Biographies of scientists and explorers
honored in the names of plants 
shown on this website 

Last names beginning with N-Z on this page.   A-F   G-M

Navarrete, Francisco Fernandez, (d.1742): Spanish botanist, physician, and philosopher in the court of King Felipe V of Spain.  The genus Navarretia was named for him by Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pavon in 1794.  Navarretia breweri  Navarretia sinistra subspecies sinistra

Nelson, Aven, 1859-1952: Professor of Botany at the University of Wyoming, President of the University, and founder of the University of Wyoming Rocky Mountain Herbarium.  He botanized extensively in the Rocky Mountains and published such seminal works as his 1896 First Report on the Flora of Wyoming and his 1903 revision of John Coulter's Manual of Rocky Mountain Botany, newly titled, New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains.

Newberry, John Strong, 1822-1892: American physician, geologist, paleontologist, botanist, and Professor at Columbia University's School of Mines.  In 1855 he was assistant-surgeon and geologist in Lieutenant Williamson's exploration between San Francisco and the Columbia River.  With the 1857-1858 Ives Expedition he was the first geologist to see and describe the Grand Canyon.  He was in the Macomb Expedition which explored the San Juan and upper Colorado Rivers in 1859, was appointed by Congress to the founding Governing Board of the National Academy of Sciences, was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1867) and President of the New York Academy of Sciences (1867-91), and was an organizer and first vice-president of the Geological Society of North America.  Hymenopappus newberryi    Cymopterus newberryi  Physaria newberryi subspecies yesicola

Nocca, Domenico, 1758-1841: Italian clergyman, Director of the Botanical Garden of Montova, Italy, Director of the Botanical Gardens of the University of Pavia in Italy from 1797-1826, and Chair of the Botany Department from 1802-?   Noccaea fendleri subspecies glauca

Nuttall, Thomas, 1786-1859: In his "Preface" to his 1842-1849 three volume The North American Sylva, British citizen Thomas Nuttall summarized his experiences in America, the country he had wandered and loved for 33 years:

"For thousands of miles my chief converse has been in the wilderness with the spontaneous productions of nature; and the study of these objects and their contemplation has been to me a source of constant delight."

Over twenty years prior to writing these words he wrote,

"I have enjoyed an uncommon share of health and happiness. I have hardly known any weariness of mind -- this gentle traveling on foot is, I think, the way to prolong life and health both. I shall never again consent to be cooped up in a city; for what has nature spread around me such a profuse and entertaining variety of objects of skill and wonder but that I might examine and contemplate them, and be happy."

Asa Gray said of Nuttall:

No botanist has visited so large a portion of the United States, or made such an amount of observations in the field and forest. Probably few naturalists have ever excelled him in aptitude for such observations, in quickness of eye, tact, in discrimination and tenacity of memory.

Thomas Nuttall was an avid, expert, and intrepid collector, plant taxonomist, botanical writer, geologist, ornithologist, and Harvard instructor. Nuttall was, and is still respected as the most widely traveled and most knowledgeable naturalist of his time.

Nuttall walked and road horseback for tens of thousands of miles, often in areas no non-native had ever visited and his explorations are praised in numerous books, articles, and newspapers from the 18th to the 21st centuries.

"Thomas Nuttall, a preeminent and far-ranging field naturalist, participated in the early scientific exploration of Arkansas and is remembered both for identifying a number of the state’s plants and for his description of early Arkansas life. His notes on people living in the territory - both Native Americans and American settlers - have provided valuable information for historians and researchers ever since they were first published in 1821." (From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.)

Whereas most naturalist/botanists in the biographies on this website spent a few seasons on one or two collecting expeditions, Nuttall gave 34 years of his life (from 1807 to 1841) to collecting, describing, and teaching about the flora of the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Nuttall's name appears 600 times on this website.

After his extensive travels and collections in America, Nuttall returned to England in 1841 when the will of his recently deceased uncle required that Nuttall live at least 9 months each year in England. Nuttall returned briefly only once more to the United States in 1847. But even after Nuttall returned to his native England, his time was mostly devoted to continued studies of and writing about American natural history.

Nuttall's monumental contributions to natural history were recognized even in his early years in the United States: he was elected to the Linnean Society of London (1812), the American Philosophical Society (1817), and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1817). He continued to receive many awards throughout his life. He was also rewarded with the friendship and intellectual companionship of scores of Americas and Europe's greatest travelers, intellectuals, and naturalists. He gained their friendship and admiration as he met them while walking through America and while visiting the intellectual societies of America and England.

As a young man, Nuttall was an apprentice printer not far from his home in England. At one point in his apprenticeship he returned home for his health and it was there that Nuttall's interest in natural history was born through his chance acquaintance with a plant-loving friend. He returned to his apprenticeship but the lure of adventure in a new land brought him to Philadelphia in the spring of 1808.

Again chance brought him the good fortune that led to his calling and fame: His curiosity about a plant he found on the second day in his newly adopted land led him to famed University of Pennsylvania Professor and naturalist, Benjamin Barton, who was immediately impressed by Nuttall's curiosity, passion, and intellect. Barton needed a new botanical recruit to wander and collect for him and for many days immediately after the fortuitous meeting and for many years thereafter, Nuttall learned from and collected for Barton, who wrote Nuttall glowing letters of introduction:

"[Nuttall] is a young man, a native of England, brought up in a manner under mine own eyes and instruction, and distinguished by his love of science, his integrity, his sobriety, and innocence of character."

Click for a map of several of Nuttall's early explorations.

Nuttall risked injury and death on innumerable occasions as he followed his passions. From his very first botanical forays it was clear, as Durand observed,

"that Nuttall was deterred by no trifles. At the season of the year when in the Southern swamps the musquitoes were very numerous and had made such an impression upon his face and hands as unconsciously to himself to give him the appearance of a man attacked with small pox, upon approaching a habitation he was refused admittance by the people of the house and with difficulty could he persuade them that he was only bitten by insects". (Quotation from Memoir of the Late Thomas Nuttall by Durand published by the Harvard Press in 1860, just after Nuttall's death.)

In 1810 on Nuttall's third collecting trip for Barton, this one to the Great Lakes, Nuttall learned of a John Jacob Astor Company trip up the Missouri, so instead of heading back to Philadelphia, he went to St. Louis. There he made some money as a printer at the newspaper, studied the geology of the are, and met famed naturalist John Bradbury, with whom he botanized. In the spring of 1811 the two of them travelled West with the Astor Company, collecting along the route the Lewis and Clark Expedition had covered, but whereas much of Lewis' collection had been lost (see Lewis), Nuttall's fabulous collection survived. Bradbury, too, made a large collection until he returned to St. Louis in July of 1811. (Nuttall probably returned in late October).

Nuttall's devotion to plants was described by one of the members of the Astor group:

There is in company a gentleman.. Mr. Nutal... singularly devoted... engross every thought, to the total disregard of his own personal safety, and sometimes to the inconvenience of the party he accompanies. To the ignorant Canadian boatmen, who are unable to appreciate the science, he affoards a subject of merriment, le fou is the name by which he is commonly known.... He is a young man of genius....

In his Astoria, a history of the Astor Expedition of 1810-1812, Washington Irving describes the same utterly devoted Nuttall and the same baffled Canadian boatmen:

Mr. Nuttall seems to have been exclusively devoted to his scientific fruits. He was a zealous botanist, and all his enthusiasm was awakened at beholding a new world, as it were, opening upon him in the boundless prairies, clad in the vernal and variegated robe of unknown flowers. Whenever the boats landed at meal times, or for any temporary purpose, he would spring on shore, and set out on a hunt for new specimens. Every plant or flower of a rare or unknown species was eagerly seized as prize. Delighted with the treasures spreading themselves out before him, he went groping and stumbling along among the wilderness of sweets, forgetful of everything but his immediate pursuit, and had often to be sought after when the boats were about to resume their course. At such times he would be found far off in the prairies, or up the course of some pretty stream, laden with plants of all kinds.

