Colorado
Botanists
 Colorado as a very rich flora, with about 3,200 species of
seed plants. Many botanists have collected, documented, and described the
plant diversity of Colorado since
the first botanical exploration by Edwin James in 1819-1820 as part of the
Major Long Expedition. Featured here are eleven botanists who
contributed significantly to the study of the flora of Colorado .
| Thomas Nuttall
| John
Torrey | Asa Gray
| Joseph
Hooker | Thomas
C. Porter | Charles
C. Parry | Aven
Nelson | Alice
Eastwood | Per
Axel Rydberg | Francis
Ramaley | Harold
D. Harrington |
Thomas Nuttall is known as the Father
of Western Botany. Not only was he an authority in the botanical field, but
he was also a well-trained ornithologist, naturalist, and printer.
He was born in England and worked at his
family's printing business as a youngster. When he was not at work in the
print shop, he was out exploring his natural surroundings. His love for
nature and for studying all its aspects became his calling. At the age of
twenty-one he left for America to become a naturalist.
In 1808, Nuttall met Benjamin Barton,
professor of medicine and naturalist at the University
of Pennsylvania , and was soon helping Barton to
fulfill his dream of completing a flora of North
America .
In 1810, Barton offered Nuttall the
opportunity to collect plants in the West for two years at $8.00 per month.
During these two years, he collected hundreds of specimens and traveled
halfway across
North America. He was quite
zealous in his explorations and would hitch rides on riverboats used by fur
traders in order to reach his destinations faster. He was nicknamed "Old
Curious" and was thought by many of his fellow travelers as somewhat
mad. Occasionally he would wander away from his group while collecting plants
and become lost. On one instance, while in the North Dakota area, he wandered
100 miles away from his group and could not find his way back. He was so
exhausted that he collapsed and lost consciousness. As the story is told, a
Mandan warrior found him and took him back to his
rendezvous point.
Instead of returning to Philadelphia
as had been planned after the two years were over, he traveled to England,
taking his plant specimens with him, to be with his family during the War of
1812. While in England, he
described many of the plants he collected in America and published the results
with Frederick Pursh in the Botanical Magazine, including color plated
for each specimen.
In 1815, he returned to the
United States
and began exploring and collecting in the Southeast. When he finally returned
to
Philadelphia
,
he began work on his Genera of North American Plants, which was published in
two volumes in 1818. He used a combination of the Linnaean classification
system and Jussieu's ordinal nomenclature at a time when many botanists were
still using the Linnaean sequence.
In 1822, Nuttall went to teach botany
at Harvard. In 1833, he received many specimens from Nathaniel Wyeth to
describe and name. At the same time, he was planning a trip to the Northwest,
California, and Hawaii
to collect with Wyeth. Over the three-year expedition, Nuttall collected
thousands of plants, many of which were described by himself, Gray, or Torrey
in the Flora of North America.
In his many years of western travels,
Nuttall visited the Sweetwater River
of southern Wyoming and the Black Hills of southeastern Wyoming. He traversed the South Pass at the border of Colorado
and Wyoming and followed parts of the Oregon
Trail.
John Torrey's first lessons in the
Linnaean system of botanical nomenclature were from Amos Eaton, botanist and
inmate at the prison where Torrey's father worked.
In
New York , Torrey was trained in medicine under Samuel
Mitchell while, at the same time, studying botany under David Hosack,
botanist at the Elgin Botanic Gardens. Torrey eventually worked in the fields
of geology, botany and chemistry.
After publishing a catalog of plants
collected by D.B. Douglass, Torrey left for West Point in
1824 to teach chemistry and mineralogy. In 1827, he accepted a teaching
position at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons (later Columbia
University ). In
1830, he began to teach at Princeton during the summers while retaining his
position at Columbia .
