Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
in northern India to two maharajahs (one in north Bihar
and the other in north Madhya Pradesh). During these
20 years in India, he became an acknowledged expert
on mangoes. He died in India in 1902.
His plant collecting legacy is considerable: he
discovered over 500 species that were new to Britain
and Ireland.
Alice Eastwood
(1859-1953) was born in Toronto,
Canada, moving to USA at the age of 14. While
teaching in Denver, Colorado, she studied botany,
which led her to work with the herbarium at
the California Academy of Sciences in 1890. She
became joint Curator of the Academy in 1892, and
then Head of the Department of Botany.
Her plant collecting expeditions in the then remote
Big Sur region in California led to the discovery of
Salix
eastwoodiae
and
Potentilla hickmanii
. At this time,
1906, Eastwood was able to salvage large number of
valuable dried 'type-specimens' from the herbarium
that had been set on fire by the San Francisco
earthquake of that year. In future years, it became
an important aspect of her life's work to build up this
herbarium (to reach a total of over 300,000 specimens).
Eastwood was involved in many collecting expeditions
and vacations in the western United States, which
included visits to Alaska, Arizona, Utah and Idaho.
She had editorial responsibilities in two botanical
journals (
Zoe
and
Erythea
)
and
founded a journal
(
Leaflets of Western Botany
) with a fellow botanist
John Howell. She also was Director of the San
Francisco California Botanical Club during the 1890s.
Species such as
Astragulus ceramicus
,
Allium
cratericola
,
Aquilegia eastwoodii
,
Ceanothus gloriosus
,
many
Lupinus
spp.
(including
Lupinus pulcher
),
Oenothera deltoides
and
Penstemon bradburyi
were
amongst the many species collected by her. She
had eight species named after her. She died in San
Francisco in 1953.
Ynes Enriquetta Mexia
(1870-1938) was born in
Washington DC where her father was a diplomat in
the Mexican embassy. She was to become one of
the most prolific plant collectors, travelling extensively
in Mexico and South America. In 1885, after her
school education in Maryland, she moved to Mexico
City, where she looked after her father for ten years
until his death. She was, in 1904, bereaved by her
husband's early death and subsequently a second
marriage proved unsuccessful.
By 1921, and after studying for a botany degree in
California, at 55 years of age she began her plant-
collecting career. She went first to western Mexico
and was the first to collect
Mimosa mexiae.
There
followed visits to Brazil in 1926 (
Begonia jaliscana
),
back to Mexico in 1927 (
Abutilon jaliscanum
,
Fuchsia
decidua
,
Salvia mexicae
and
Sedum grandipetalum
),
Argentina, Chile and Alaska in 1928, Brazil in 1929
(
Adiantum giganteum
and
Capsicum microcarpum
),
Peru in 1931 (many
Piper
spp.), Ecuador in 1934,
Peru and southern Argentina in 1935, and southwest
Mexico in 1937. Many of her specimens were sent to
herbaria in Harvard and Chicago.
Mexianthus
, named
after Ynes Mexia, is a genus in the Asteraceae.
Ynes Mexia is reputed to have collected 150,000
plant specimens in her 17 years of plant hunting. She
died in California in 1938 after falling ill on her 1937
collecting trip in Mexico.
George Forrest
(1873-1932) was born in Falkirk,
Scotland. He worked in a chemist's shop until he
was 18, when a small family 'windfall' allowed him
to visit and work for several years in Australia. On his
return to Scotland in 1902, a chance meeting on a
riverbank with Professor Bayley Balfour, Keeper of the
Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, changed his life. A
year's work in the Botanic Gardens led to a sponsored
visit to the southwest China province of Yunnan in
1904, particularly to look for rhododendron species.
Skirmishes with politically active Buddhist lamas led to
several narrow escapes, but Forrest was to make seven
visits to Yunnan province and to the adjacent area of
Sichuan province, and then to Burma and eastern Tibet.
On 5 January 1932, while hunting game in Tengchong,
the Yunnan town that he often used as a base, he
suffered a heart attack, dying instantly. He was buried
locally.
In all, this intrepid collector introduced over 1,200
plant species new to science. These included
Acer
forrestii
,
Camellia saluenensis
,
Clematis chrysocoma
,
Gentiana sino-ornata
,
Iris forrestii
,
Jasminum
polyanthum
,
Mahonia lomariifolia
and
Pieris forrestii.
He also collected many species of
Allium
,
Anemone
,
Aster
,
Berberis
,
Buddleia
, conifers,
Cotoneasters
and
Deutzias
. He is especially remembered for the
Rhododendron
species (
R. forrestii
,
R. sinogrande
,
R. repens
,
R. griersonianum
,
R. intricatum
and
R.
giganteum
) and
Primula
species (
P.malacoides
,
P.
bulleyana
,
P. nutans
,
P. vialii
and
P. spicata
) that he
collected.
Ernest Wilson
(1876-1930) was an English plant
collector. He was born in Gloucestershire. He began
his career working in a nursery near Birmingham
before joining the staff at the Birmingham Botanical
Gardens. Further experience at the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew led to the exciting position of 'Chinese
plant collector' with the well-known Veitch nursery
that had employed William Lobb earlier that century.