The Canadian voyageurs, who are a class of people that know nothing out of their immediate line, and with constitutional levity make a jest of anything they cannot understand, were extremely puzzled by this passion for collecting what they considered mere useless weeds. When they saw the worthy botanist coming back heavy laden with his specimens, and treasuring them up as carefully as a miser would his hoard, they used to make merry among themselves at his expense, regarding him as some whimsical kind of madman.

Nuttall's 1967 biographer, Graustein, relates a story about Nuttall and Bradbury being "pursued and robbed by Indians", buying their lives with trinkets, and being rescued from death by "a friendly Indian". I have read both Nuttall's and Bradbury's accounts of the Aster trip and there are no descriptions of any such event. Embellishments inevitably accompany the deeds of adventuresome explorers, but there really is no need for such apocryphal stories, for the true adventures are sufficiently heroic.

Nuttall's considerable collection from the Astor trip was delayed in getting back to Barton in Philadelphia, because when Nuttall returned to St. Louis in the fall of 1811 he, as a British citizen, felt it more prudent to leave for England (via New Orleans) than risk being caught up in the imminent British/American War of 1812.

Photo of Thomas Nuttall from the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

Nuttall did fulfill his contractual obligations to Baron by shipping collections to Barton before boarding a ship for England. Once in England Nuttall began reviewing his personal collections, his Barton collection notes, duplicate specimens he had collected, and seeds (which were grown out in England), and he met with Frederick Pursh to discuss their North American collections. Friction between Nuttall and Pursh (over what we would call "intellectual rights", i.e., who should receive credit for which discoveries and which plant names were to be accepted) soon prompted frantic publishing by Nuttall and Pursh in order to gain first credit. Both published a number of articles and Pursh published a two volume Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1814), using a number of Nuttall's collections  --  without giving credit to Nuttall. Pursh also used a number of Nuttall's collections in violation of the contract that Nuttall had with Barton, who had contracted with and paid for Nuttall's western travels. Click to read the details about one of the conflicts that Nuttall had with Pursh.

Nuttall may not have received proper credit for discovering a number of North American species, but his reputation as an intrepid traveler and botanist was well-established in England and not long after his return to England in 1812, he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in November of 1812. His certificate of recommendation reads that he has,

"travelled in many parts of America; and has discovered many new plants, on the banks of the Missouri, or the Mississippi; and has brought a rich Herbarium and many living plants to this Country, being desirous of the honor of becoming a Fellow of the Linnean Society, we whose names are underwritten do from our personal knowledge recommend him as likely to become a useful and valuable member."

Nuttall returned to the U.S. in 1815 and worked long hours for several years on his own two volume, 600 page work, Genera of North American Plants (1818) which included 834 genera. (Click the title to read.) Nuttall set most of the type himself. John Torrey, the most important botanical teacher and taxonomist of the first half of the 19th century, said that Nuttall's Genera "contributed more that any other work to advance the accurate knowledge of plants in this country". William Jackson Hooker, Director of Kew Gardens and the most important botanist world-wide, said that the Genera marked "an era in the history of American botany". Genera was an amazing accomplishment for a self-educated botanist with only a half-dozen or so years of field work and learning. 

Nuttall's 1821 detailed account of his 1819 Travels into the Arkansa Territory give us not only a view of the plants he encountered but also of his personal philosophy, the Native American's he encountered, the extreme hardships he endured, and his passionate dedication to botany:

"Had I solely consulted my own gratification, the present volume would probably never have been offered to the public. But, as it may contain some physical remarks connected with the history of the country, and with that of the unfortunate aborigines, who are so rapidly dwindling into oblivion, and whose fate may, in succeeding generations, excite a
curiosity and compassion denied them by the present, I have considered myself partly excused in offering a small edition to the scientific part of the community.... To converse, as it were, with nature, to admire the wisdom and beauty of creation, has ever been, and I hope ever will be, to me a favourite pursuit. To communicate to others a portion of the same amusement and gratification has been the only object of my botanical publications...."

"The name of Akansa or Arkansa, if ever generally assumed by the natives of this territory, is now, I am persuaded, scarcely ever employed; they generally call themselves O-guah-pa or Osark, from which last epithet, in all probability, has been derived the name of the river and its people; indeed, I have heard old French residents in this country, term it Riviere des Arks or d'Osark...."

"I now experienced a relapse of the remittent fever, attended with delirium. Being about 3 o'clock in the afternoon when it came on, I was exposed to a [outdoor] temperature of between 90 and 100°. It was with difficulty that I could crawl into the shade, the thin forest being every where pervious to the sun, so that I felt ready to burn with heat...."

"Amongst several other new plants, I found a very curious Gaura, an undescribed species of Donia, of Eriogonum, of Achyranthes, Arundo, and Gentian. On the sandy beaches grew several plants, such as the Uralepsis aristulata [Festuca procumbens, Muhlenberg), an Uniola scarcely distinct from U. spicata and Sesuvium sessile, which I had never heretofore met with, except on the sands of the sea coast...."

[The stream was] lined with such an impenetrable thicket, that I did not attain the bank, and had to lie down alone, in the rank weeds, amidst musquetoes, without fire, food, or water, as the meat with which I had been provided was raw, and spoiled by the worms...."

"I again arrived at the trading establishment of Mr. Bougie, an asylum, which probably, at this time, rescued me from death. My feet and legs were so swelled, in consequence of weakness and exposure to extreme heat and cold, that it was necessary to cut off my pantaloons, and at night both my hands and feet were affected by the most violent cramp..... I remained about a week with Mr. Bougie, in a very feeble state, again visited by fever, and a kind of horrific delirium...."

Nuttall's companions on this and all his trips were amazed at his enthusiasm, his devotion to collecting, and his total joy in the beauty of the world they traveled through. But Nuttall was also greatly pained by the barbaric treatment of the natives and the barbarities of the natives. Before arriving at the depravities of New Orleans and ending his Arkansas trip, Nuttall passed through the opulent depravity of slave plantations:

"How little wealth has contributed towards human improvement appears sufficiently obvious throughout this adventitiously opulent section of the Union [Nuttall wrote]. Time appears here only made to be lavished in amusement. Is the uncertainty of human life so great in this climate, as to leave no leisure for anything beyond dissipation? The only serious pursuit seems to be amassing and spending of that wealth which is wrung from the luckless toil of so many unfortunate Africans, doomed to an endless task, which is even entailed upon their posterity. "O slavery, though thousands of all ages have drunk of thee, still thou are a bitter draught." 

Exhausted and a sadder but wiser Nuttall returned to Philadelphia in 1820 with several hundred new species from his Arkansas/Mississippi excursion. He had hoped to reach the Rockies but saw the folly of taking on such an immense journey by himself. Nuttall worked a year and a half to produce the scholarly account of his expedition quoted above.

In March of 1823 he assumed his duties as Curator of the Botanic Garden in Cambridge and Instructor in Natural History and Botany at Harvard College, replacing the highly respected and long-established Professor William Peck who had died in 1822. Harvard, with only eight buildings and 259 students, was so strapped for funds, that Nuttall was not given a professor's standing nor paid appropriately, but instead received a yearly stipend of $500, was paid per class, and probably also received some botany student fees. In his 10 years at Harvard he published a much sought after bird guide (Manual of Ornithology of the United States and Canada), wrote Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany, lectured at Yale and the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, had several sabbaticals to collect plants, was elected to more societies, and inspired students to become field botanists. All of this so impressed the governing body at Harvard that he was granted all of his requests for research time and given an increase in salary. He was, said Eliot Morrison in his Three Centuries of Harvard, "the first scholar to whom the University gave an appointment with the permission to devote most of his time to research."