During the next few years, Torrey became
interested in some of the new methods of classification while continuing to
use the traditional Linneaean stystem. In 1826, he wrote the Compendium of
the Flora of the Northern and Middle
States
using the Linnaean system of sexual classification. At the same time, he was
a proponent of deJussieu?s natural system of classification (plants named
according to an array of morphological characters). Also in 1826, Torrey
published a manuscript on Edwin James' Rocky
Mountain
plant collection using the natural system of
classification. This was the first account of published material in
America
using
the natural system.
In 1830, Torrey met Asa Gray, then
teacher at the Bartlett School
in
Utica. Torrey worked
closely with Asa Gray on various flora projects. Together they published the
first comprehensive flora of
North America,
called Flora of North America in two volumes (1838-1843). Gray and Torrey's
volumes were seen as the new authority in American botany. It was in these
two volumes that the new Lindley system of classification was promoted,
leaving behind the antiquated sexual system of Linnaeus.
In 1842, Torrey and Gray parted ways.
Torrey remained in
New York
while Gray went to teach at Harvard. At about the same time, exploration in
the West intensified, resulting in overwhelming numbers of specimens being
sent to both Torrey and Gray for description and naming.
While Torrey's ambivalence toward a
specific classification system lingered, Gray readily adopted and applied
modern systems of classification in his work. Consequently, Torrey's
influence lessened in American botany while Asa Gray became America 's favored botanist.
At the age of 86, Torrey made his first
visit to Colorado with
his daughter. He collected some plants in Colorado Springs. They visited Gray's peak just a
couple of months after Gray himself had gone to Colorado to climb the
peak that had been named in honor of him by Parry. Charles Parry also named a
peak in the Rocky Mountains after Torrey.
After Torrey's death, his vast library
and herbarium collection was moved to the New
York Botanical
Garden.
The Torrey Botanical Society, the oldest
society dedicated to botanical study, was began by friends and admirers of
Torrey in the 1860s and continues to provide invaluable resources and
experiences to botanists of all kinds.
Asa Gray is known as the father of
American botany. He is said to have dominated American taxonomy more than any
other botanist. By 1850, he had established himself as the foremost authority
of American botany. His influence was such that few botanists would attempt
to study North American flora without his permission. In all, he produced 780
publications and was one of the most prolific botanists of all time. When he
retired, four botanists were hired to take his singular place at Harvard.
Gray was trained as a physician in New York, but soon left that field to pursue botany.
While teaching at the Bartlett School
in Utica in 1830, he met
John Torrey and thus began his lifelong devotion to botany. In that same year
he accepted a curator position at the Lyceum of Natural History in New York.
For a time, Gray worked closely with John
Torrey on various flora projects. Together, they published the first
comprehensive flora of North
America, called
Flora of North America in two volumes (1838-1943). Gray and Torrey's
volumes were seen as the new authority in American botany.
In 1836, Gray decided to publish a
textbook for his students since most botanical texts were geared towards
British students and the only other prominent American text was outdated.
Gray's text was called Elements of Botany. A more updated version, Gray's
Manual of Botany, is still used today.
In 1842, Gray was appointed head of the
Botanic Garden at Harvard
University.
The herbarium at Harvard today is named after Gray. As he continued his
floristic work, Gray adopted some of the more modern systems of
classification. He developed family keys similar to the system developed by
Lindley (Lindley had proposed an arrangement of natural orders in 1830 in An
Introduction to the Natural System of Botany) and developed keys to the
genus level adapted from those created by S.F. Gray in the 1820s. He also
followed the format of de Candolle's Prodromus concerning species
arrangement. In 1842, Gray also began work on his own regional flora, A Manual
of the Botany of the Northern United States. It was first published in
1848.
During the period of major westward
expansion, Gray and Torrey had loyal collectors who were sent out into the
field. These collectors provided them with numerous and unusual specimens.
During this time of frenzied exploration of
North America , Gray and Torrey described hundreds of new species. They
were overwhelmed with the constant task of describing and naming new species
sent from the westward expeditions. Gray carried out most of the descriptions
of the western flora. In the following years, as more specimens poured in and
as the debate over evolution took shape, Gray's floristic projects were being
left unfinished. As the Civil War unfolded, Gray returned to his North American
flora project and hoped to produce a third volume but was unable to complete
this task.
