A Gram-negative, UV tolerant bacterial strain, DG7A(T), was isolated from soil samples collected in Seoul city, South Korea. The cells were grown on R2A agar at 25 A degrees C and were pink to red in color. The DNA G+C content of the novel strain DG7A was 63.5 mol%. Chemotaxonomic data revealed that the strains contain the major fatty acids iso-C-15:0, anteiso-C-15:0, and summed feature 3 (16:1 omega 7c/16:1 omega 6c), with phosphatidylethanolamine as the major polar lipid. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain DG7A(T) formed a distinct phylogenetic line along with Hymenobacter soli PB17(T), and they shared approximately 98.35 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. However, these two strains shared only 5.3 % pairwise similarity (reciprocal analysis, 36.3 %) in their genomic DNA. The next highest degree of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity after H. soli PB17(T) was found with H. glaciei VUG-A130(T) (96.78 %), H. antarcticus VUG-A42aa(T) (96.66 %), and H. saemangeumensis GSR0100(T) (96.57 %). Based on the phylogenetic analysis and analysis of the physiological and biochemical characteristics, this isolate was considered to represent a novel species, for which we propose the name Hymenobacter terrae sp. nov., with type strain DG7A(T) (= KCTC 32554(T) = KEMB 9004-164(T) = JCM 30007(T)).