In 1833 Nuttall's friend Nathaniel Wyeth returned from a western trading expedition with 112 plant species for Nuttall to examine. 51 of these Nuttall judged to be new to science. Wyeth proposed that Nuttall join him on another expedition west, making a reality of Nuttall's long hoped-for journey across the Rockies. Nuttall resigned from Harvard, but did ask if the "Corporation of the College [could] see fit to appoint a temporary instructor". They could not and Nuttall reluctantly resigned from Harvard on March 20, 1834.

Nuttall suggested that Wyeth take along Nuttall's young acquaintance, ornithologist John Townsend. Taking Townsend turned out to be a wise decision since Townsend showed himself to be not only an excellent birder (his drawings were used by Audubon in Birds of America) but also a good observer who chronicled the expedition in his well written and very interesting journal, Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River. (Click to read.) The Appendix of the Narrative has a list of the birds Townsend saw, with notes on those that were new discoveries.

On September 12, 1834 the Wyeth Expedition neared the end of their 6 month journey across the continent and they exchanged their horses for canoes for the last few miles down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver. They encountered terrific head winds that created such monstrous waves on the River that the canoe in front was lost sight of in each new deep trough. Townsend tells us:

The gale continues with the same violence as yesterday, and we do not therefore think it expedient to leave our camp. Mr. N's large and beautiful collection of new and rare plants was considerably injured by the wetting it received; he has been constantly engaged since we landed yesterday, in opening and drying them. In this task he exhibits a degree of patience and perseverance which is truly astonishing; sitting on the ground, and steaming over the enormous fire, for hours together, drying the papers, and re-arranging the whole collection, specimen by specimen, while the great drops of perspiration roll unheeded from his brow. Throughout the whole of our long journey, I have had constantly to admire the ardor and perfect indefatigability with which he has devoted himself to the grand object of his tour. No difficulty, no danger, no fatigue has ever daunted him, and he finds his rich reward in the addition of nearly a thousand new species of American plants, which he has been enabled to make to the already teeming flora of our vast continent. 

Nuttall spent the winters of 1834-1835 and 1835-1836 in Hawaii (collecting, of course). He returned to the Columbia River area for more collecting after his first winter in Hawaii and sailed to California from Hawaii in the spring of 1836 after his second winter. In California he boarded the Pilgrim, a merchant ship from Boston, sailed down the California coast collecting at ports in Monterey and Santa Barbara, disembarked in San Diego and waited there for three weeks for the Alert, another merchant ship of the same Boston company, to sail south around Cape Horn and on to Boston. While waiting for the Alert in San Diego, Nuttall was most memorably found collecting shells in San Diego Bay by his former Harvard student, Richard Henry Dana, who had been a sailor aboard the Pilgrim and was now returning to Boston as a sailor aboard the Alert. Dana wrote of his chance meeting with Nuttall in his chronicle of his sailing experiences in Two Years Before the Mast (click the title to read):

This passenger—the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port, on the coast, was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should have expected to have seen on the coast of California—Professor N[uttall]——, of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trowsers roiled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells....

I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business.... The crew christened Mr. N., "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities, and some of them said that he was crazy, and [it was a shame] that his friends let him go about and amuse himself in this way. Why a rich man (sailors call every man rich who does not work with his hands, and wears a long coat and cravat) should leave a Christian country, and come to such a place as California, to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand.

From their trip across the continent, Nuttall and Townsend both amassed significant collections: Townsend collected hundreds of bird specimens, many of which we can now see in Audubon's Birds of North America. Nuttall collected thousands of plants, birds, fossils, sea creatures, and geologic specimens. He made these available to all, sold duplicates for his modest income, and published numerous papers on his collections. With Torrey and Gray and on his own, he described and published his huge plant collection, much of the details appearing about six years after the Wyeth Expedition in Torrey and Gray's, Flora of North America. (Click the title to read.)  Nuttall also published his plant findings from 1842 to 1849 in The North American Sylva. Unfortunately considerable ill-will developed over the publishing of the plant, bird, fossil, geologic, and ocean species collected by Nuttall and Townsend. Nuttall came into conflict especially with Asa Gray. Townsend had his western birds used by Audubon without proper credit.

1841 marked as significant a turning point in Nuttall's life as 1807. Now Nuttall was sailing back to England to live on the estate his uncle left him. Nuttall would have the time to work over his massive collections from 34 years in the western wilderness. He looked forward to having the vast botanical and other natural history resources available to him from places such as Kew Gardens, for the lack of such resources in his western wanderings made it difficult or impossible to accurately describe his collections. How could he know if he had a new species or place the species in the proper genus and family if he could not compare his species with previously collected ones?

One of Nuttall's most significant botanical accomplishment during the early years of his return to England, was his production of the magnificent three volume (1842, 1846, 1849) supplement to François André Michaux's 1810 three volume, The North American Sylva; or A Description of the Forest Trees of the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia. (English translation of 1853).

In England Nuttall's wanderings would come to an end, but at least (and at last) he would have sufficient income for a comfortable life as he aged and he would have the resources to purchase the natural history books he needed. Nuttall did, however, find his return and life in England very difficult. The estate his uncle left was shared by relatives, taxes were high, and, in general, there was just enough to survive nicely on. But Nuttall's mental and physical health suffered in the confining gloom of the estate he lived on and he longed for the wide-open adventure of his American wanderings. Over his remaining years, he made one trip to America, visited Hooker and other naturalists, devoted more time to horticulture, and worked on the chores of the estate. He longed for his days of wanderings.

Reverend Higgins, a neighbor of Nuttall's, wrote of Nuttall after his death:

"Retiring in disposition, his intercourse, even with his friends, was not characterized by an abundant flow of conversational remarks, yet on certain occasions, chiefly when by some incident reminded of his early explorations in the wilds of America, he would kindle with animation and speak fluently and even eloquently.... Even up to the time of his last illness his memory was as fresh and vigorous as it had been in the prime of life. Nor was he less remarkable for a truly philosophical and conciliatory spirit.... His charity, too, was self-denying. Possessing an ample income he was frugal almost to excess, scarcely allowing himself the comforts and lesser luxuries required by his advanced years; whilst at the same time the stream of his liberality toward those whom he considered to be deserving of it was never stinted."

Charles Short, eminent American botanist, wrote to Engelmann upon hearing of Nuttall's death:

"Do not American botanists owe [Nuttall] a large debt of gratitude for his early, long-continued and arduous labors in their cause?... Surely a monument should be erected to his memory, and I respectfully suggest such an expression to Mr. Shaw for his St. Louis Kew."

Engelmann acted on Short's suggestion and a granite obelisk was erected, and still stands, at the Missouri Botanical Garden in memory of Nuttall's contributions to American botany. And above the entrance of one of the conservatory buildings in the Garden are the busts of Linnaeus, Asa Gray, and Thomas Nuttall.

Although his last years certainly were not his happiest, Nuttall had, for much of his life, lived as he wanted. He wrote of himself:

"Hardships and privations are cheaply purchased if I may but roam over the wild domain of primeval Nature and behold another Flora there of bolder hues and richer sweets beyond our garden's pride. How often did I realize the poet's buoyant hopes amidst my solitary rambles. My chief converse has been in the wilderness with the spontaneous productions of Nature and the study of these objects and their contemplation have been to me a source of constant delight."