In the 1850s and 1860s, botanical
institutions began to take new precedence on the scene of American botany.
The Smithsonian Institution established a botany section, Henry Shaw
developed the botanical gardens in St. Louis, Missouri, and various other
state schools began implementing a botanical curriculum. Gray began to lose
his domination over American botany. By the 1870s, Sereno Watson began to
assist Gray. In 1873, Gray retired, and Watson assumed many of his
responsibilities at Harvard.
During his retirement, Gray published a
two volume set called Synoptical Flora of North America (1878-1897). He
continued to focus on his North American flora project. With the advent of
the USGS, he and Watson were provided with a steady stream of new species to
describe from the Rocky
Mountains.
Asa Gray made his first visit to Colorado in 1872. He went to meet with Charles Parry,
who dedicated the highest peak on the Continental Divide to Gray in 1862.
Along with Parry and friends, the 62-year old botanist and his wife climbed
the 14,000-ft peak named after him and celebrated by giving speeches and
singing the National anthem when they reached the top. In 1877, Gray and his
wife returned to Colorado
to meet with J.D. Hooker and others. The group camped in the Sangre de Cristo
range of the southern Rockies. As a result
of the meeting, Gray and Hooker wrote The Vegetation of the Rocky
Mountain
Region and
a comparison with that of other parts of the world (U.S. Geological and
Geographical Terr. Bulletin 6:1-77, 1880).
Gray was a close friend of Charles Darwin
and was a major supporter of Darwin?s views. He wrote a collection of
essays in 1876 on Darwin's
theory of evolution entitled Darwiniana.
A biography about Gray is available: Asa
Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin by A. Hunter Dupree (1959, 1988).
Joseph Hooker served as the director of
the Royal Botanic Gardens at
Kew from
1865-1885 and was the President of the Royal Society of London.
His publications include Flora
Tasmaniae, published in 1860, after his visit to Tasmania when Hooker worked as surgeon and botanist
with the expedition of James Ross. From 1862 to 1883, Hooker wrote the Genera
Plantarum (3 vols.), with George Bentham. These volumes were a landmark
for understanding genera and classification schemes. Hooker and Bentham made
throrough descriptions of plant families and genera based on original
observations. They treated 97,000 species and 200 families and adopted a
classification scheme similar to the system of de Candolle.
Hooker came to America in 1877 to explore the flora of the
Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the Sierra Nevada Mountains
of California. He
traveled to Pueblo, Colorado
with a group of colleagues including Asa Gray. Later, Hooker traveled to La
Veta Pass and camped with a group of naturalists and explorers. The group
later traveled to the Sangre de Cristo range where Hooker and Gray conducted
a plant survey and wrote a manuscript about their experience, The
Vegetation of the Rocky
Mountain
Region and a comparison with that of other
parts of the World (1880).
Hooker was highly respected by his
colleagues and extolled the work of his American contemporaries such as
Charles Parry, whom he dubbed the king of Colorado botany.
Hooker was a close friend and supporter
of Charles Darwin. When he realized that Wallace was about to present his
findings on evolution to the public which were similar to Darwin's,
he helped arrange for the shared presentation of
Darwin 's and Wallace's papers to the Linnaean Society
of London in 1858.
Thomas Porter was born in Pennsylvania
. He attended Lafayette
College
and graduated at the age of
eighteen. It was at this time that he began his botanical explorations in the
Alleghanies near his home.
He attended the Princeton Theological
Seminary and graduated in 1844. Soon agfter, he took a position as minister
at a Presbyterian church in Monticello,
Georgia
.
While in north
Georgia, he
collected and explored Stone Mountain and Toccoa
Falls
. Of these collections, he sent his notes and
description to Asa Gray at Harvard.
In 1848, Porter became ordained and took
a position at the Second German
Church in Reading
, Pennsyvania. One year later, he left his ministerial duties to teach
chemistry, botany, and zoology at Marshall College in Mercersburg.
