Kampinos National Park in 1959, which encompasses the Kampinos Forest, to which he devoted his doctoral dissertation (Phytosociological Relations in the Kampinos Forest), defended at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw in 1926. Kobendza was an advocate for the protection of e.g. the Bielany district of Warsaw, discovered the source of the Łyna River and a created the nature reserve surrounding it. He was also interested in other natural areas of Poland, including the Białowieża Forest and the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, as well as in parks.