The following 9 taxa shown on this website were named for Nuttall: 

Astragalus nuttallianus, Calochortus nuttallii, Delphinium nuttallianum, Leptosiphon nuttallii, Monolepis nuttalliana, Nuttallia pterosperma, Viola nuttallii, Sophora nuttalliana, Pulsatilla nuttalliana

The following 10 genera shown on this website were named by Nuttall:

Dieteria, Ericameria, Heliomeris, Isocoma, Shepherdia, Stanleya, Stenotus, Stephanomeria, Streptanthus, Wyethia 

The following 85 taxa shown on this website were first found and described for science by Nuttall:

Acer grandidentatum, Aconitum columbianum, Agoseris glauca, 
Agoseris parviflora, Aliciella pinnatifida, Allium textile, Antennaria dimorpha, Antennaria parvifolia, Artemisia ludoviciana,  Artemisia tridentata, Asclepias cryptoceras, Astragalus flavus, Brickellia oblongifolia, 
Brickellia microphylla, Cercocarpus ledifolius, Chrysothamnus depressus, 
Chylismia scapoidea, Cirsium scariosum, Clematis ligusticifolia, Collinsia parviflora, Collomia linearis, Crataegus rivularis,  Dieteria canescens, Dracocephalum parviflorum, Erigeron bellidiastrum, Erigeron glacialis, 
Eriogonum cernuum, Eriogonum microthecum, Eriogonum ovalifolium, Eriogonum racemosum, Escobaria vivipara, Gayophytum diffusum, Geranium viscosissimum, Glycyrrhiza lepidota, Hedysarum boreale,  Herrickia glauca, Heuchera parvifolia, Holodiscus dumosus, Ipomopsis pumila, Iris missouriensis, Lepidium lasiocarpum, Lepidium montanum, Lilium philadelphicum, Lithophragma glabrum, Lithophragma tenellum, Lomatium dissectum, Lupinus caespitosus, Lygodesmia arizonica, Malacothrix sonchoides, Opuntia fragilis, Oenothera caespitosa, Orobanche fasciculata, Orthocarpus luteus, Osmorhiza occidentalis, Packera streptanthifolia, Peraphyllum ramosissimum, Petradoria pumila, Petrophyton caespitosum, Phacelia glandulosa, Picrothamnus desertorum, Potentilla plattensis, Polemonium viscosum, Rhus aromatica var. trilobata, Rubus nutkanus, Salix brachycarpa, Salix exigua, Senecio integerrimus, Sisymbrium linifolium, Solidago glutinosa, Sphaeralcea coccinea, Stanleya pinnata, Stenogonum salsuginosum, Stenotus armerioides, Stephanomeria exigua, Streptanthus cordatus, Tetraneuris torreyana, Thelypodium integrifolium, Thermopsis montana, Thermopsis rhombifolia, Townsendia incana, Toxicoscordion paniculatum, Trifolium gymnocarpon, Trifolium longipes, Wyethia amplexicaulis,  Xanthisma grindelioides

The following 16 taxa were first found for science by other collectors (most by Nuttall's friend Nathaniel Wyeth), but they were described for science by Nuttall:

Achillea millefolium, Amelanchier alnifolia, Astragalus missouriensis, Clematis occidentalis, Crepis occidentalis, Euphrosyne acerosa, Fritillaria atropurpurea, Helianthella quinquenervis, Heliomeris multiflora, Heterotheca villosa, Mahonia, Phlox longifolia, Pterospora andromedea, Solidago missouriensis, Tomostima cuneifolia, Valeriana edulis
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Click for a biography of Nuttall: Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808-1841. Jeannette Graustein, 1967. Several quotations and paraphrases in my above biography are from Graustein's biography.

Click for Ronald Stuckey's review of and bibliographical additions to Graustein's Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist.

Travels and Scientific Collections of Thomas Nuttall, Francis Pennell.

Click for Nuttall's "Genera of North American Plants" (1818).

Click for Nuttall's three volume supplement to Michaux's The North American Sylva.

Click for Nuttall's "A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada".

Click to see some of Nuttall's botanical illustrations.

Click to read about Nuttall's understanding of Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Phytogeographical Relationships.

Click to read Elias Durand's Memoir of the Late Thomas Nuttall.

Click for Nuttall's "A Journal of Travels into the Arkansa Territory during the Year 1819".

Click for a list specimens collected by Nuttall (and other botanists) that are now in the Philadelphia Herbarium.

Click for a list of the 1,300 specimens collected by Nuttall and now in the Natural History Museum in London. When the link opens, select "Botany" from the departments and then select "Thomas Nuttall" as the search term.

Click for a list of plants collected by Nuttall on his 1834 trip with Wyeth.

Click for a well researched, accurate, and informative review of the San Diego collections of Nuttall, Coulter, et al.

Click for a list of all plants that Wyeth collected and Nuttall described on Wyeth's first expedition across North America: Nuttall, T. 1834. "A catalogue of a collection of plants made chiefly in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains or northern Andes, towards the sources of the Columbia River, by Mr. Nathaniel B. [sic] Wyeth, and described by T. Nuttall", Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 7: 1-60.

Click for the Nuttall Ornithological Club, founded in 1873, the first organization in North America devoted to ornithology. During the Club’s long years its members have included the premier names in the field of ornithology: William Brewster, Ludlow Griscom, Roger Tory Peterson....

In addition to Nuttall's writings mentioned above, Nuttall wrote the following (and much more):

Observations on the genus Eriogonum and order Polygonaceae

An account of two new genera of Plants, of a species of Tillea, and another of Limosella recently discovered on the banks of the Delaware in the vicinity of Philadelphia

Description of Collinsia, a new genus of Plants

A Geographical Description of the Valley of the Mississippi

Descriptions of rare Plants recently introduced into the Gardens of Philadelphia

Remarks on the Species of Corallorhiza indigenous to the United States

On the Serpentine Rocks of Hoboken and the Minerals which they contain

Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada, 2 volumes of 600 pages each

A Catalogue of Plants from Florida

Remarks on the Minerals of Paterson and Sparta New Jersey

Remarks and Inquiries concerning the Birds of Massachusetts

A Description of a new Species of Sarracenia

An Account of the Jalap Plant as an Ipomaia

A Catalogue of Plants collected chiefly in the Valleys of the Rocky Mountains towards the source of the Columbia River by Nathan B Wyeth

Collections towards a Flora of the Territory of Arkansas

Descriptions of some of the Rarer Plants indigenous to the United States

Descriptions of new species and genera of plants in the natural order Composite collected in a tour across the continent to the Pacific a residence in Oregon and a visit to the Sandwich Islands and California in the years 1834 and 1835

Description and notices of new and rare plants of the natural orders Lobeliace Campanulace Vaccinie and Ericaceae collected in a journey across the Continent of North America and during a visit to the Sandwich Islands and Upper California.

Osterhout, George Everett, 1858-1937: Amateur botanist and naturalist who moved to Colorado and collected extensively for many decades.  He published a series of journal articles detailing his botanical findings under the title of "New Plants from Colorado".  Nelson and Rydberg cited his collections often in their publications.  Penstemon osterhoutii (In the Four Corners area this species is now known as P. lentus)

Packer, John George, 1929-2019: Canadian botanist, Professor of Botany at the University of Alberta (1958-1988), Professor Emeritus.  Co-author with Cheryl Bradley of Checklist of the rare vascular plants in Alberta (1984), one of the editors of the English edition of Flora of the Russian Arctic (2000), co-author with his wife of Some Common and Interesting Plants of San Miguel de Allende (Mexico). Packer revised E. H. Moss's Flora of Alberta (1983). When Packer died he was working with Joyce Gould on Flora, Vascular Plants of Alberta. Volume 1 was published in 2017. (Click for a PDF of this volume). Packer worked to protect Mountain Park in the Canadian Rockies from an open-pit coal mine. He specialized in plant systematics and was a contributor to the Flora of North America. 