While at Marshall
College, Porter
published his first botanical paper in 2850. The subject was a collection of
plants made by T.A. Culbertson in Missouri.
He continued his teaching at Marshall College
(later Franklin and Marshall College)
for the next seventeen years. In 1866, he left to teach botany and zooloogy
at Lafayette College,
where he ramained until 1897. In addition to teaching, he served as pastor of
the Third Street Reformed Church in Easton.
Porter made his first visit to Colorado in 1869. For five years he explored and
collected in the central Rocky
Mountains.
During these trips, he and his field crew accompanied F.V. Hayden of the U.S.
Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. As a result of these
collections and valuable help from J.M. Coulter, Parry, and others, Porter
and Coulter wrote the Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado,
the first flora of Colorado,
in 1874. This book firmly established the range of many plant species
throughout the Rocky Mountains. Newly
discovered species described by Porter in Synopsis include Erigeron
coulteri, Erigeron glandulosum, Astralagus brandegei, Astralagus
scopulorum, and Penstemon brandegei.
Many of Porter?s personal collections
were from the area of Greeley, Colorado City, the canyons of the Front Range,
and Denver including Gilbert Meadows in the Unita Mountains. He also made
excursions to South Park
via Ute Pass, Twin
Lakes, Monument Park,
and Pikes Peak.
Among his collections, Porter collected
the type specimen of Melica porteri at Glen Eyrie. Other species first
described by Porter now bear his name: Aster porteri (re-named in
honor of Porter by Asa Gray), Calamagrostis porteri, and Muhlenbergia
porteri. Most of Porter?s collections are housed at the Porter Herbarium
of the Academy
of Natural
Sciences
in Philadelphia.
He made his last publication at the age
of seventy-eight. His lifelong wish to publish a flora of
Pennsylvania was made possible by a provision in his
will. In 1903, J.K. Small of the
New York
Botanical Garden
produced the flora of Porter's home state.
Porter is said to have been a cautious and
generous man, possessing wit, impatience, and a thorough knowledge of plant
ecology. Among his favorite pastimes were German literature and poetry.
Charles Parry is most well known for his
studies and explorations in the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Sir
Joseph Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at
Kew,
described Parry as the "King of Colorado Botany." This title would
certainly have been considered flamboyant to Parry himself. He was described
as an "exceptionally unselfish and kind" man. The fact that he
never published a book ascribes to his humble nature. His only publications
were mostly in newspapers and nature journals. His appeal was more to public
society than to the scientific establishment.
Parry was born in Gloucestershire,
England in 1823 and later
moved to New York state
in 1832. As an undergraduate he began studying medical botany under Dr. John
Torrey and earned the degree of Doctor of Medicine from Columbia
College.
After only four years at his medical
practice in
Iowa , Parry
turned to botanical exploration. Parry's first visit to
Colorado
was in 1861
and he continued his collecting excursions in the West for nearly fifty
years. His most important collection was conducted in 1862, and is known as
the Hall and Harbour collections, after the two explorers for whom Parry
served as guide and botanical expert. Locality data and collection dates were
not recorded, thus devaluing the collection and making it useful only insofar
as representing newly discovered species. The collection was distributed to
several institutions and it was Asa Gray who made the first evaluation of the
specimens and published the descriptions in 1863.
Parry not only studied the flora of the
Rocky Mountains, but he avidly investigated climatic
and geologic conditions of the region. His barometric measurements of the
mountains led to the earliest accurate altitude estimates of many peaks in
the Rocky
Mountain
range. He was also fond of naming mountain peaks in the
Rocky Mountains after famous botanical personalities and friends.
James
Peak was names for botanist Edwin James; Parry
named two separate peaks after himself;
Mount
Eva was named for Parry's wife;
Mount
Engelmann
,
after botanist George Engelmann; Gray's Peak after Asa Gray; and Torrey's
Peak after John Torrey.
Parry's plant collections in the West
introduced the rest of the world to the bounty and beauty of western flora.
