A red-pink coloured, Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium designated as strain DG31A(T) was isolated from soil collected in Seoul, South Korea. The isolate was found to grow optimally at 25 A degrees C on R2A agar. The highest degrees of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of the strain were found with Hymenobacter arizonensis JCM 13504(T) (98.0 %), Hymenobacter glaciei VUG-A130(T) (96.1 %), Hymenobacter soli PB17(T) (95.2 %), Hymenobacter antarcticus VUG-A42aa(T) (94.7 %) and Hymenobacter chitinivorans Txc1(T) (92.8 %). The DNA G+C content of the novel strain, DG31A(T), was determined to be 60.8 mol%. Chemotaxonomic data revealed that the major fatty acids were summed feature 3 (C-16:1 omega 7c and/or C-16:1 omega 6c; 26.7 %), C-16:1 omega 5c (18.9 %) and anteiso-C-15:0 (12.9 %); the major polar lipid was identified as phosphatidylethanolamine; the polyamine pattern was found to contain sym-homospermidine; and the major quinone was identified as MK-7. The DNA-DNA relatedness of strain DG31A(T) with respect to H. arizonensis JCM 13504(T) was 19.5 +/- A 2.9 % (reciprocal, 19.3 +/- A 0.6 %). Based on these data, strain DG31A(T) should be classified within the genus Hymenobacter as a novel species for which the name Hymenobacter humi sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain DG31A(T) (=KCTC 32523(T) = JCM 19635(T)).