The genus, Packera, was named for John Packer by Weber and Love in honor of "an old-time friend who has contributed much to the clarification of the status of the arctic-alpine North American members of the taxon".
Packera crocata , Packera dimorphophylla, Packera multilobata, Packera neomexicana, Packera oodes, Packera pseudaurea, Packera mancosana, Packera werneriifolia

Palmer, Edward, 1829-1911: Prolific botanical collector in the Southwest and in Mexico, archaeologist, botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, field assistant for the Bureau of American Ethnology. Mostly self-taught.

Palmer is considered one of the founders of ethnobotany. F.W. Putnam, Curator of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, supported Palmer in his studies of Native Americans uses of plants. Click to read Dexter's summation of the fundamental contribution that Palmer made to ethnobotany.

Palmer started his collecting life when 22 years old on an expedition to Paraguay as hospital steward and botanical collector. He worked for the Geological Survey of California, collecting marine invertebrates. During the Civil War he did medical work and collected. Made numerous botanical collecting trips to Mexico from 1878-1910. Palmer was on Charles Parry’s 1878 expedition to Mexico. Led an 1891 Death Valley collecting expedition. Palmer often made his living by selling collections to museums in the United States and England.

Palmer helped establish standards for collecting plants and is considered one of the most productive collectors ever, having collected over 100,000 specimens, among which were 1,162 new to science. He has 200 species named for him. 

Palmer published Food Products of the North American Indians in 1871 and published a number of articles, including: "Indian rope and cloth", "Notes on Indian manners and customs", "Plants used by the Indians of the United States", and "Indian food customs". Click to read some of &Palmer's works and correspondence.  Cleomella palmeriana  Eriogonum palmerianum  Penstemon palmeri

Palmer, William Jackson, 1836-1909: Engineer, Civil War general and hero, industrialist, philanthropist. Palmer was influential in numerous aspects of the development of the United States, especially railway development in both the east and prominently in the west where he co-founded the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and continued the rail line to Mexico. Along the routes of his rail ventures he founded the towns of Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Salida, Alamosa, and Durango. Palmer donated money and land for parks, Colorado College, a school for the deaf, a tuberculosis sanatorium, libraries, and newspapers.

Palmer built Durango's General Palmer Hotel in 1898.

It is estimated that Palmer donated the present-day equivalent of over $100,000,000 to various projects and charities.

Palmer entered the botanical world in his late-life friendship with Marcus Jones, the most prolific plant collector of the West. Jones taught at Colorado College for some time and Jones was well-known to the Governor of Colorado and other influential people who also had strong relationships with Palmer. In 1890 Palmer visited Jones, suggested several mining ventures and offered Jones jobs and a yearly free pass on the new Rio Grande Western Railroad. Over the next two decades Palmer enrolled Jones' assistance on a number of rail and industrial assessments and ventures. In 1893, for instance, he hired Jones to "take charge" of exploring the resources west of Salt Lake City into Nevada. Palmer hired Jones to collect native plant seeds that Palmer could use for landscaping his Glen Eyrie estate near Colorado Springs. Palmer also became a financial supporter of Jones' botanical work, offering Jones $3,000 for the printing of his book on the flora of the West and another $500 for book engravings.

Jones thought highly of Palmer and honored him in the naming of a new species:  Cleomella palmeriana   (Note that Weber and Wittmann's Colorado Flora incorrectly indicates that the specific epithet honors Edward Palmer.)

Parry, Charles Christopher, 1823-1890: Highly respected and loved Doctor, explorer, and naturalist. After receiving his medical degree in 1845 Parry moved to Davenport Iowa and soon began participating in botanical surveys of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota; became member of various Western botanical surveys including the acclaimed Mexican Boundary Survey; first botanist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, spending 1869-1871 at the Smithsonian; collected in the mid-west, Colorado, and other western states for forty-eight years; named at least six Colorado peaks (including Gray's Peak and Torrey's Peak); widely publicized the flora of the West to encourage horticulture and the settling of the new lands he had explored. 

Parry was one of the most eminent botanists of the 19th century, and he was friend to the other great botanists of his time. From 1842-1845 Parry attended Columbia College for his medical degree and was a student and friend of the great John Torrey. He met George Engelmann in 1848, and Joseph Hooker in 1870. In 1872 he led his long-time friend, Asa Gray, and nineteen others to the top of Gray's Peak (14,274 feet) to formalize the naming of the peak.

Photo of Charles Parry from the National Library of Medicine

In the summer of 1862 he led Eastern farmers and sometimes collectors, Elihu Hall and J. P. Harbour, on a Colorado collecting expedition which gathered ten sets of over 700 species.  This remains, according to William Weber, "the largest [collection] [ever] made in Colorado in a single season".  Asa Gray, who described the collection, said, "[it] is full, excellent, and of great interest".  See Hall and Harbour.

Parry was, according to Weber's book, King of Colorado Botany (an appellation given him by the eminent Joseph Hooker), "the first resident Colorado botanist".  On and off for twenty years he spent his summers in a cabin at the base of Gray and Torrey's peak and collected voraciously, specializing in alpine plants. "Through the distribution of his botanical collections he introduced the Colorado flora to the world." 

Parry was a believer in the westward expansion of the United States, perhaps even a believer in the contested and highly controversial doctrine of Manifest Destiny. He certainly wanted his discoveries of the beauties of Colorado to entice others to come to Colorado and "build a mountain empire".

After Parry's death (the result of influenza and pneumonia), his wife had Parry's herbarium cataloged and in 1891 put up for sale. The plant collection numbered 18,000 specimens and these and many of his personal papers and books were purchased for $500 by Iowa State University in 1894.

Parry collected about one hundred new Colorado species, including the following plants shown on this website: Engelmann Spruce and Colorado Blue Spruce,  Campanula parryi, Pedicularis parryi, Penstemon harbourii, Polemonium foliosissimum, Primula parryi, Rhodiola rhodantha, Senecio amplectens, Trifolium parryi, Trollius albiflorus. 

Eighty new Colorado species were named for Parry including the following shown on this website: Primula parryi,  Lomatium parryi, Oreochrysum parryi, Pedicularis parryi, Pneumonanthe parryi (now Gentiana parryi), Trifolium parryi, Campanula parryi, Arnica parryi,  Oxytropis parryi.  (See also Porter.)

Click for a slide show about Parry and his plants.

Click to read correspondence between Parry and Engelmann.

Click to view Parry's work held at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

Click to see Asa Gray's list of the plants Hall, Harbour, and Parry collected in 1862.

Patterson, Harry Norton, 1853-1919: Illinois newspaper publisher and amateur botanist who visited Colorado often.  He took over the Oquawka Spectator which he and his wife, Florence, published after his father, Edward (or Edwin) H. N. Patterson moved to Denver in 1875.  (Patterson, the elder, was well known.  He and Eugene Field were associates of Edgar Allen Poe and had attempted to have Poe move to Oquawka.  Patterson also corresponded with Poe about financing Poe's longed-for literary magazine, the "Stylus", but Poe died of alcohol poisoning before the two could work out the publishing details.)

H. N. Patterson was a correspondent with prominent American botanists of the time and he printed botanical labels for many collectors.  His botanical collections are housed in a number of herbaria around the United States.  In 1874 Patterson wrote "A List of plants collected in the vicinity of Oquawka, Henderson County, Ills".  Of this list Patterson said, "709 species are enumerated (not including mosses), and of these I have found 654 within three miles of Oquawka."   In 1892 Patterson published "Patterson's Numbered Check-list of North American Plants North of Mexico". (Click to read.) 