His collections were distributed worldwide to botanical institutions such as Harvard
University, New York Botanical Garden, Missouri
Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew, and Oxford
University. He
wanted to expose others to plants that he considered had ornamental as well
as practical value. Of all of his Colorado
collections, eighty new species were described and two new genera were
dedicated to him, Neoparrya and Parryella. The most complete
set of Parry's collections is housed at the Parry Herbarium in
Ames,
Iowa
.
This collection included 18,000 specimens representing 6,800 species and
1,400 specimens determined to the genus level.
In all of his years as a naturalist and
botanical explorer, Parry was regarded highly as an expert botanist by all in
the field, including John Torrey, noted botanist and life-long friend of
Parry.
Aven Nelson came to Wyoming in 1887. He taught at the University
of Wyoming, and was
president of the university at one time. While teaching at the university, he
co-founded the Rocky Mountain Herbarium of the University
of Wyoming with Burt C. Buffum.
In 1896, he published the First Report
on the Flora of Wyoming, which included his own collections from
1894-1895.
Taking advantage of the ample botanical
resources in this area, Nelson explored the Rocky Mountain
region and made many collections, which are now housed at the University
of Wyoming Herbarium at Laramie. During the summers he went on collecting trips
to various regions in the West including Yellowstone
National Park and the mountains north of Laramie,
Wyoming.
His publications include a series of papers
entitled "Western Plant Studies" in the Botanical Gazette
produced in 1913 and 1916 with James McBride. In 1909, he completed a
revision of Coulter's flora of the Rocky Mountains,
entitling his book New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains.
He also published a list of 152 vascular plants collected by Willard Clute in
the Navajo Reservation of northeast Arizona
in 1920-1922 in American Botanist.
His wife was Ruth Elizabeth Ashton,
botanist and illustrator who collected in Rocky Mountain
National
Park.
Alice Eastwood is the most well known woman
botanist in America.
She was a devoted and heroic botanist, hence she was revered by her
contemporaries.
She was a native of Canada, but moved to Colorado
in 1880 to teach at East Denver
High
School.
Eastwood was an avid explorer in the Rockies and made many collections there. In 1893, she
wrote the first local flora for Denver
entitled A Popular Flora of Denver, Colorado.
She was offered the position of curator at
the California Academy of Sciences in 1915. After accepting her position at
the California Academy of Sciences, she returned to Colorado to explore the Mancos clay hills.
As curator, Eastwood was devoted to her
responsibilities at the Herbarium of the California Academy of Sciences to
such a degree that she heroically saved 2,000 type specimens from destruction
during the 1906 earthquake.
As a devoted botanist of the Rocky
Mountain region, Rydberg is said to have been a
critical participant in the history of the study of Rocky
Mountain flora.
Born in Sweden,
Rydberg left for America
in 1882. He taught at the Lutheran Academy
in Nebraska from
1884-1893. During the summers from 1891-1896, he conducted field studies for
the U.S. Department of Agriculture and for many summers afterward, he
conducted field studues for the New York Botanical
Garden from 1899 until his death.
In a collaborative effort, Rydberg co-wrote
A Report on the Grasses and Forage Plants of the Rocky Mountain Region
(1897) with C.L. Shear after exploring and collecting in the mountains of Colorado during the summers of 1895 and 1896. He also
wrote the Flora of Montana and Yellowstone Park (1900) after his visits
in the late 1800s.
While in service to the New
York Botanical Garden, he made his first collecting
trip to Colorado in
1901. In 1906, he published the Flora of Colorado (published by the
Colorado Experiment Station in Fort Collins), which enabled extensive ecological work to begin in
the state. James Cassidy, C.S. Crandall, and J.H. Cowan, all faculty at Colorado
State University (then Agricultural
College and Experiment Station) and curators at the
CSU Herbarium, made the primary collections for this flora. The work included
over 2,900 plants (second largest flora at that time).
Other noted publications of Rydberg include
the Flora of the Rocky Mountains and Adjacent Plains (1917 and 1922)
based on his own studies and field work on Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and
Montana with additional input from Aven Nelson and others. He also published
(posthumously) the Flora of the Prairies and Plains of Central North
America (1932).