Asa Gray named Astragalus pattersonii from a specimen "collected by Mr. H. N. Patterson [in 1876?]... in the foothills of Gore Mountains, Colorado".  (Asa Gray's words as quoted in "T. S. Brandegee's 1876 "The Flora of Southwestern Colorado", part of the Hayden Survey Report.)  Astragalus pattersonii,  Draba fladnizensis variety pattersonii

Porter, Thomas Conrad, 1822-1901: Professor of Botany at Pennsylvania's Lafayette College, Colorado flora collector, and participant in the Hayden Survey.  In 1874 he and John Coulter published the first Colorado Flora, Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado (click the title to read the Synopsis) which, in Porter's words in the preface addressed to Hayden, drew "chiefly on collections made in 1861 and succeeding years, by Dr. C. C. Parry, whose indefatigable labors have added so much to our knowledge of the flora of... [Colorado]".  Many other collectors were consulted for this volume which, in Porter's words, described "all species not contained in Gray's Manual..." and other major botanical guides.

Hayden makes three particularly interesting points in his "Prefatory Note" to the Synopsis: 1) This volume "is intended to be [one of] a series of [natural history] "handbooks". 2) since "the mountain regions of Colorado are now so accessible to the traveling public... this [book] will prove a most valuable aid to students and travelers who are annually visiting Colorado in great numbers". 3) The "mountainous portions [of Colorado]... resemble the Alpine districts of Central Europe, not only in the scenery, but also in the... vegetation". We can see, then, that by at least 1874 Colorado field guides were being written, Colorado tourism was already booming, and botanists had noticed the similarities of Colorado montane flora to the montane flora of other regions of the world (see Hooker).  Ligusticum porteri

Powell, John Wesley, 1834–1902: geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer, professor, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (1881-1894) and Bureau of Ethnology (1879-1902), and dedicated, long serving governmental scientist. Powell is best known to the public as the leader of the first government sponsored exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers, including the entire Grand Canyon in a three month river trip in 1869. Powell described the trip in his widely read, The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West. Powell was strongly influenced by Darwin's theories and applied them to geology as well as to anthropology. Powell made dozens of trips to the West after his 1869 Grand Canyon trip and wisely saw the arid quality of the area. In his biographer James Aton's words, Powell saw "that water dictated the terms of Western settlement".

Click for a brief summary of Powell's life.
Click again for a more detailed account of Powell's life.
Amaranthus powellii

Preuss, Charles, 1803-1854: Highly acclaimed topographer and artist with Nicollet's and Fremont's expeditions. Preuss kept diaries which were published by Gudde and Gudde: Exploring with Fremont: The Private Diaries of Charles Preuss, Cartographer for John C. Fremont on His First, Second, Second, and Fourth Expeditions to the Far West.      Astragalus preussii

Pursh, Frederick, 1774-1820: Botanist, collector, author. Pursh came to the U.S. from Germany in 1799 and quickly met the most accomplished American botanists and horticulturists: Muhlenberg, Marshall, John and William Bartram, Hamilton, and Barton. Pursh embarked on many collecting expeditions in the wilds of the East:"These tours I principally made on foot, the most appropriate way for attentive observation, particularly in traveling over an extent of more than three thousand miles each season with no other companions than my dog and gun, frequently taking up my lodging in the midst of wild mountains and impenetrable forests, far remote from the habitations of men." (This quotation and those below are from the "Preface" to Pursh's 1814 Flora Americae Septentrionalis.

By 1805 Pursh had begun collecting for Benjamin Barton, famous botanist, University of Pennsylvania Professor, and author of the first United States botany textbook, Barton's Elements of Botany. In 1803 Jefferson asked Barton to train Meriwether Lewis in botany for the 1804-1806 Expedition. Jefferson also asked Barton to receive and work on the Expedition's botanical collections but Barton never fulfilled this request, apparently because of his poor health and his predisposition to procrastination.

The renowned horticulturists, Bernard McMahon, respected scientist and friend of Jefferson, Barton, and Pursh, suggested that Pursh take on the analysis of Lewis' collection.  Lewis was then to combine Pursh's work with details about the Expedition in an organized narrative. In 1807 Lewis met Pursh, was very impressed, and paid Pursh about $60 to begin the work which Pursh went on to complete in a few years. Tragically, Lewis committed suicide in 1809, having organized and written almost nothing about the Expedition. 

Of Lewis' collection Pursh stated, "... when I consider that the small collection communicated to me, consisting of about one hundred and fifty specimens, contained not above a dozen plants well known to me to be natives of North America, the rest being either entirely new or but little known, and among them at least six distinct and new genera. This may give an idea of the discerning eye of their collector [Meriwether Lewis].

With Lewis' collection, his own collection, and many other specimens, Pursh began working on a new flora of America but, "While I was engaged in arranging my materials for this publication, I was called upon to take the management of the Botanic Garden at New York....  As this employment opened a further prospect to me of increasing my knowledge of the plants of the country, I willingly dropped the idea of my intended publication for that time, and in 1807 took charge of that establishment."

Pursh made several more collecting expeditions and "On my return to New York [in 1811], I found things in a situation very unfavourable to the publication of scientific works, the public mind being then in agitation about a war with Great Britain. I therefore determined to take all my materials to England, where I conceived I would not only have the advantage of consulting the most celebrated collections and libraries, but also meet with that encouragement and support so necessary to works of science, and so generally bestowed upon them there".

Exactly what happened to all of Lewis' collections after Pursh worked on them, is still not known.  Pursh returned most of the collection he had studied to McMahon, departed for England with about four dozen specimens of the Lewis collection, his own descriptive work and drawings of the specimens, and his own collections. In England he had access to numerous botanical collections, herbaria, and libraries, and had the encouragement and assistance of influential people, especially Joseph Banks and Lord Aylmer Lambert. 

In 1814 Pursh published Flora Americae Septentrionalis, or a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America.  In this work, Pursh did give thanks to many individuals for their assistance, but he was lacking in honesty about who had discovered which plants and about where he obtained the description for each species; this led him into controversy, especially with John Bradbury and Thomas Nuttall -- neither of whom Pursh credits properly on a number of occasions. For instance, although Pursh and Nuttall agreed on naming a new species Bartonia decapetala for their mutual mentor, Benjamin Barton, they were strongly at odds over where Pursh acquired the details about that species. Pursh indicates that he described the species from material collected by Lewis and he implies that Nuttall believes that Nuttall, not Lewis, deserves credit for discovering the species. Nuttall rebuts indicating that he knows and never doubted that Lewis discovered Bartonia decapetala. Nuttall argues that the few fragments collected by Lewis could not possibly produce the drawing and description that Pursh made. The drawing and description, Nuttall asserts, were made without Nuttall's permission from plants collected by Nuttall and from notes written by Nuttall.

From Pursh's 1813 Flora, page 327:

"This beautiful plant, whose large white flowers open during the night and spread a most agreeable odour, was discovered in the year 1804, on the white bluffs near the Maha village, by the late M. Lewis, Esquire. In 1807 I made a drawing and description of it for the publication of that gentleman's Tour across the Continent of America to the Pacific Ocean. In 1812, Mr. Nuttall, on his return from a journey in those parts, brought seeds and specimens of this and another species to London; and having by those means the living plants, I agreed with Mr. Nuttall to dedicate it to the memory of Dr. B. S. Barton, of Philadelphia, our mutual friend; under which name it was published in the Botanical Magazine. Since that publication, Mr. Nuttall, whose name has occurred in several pages of this work, with all the credit due to his valuable discoveries, has found himself rather offended at not having given him all the exclusive credit of discovery, which with justice and propriety to the memory of M. Lewis, Esq. I never could do."

On page 298 of his "Genera of North American Plants", 1818, Nuttall retaliates, indicating that he does not claim to have discovered Bartonia decapetala. He fully accepts that Meriwether Lewis should be given credit for the discovery. He objects to Pursh having stolen his (Nuttall's) description of the plant and inserting that description into Pursh's Genera of North American Plants as his own description. (It should be remembered here, that the person who describes a plant gets their name attached to the plant's name.)

"In reply to the insinuations of Mr. Pursh... I must here remark, that he could not possibly have had any authority to assert, or even suppose me capable of disputing with the late indefatigable and unfortunate M[eriwether] Lewis, the discovery of this plant; this charge is merely a subterfuge. Mr. Pursh, before he had perused the notes which I had made from the living plant on the Missouri, with and intention of rendering them public, had not then, by his own acknowledgement, any thing like materials for publishing this genus. My friend A. B. Lambert, Esq. Vice President of the Linnean Society, can also aver the truth of this statement. Mr. P[ursh] possessed merely an imperfect capsule of the plant, which M. Lewis had collected while descending the Missouri, he not having seen it then at the time of flowering; the collections made by that gentleman while ascending the Missouri were unfortunately lost, and it is only in that collection, according to the time of the year, which he could possibly have had flowering specimens, of this late autumnal plant. This unfortunate want of fidelity, prevented me from communicating to Mr. F. Pursh, many of the plants which now appear in this [Nuttall's own] work. Appeals to the public are to me extremely irksome, but silence on such an occasion would have been indeed the most degrading condemnation, and a tacit submission to reiterated injustice. It was not surely honourable in Frederick Pursh, whom I still esteem as an able botanist, to snatch from me the little imaginary credit due to enthusiasts."

Although there are numerous internationally accepted guidelines for dealing with innumerable potential problems associated with plant names, those guidelines do not cover such disputes. Pursh published first and that publication, even if based on stolen details or specimens, is accepted. Bartonia decapetala is now in the Mentzelia genus and its full name is written today as Mentzelia decapetala (Pursh), not Mentzelia decapetala (Nuttall).

Pursh was an alcoholic and apparently only the help of his friends kept him at his task of completing his Flora Americae, which included descriptions of 132 specimens from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For nearly forty years Pursh's two volume work was, alongside Nuttall's Genera of North American Plants, the standard flora of North America.  Pursh and Nuttall's floras were added to and superseded by Torrey and Gray's 1838-1843 Flora of North America. 

All but a few of the Lewis and Clark Expedition specimens which Pursh had taken with him to England were bought at auction years later and returned to the United States.  The total number of Lewis and Clark Expedition plants known now is 232-237, all but eleven (those in the Kew Gardens Herbarium in London) are in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where both Lewis and Pursh began their Expedition botanical work.  

Pursh died in Canada at 46, drunk, impoverished, and forgotten. But the eminent modern day botanist, James Reveal, sums Pursh's contributions favorably: "While his Flora had many flaws, they were no more serious than those found in any other work treating a large portion of the world's flora. He has been criticized for his means of acquiring new and interesting plants and for ignoring the contributions of others, yet he was remarkably thorough for his time. He modified the Linnaean system of arranging plants into groups, making his groupings of plants much more natural than anything published to that time. He was careful to indicate whose specimens he saw and where he saw them, and where the plants grew in the wild."

Click to read more about Pursh.

Purshia stansburiana, Purshia tridentata

Redowski, Ivan Redowski, (1774-1807): Born in Lithuania, studied botany and medicine at Leipzig and Konigsberg, employed by Count Alexei Razumovski at Gorinka (near Moscow) in his great botanical garden and library, for which Redowskii compiled a plant catalog. In 1805 he received an appointment as naturalist to travel to China with Count J. A. Golovkin who, as Consul, was sent with a diplomatic entourage to conduct boundary and trade talks with the Chinese. When Golovkin turned back after apparently being rebuffed, Redowski remained to collect in the Aldan Mountains, the Shantarsky Islands, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka, where he died of a sudden illness.
Lappula redowskii
Information adapted from Michael Charter's CalFlora Names.)

Reeves, Tim, 1950?  Botanist, fern expert, and computer teacher at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico.  Cystopteris reevesiana

Reveal, James, 1941-2015: Jim died, apparently of tuberculosis, January 9, 2015. I knew Jim for about 15 years and always found him gracious and willing to assist with my questions. We corresponded a number of times via email, some by phone, and met on a half dozen occasions. His knowledge was prodigious (his key to Eriogonum is 1,200 pages!), he responded to my email questions immediately and with great clarity and accuracy, and I always found him pleasantly willing to assist. I did not know Jim well, but I feel an empty spot in my life now and I know there is a huge empty area in the science of botany.

Jim was Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland; Adjunct Professor, Cornell University; Honorary Curator, New York Botanical Garden; and a member of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. Reveal was one of the most respected, published, and honored botanists of his time. He received dozens of awards, collected over 9,000 specimens for 50 years across the U.S. (and in a number of foreign countries), was a major contributor to the Flora of North America and the Intermountain Flora, and published hundreds of papers on subjects ranging from the flora of California, to the flora of Maryland, to the collections of Lewis and Clark, to systematics, to botanical explorers.

Reveal worked under Arthur Holmgren at the University of Utah for his B.A. and M.A. degrees and continued at Brigham Young University under Stanley Welsh for his PhD. While working on his doctorate he did extensive field work with Noel Holmgren and through the influence of Arthur Cronquist and others he began his lifelong devoted work on Polygonaceae, especially Eriogonum.

After receiving his doctorate, Reveal began teaching at the University of Maryland where he remained for 30 years until his retirement in 1999. In 2007 he left his new home in Montrose, Colorado, and returned to academia as an Adjunct Professor at Cornell.

In his online web page Reveal listed his research interests as "Plant systematics, taxonomy of Polygonaceae subfam. Eriogonoideae, botanical nomenclature, and history of botanical explorations and discovery".

Click for more biographical information about Reveal.
Click for Noel H. Holmgren's tribute to James Reveal.
Click for Kanchi Gandhi's "In Memoriam, James Reveal" (page 66).

Oreocarya revealii

Richardson, John, 1787-1865: Surgeon and naturalist.  Served on two Arctic and Canadian expeditions with Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin: 1819-1821 and 1825-1826. Richardson saved Franklin's life on the first expedition as the group struggled with starvation, cannibalism, and murder.  Richardson contributed significantly to Franklin's natural history descriptions of these trips. Sir William Jackson Hooker described many of Richardson's specimens in his Flora Boreali-Americana. (Click the title to read.)

Richardson made accurate surveys of more of the Canadian Arctic coast than any other explorer. In 1847 Richardson commanded one of the rescue ships sent to find Franklin and his men, all of whom had failed to return from an 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. Franklin's ships, Richardson found, had been crushed by ice, and years later it was found that all expedition members had died in their attempt to walk out. Richardson wrote of the rescue attempt and the knowledge gained of the area in An Arctic Searching Expedition (1851). See also Thomas Drummond and James Ross. 
Geranium Richardsonii, Hymenoxys richardsonii

Ritter, Benjamin and Jeanette T., 1859-1935 & 1857-1920: He was a lawyer in Durango, Colorado and she a long-time Durango Library Board member.  They helped Alice Eastwood put together a collecting trip and she named several plants for them as a thank you.  Besseya ritteriana (Now Veronica.) See also Bessey.