Francis Ramaley described him as a
"radical" in taxonomy because he divided large generic groups that
were widely accepted by other botanists, and because he insisted on
describing species as clearly distinguishable forms with respect to one or
more external morphological features.
In all of his publications, he provided his
own illustrations. In addition to his botanical work and illustrations,
Rydberg wrote poetry as a pastime.
Francis Ramaley was a plant ecologist and
professor of biology at the University of Colorado,
Boulder beginning in
1898. Realizing the importance of practical, hands-on learning, he founded
the mountain field station for ecological education and research in Gilpin
County in 1909.
Ramaley established his extensive plant
collection in 1899, focusing on Boulder,
Larimer, Weld, and Gilpin counties. He also made collections in the San Luis
Valley of Colorado in 1931.
Many of Ramaley?s publications are
ecological and regional accounts of plants within the Colorado montane and
grassland zones.
As an educator and naturalist, Ramaley
decided that it was important to create a plant identification resource for
those who did not have the extensive training of a botanist, but who had a
sincere appreciation for nature. Consequently, he wrote Colorado Plant
Life, published in 1927 by the University of Colorado Press.
H.D. Harrington was a Professor at Colorado
State University
for twenty-seven years. For twenty-five years of those years, he served as
the curator for the CSU Herbarium. He was quite devoted to his love of
botany, involving and inspiring his students and family. He collected almost
exclusively in Colorado, and
much of his collections are housed in the CSU Herbarium.
He was born in Indiana
and lived there until 1909 when his family moved to South
Dakota. In 1911, they moved again to Iowa
where Harrington and his siblings spent the rest of their childhood.
As a child, Harrington was an avid reader
and began his love for plant life. He also was a self-taught violinist, as
well as a player of the Spanish guitar and ukulele, which he brought along on
CSU field trips to entertain his students. Since finances were difficult,
Harold and his brother Elbert took turns attending college. While one would
go to school, the other would stay home and work, until both had completed
their undergraduate education. Harrington earned his Bachelor's degree in
1927 from the University
of Northern
Iowa.
In 1928, he had completed his Master?s degree and in 1933, his doctorate,
both from the University
of Iowa.
While working on his graduate studies, he taught at Iowa
City High School and
later taught there full time.
Harrington came to CSU in 1936 to teach
taxonomy. From 1939 to 1943, he left for Chicago
to teach botany and zoology at Chicago's
Teacher's College. He returned to CSU in 1944 and remained here until he
retired in 1968.
In 1954, he wrote Manual of the Plants
of Colorado, the only complete flora of Colorado
with keys and descriptions. This book is still a valued resource by botanists
and others studying in the field of botany. The CSU herbarium, then
consisting of 40,000 specimens, was the basis of his manual. To make the
manual affordable for students, Harrington and his wife arranged to publish
the book themselves. Edith Harrington hand-typed the entire 667-page Manual
of the Plants of Colorado in preparation for publication.
His wife, Edith, was also a botanist.
While in Colorado, she worked at
the CSU Seed Laboratory and collected plants with her husband and assisted in
editing his publications. She was very dedicated to her work and her partner.
Harrington was an expert on edible and
poisonous plants and published Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains
in 1967. He also published Western Edible Wild Plants in 1972.
He was also an authority of grasses and
aquatic plants of Colorado. In
1968 and 1974, Harrington and Bruce J. Thornton wrote Weeds of Colorado.
Other publications include How to Identify Grasses and Grasslike Plants
(Sedges and Ruches) (1977) and The True Aquatic Vascular Plants of
Colorado in (1955).
Two plant species have been named in his
honor: in the family Scrophulariaceae, Penstemon harringtonii, and in
the family Onagraceae, Oenothera harringtonii, named for him by W.H.
Wagner. His work and dedication to the herbarium have been honored with the
CSU Herbarium Graduate Fellowship, established by his family in 1995.
|