Robin, Jean, 1550-1629: Botanist/herbalist/gardener to Henry III, Henry IV, and Louis XIII of France. In 1601 he published Catalogus Stirpium which detailed 1,300 species for use in new French royal gardens. Jean's son, Vespasien, brought Robinia pseudoacacia to France from America.  Robinia pseudoacacia

Romanzoff, Nikolai, 1754-1826: early 19th century Russian Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs who sponsored several long exploratory voyages including Otto von Kotzebue's 1815-1818 voyage to the California Coast, Bering Sea, and explorations for a north-east passage.  The California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica, was first collected on this expedition and the ship's naturalist, Louis Charles de Chamisso, named it for the expedition's doctor, Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz.  Chamisso also named Spiranthes romanzoffiana

Ross, James, 1800-1862: British Arctic and Antarctic explorer. Participated in many arctic expeditions, four from 1819 to 1827 with W. E. Parry; located magnetic north pole. From 1839-1843: Antarctic explorations discovering the Ross Sea and Ross Ice Shelf in search for the south magnetic pole. Ross' ships, the Erebus and Terror, were later used by Sir John Franklin in 1845 to search for a Northwest Passage. Both ships and all crew perished. See Richardson.
Geum rossii

Rothrock, Joseph, 1839-1922:  Surgeon, botanist, teacher, forester.  Attended Harvard and studied under Asa Gray.  Served with several Canadian and western U.S. expeditions including the Wheeler Expedition.  Professor of Botany at the University of Pennsylvania.  Considered the father of Pennsylvania forestry.  In 1886 he became the first president of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association and in 1895, Pennsylvania's first Commissioner of Forestry.  He worked the last forty years of his life for the management of Pennsylvania forests.  Rothrock was a friend of Gifford Pinchot and the two worked for forest protection at the federal and state levels.  Rothrock State Forest, in central Pennsylvania, honors him.  Arbor Day in Pennsylvania is the last Friday in April, and the entire week is observed as the Dr. Joseph T. Rothrock Memorial Conservation Week.  Townsendia rothrockii

Rudbeck, Olof The Younger, 1660-1740: Physician, Uppsala University Professor of Medicine, explorer, son of Olof Rudbeck, Sr. and mentor of Linnaeus.

After the great fire of 1702 destroyed most of Olof The Younger and his father's botanical work, he turned his attention to a thesaurus of European and Asiatic languages.

When Linnaeus was a medical student at Uppsala University, Olof The Younger recognized his genius (and his poverty) and Olof befriended Linnaeus, brought him into his house, fed him, and paid him to tutor three of his children, thus rescuing Linnaeus from poverty. Linnaeus was deeply appreciative of Olof's friendship and among other indications of his gratitude, he named Rudbeckia laciniata for Olof. See the entry Rudbeckia laciniata for details about the naming of the genus.

Rudbeck, Olof, 1630-1702: Physician, Professor of Botany and Medicine, historian, dedicated Uppsala University (Sweden) promoter. After receiving his medical degree and doing pioneering research on the lymphatic system, he studied botany for several years in Holland and upon returning to Sweden built a botanical garden, later named the "Linnæan Garden".

Rudbeck compiled a twelve volume botanical work on 6,200 plants. Only the first two volumes had been published when a fire, which swept through Stockholm, destroyed the printing blocks for the book. About 6,000 watercolor paintings of the plants survived and are now in the Uppsala University Library. Linnaeus named Rudbeckia laciniata variety ampla for Olof's son. See immediately above.

Rusby, Henry Hurd, 1855-1940: Physician, plant collector, explorer, teacher.  Collected over 10,000 plants in the Southwest and South America.  In 1889 he became Professor of Botany at Columbia and in 1904 he became Dean of the Faculty and served in this capacity until his retirement in 1930. 

Rusby was a founding member of the New York Botanical Garden.  According to the NYBG online biography of Rusby, his "association with the NYBG began even before the Garden was formally established....  In 1888 a botanic garden committee of eight distinguished club members including [Nathaniel Lord] Britton and Rusby was formed" to establish the NYBG.  Once the NYBG was established,  Rusby promoted "the study of economic botany... throughout the first fifty years of its existence".  "Rusby’s neotropical explorations, particularly in the Amazon region, set the precedent for the systematic and economic botany that has characterized subsequent research at NYBG. The productivity of his trips was due to his endurance and resourcefulness as an explorer. In 1921 when Rusby was 65 years old he embarked on his last field trip to South America as the Director of the Mulford Biological Exploration of the Amazon Basin."  Isocoma rusbyi

Rydberg, Per Axel, 1860-1931: Ph.D. Columbia. First Curator of and Field Agent with the New York Botanical Garden from 1899, USDA Field Agent, author of Flora of Montana and Yellowstone Park (1900), Flora of Colorado (1906), and Flora of the Rocky Mountains and Adjacent Plains (1917). These were based in part on his own collections over many years and on the collections and publications of previous botanical authorities. Rydberg often did his own botanical illustrations.  Rydberg collected only once in Colorado in 1891.

Photo of Per Axel Rydberg from the New York Botanical Garden

William A. Weber, Colorado plant authority, considers Rydberg, Greene, and Nelson the most important figures in Rocky Mountain botany. Rydberg split many genera and wanted each species to be distinct and distinguishable from all others, a lead that Weber follows.  In Rydberg's words from his 1906 Flora of Colorado: "[I] belong to that radical school which believes in small genera with closely related species rather than in larger ones with a heterogeneous mass of different groups of plants having relatively little relationship to each other." Arnica rydbergia, Rydbergia grandiflora (now Hymenoxys grandiflora), Toxicodendron rydbergii, Penstemon rydbergii

Schiede, Christian, 1798-1836: German physician and botanist who, along with Ferdinand Deppe, emigrated to Mexico to collect and then sell zoological and botanical specimens. Their venture did not succeed and was abandoned within a two years. Schiede remained in Mexico.  Laennecia schiedeana

Schkuhr, Christian, 1741-1811: German gardener and botanist. Throughout his life he conducted botanical studies of German flora, especially in the Wittenberg area (he received a degree in philosophy from the Wittenberg University). He eventually published Handbook of Botany to help people learn the new Linnaean system and to familiarize people with the many uses of plants. For the publication of his Handbook, Schkuhr taught himself to draw and engrave (the Handbook has 500 colored plates) and he printed his own book -- in 37 parts from 1787-1803. Schkuhr also wrote the books German Cryptogram and History of Carex and he wrote a number of papers. Schkuhr's private plant collection was purchased in 1813 as the foundation of the herbarium at Martin Luther University.  Platyschkuhria integrifolia variety oblongifolia,  Schkuhria multiflora

Schmoll, Hazel, 1890-1990: After receiving her B.A. in biology from the University of Colorado in 1913, Hazel taught at Vassar for four years.

As a young woman Hazel studied with prominent botanists in various European countries, promoted the Women’s Suffrage Amendment, and lobbied as a Board Member of the Colorado Mountain Club for the protection of Aquilegia coerulea, the Colorado State Flower.

After Vassar, Hazel enrolled in the University of Chicago for her master's degree (1916-1919, M.A. awarded in 1919), following which she was hired by the Colorado Historical and Natural History Society at the Colorado State Museum as Colorado State Botanist, a position according to many sources she held from 1919-1935, but her autobiography gives the dates of 1919-1920 and 1922-1925. Among her first duties as State Botanist was arranging the botanical collections of Alice Eastwood and Ellsworth Bethel.

In 1924 Hazel began collecting in the Pagosa Springs area. She tells us in the "Introduction" to her PhD dissertation:

"The ecological survey of the Chimney Rock area of the Pagosa-Piedra region of Archuleta County, Colorado, was started in 1924 under the auspices of the state Historical and Natural History Society of the state Museum, Denver, Colorado. At the time of the discontinuation of the Natural History Department of this Society by the State, in 1925, permission was granted by its Board of Directors to use this data as thesis material."