Thomas Nuttal (January 5, 1786 - September 10, 1859)
While he was born in Long Preston England and spent his early years an apprentice printer, around the age of 18 he struck off for America. He would spend some 33 years of his 73 working in America as a botanist, explorer, and professor. America at that time was still a vast frontier to the west, and he was a tough and dedicated traveler. Upon arrival in America, the very next day he came across Benjamin Smith Barton (easily another candidate for a fascinating person) who was in need of a new protege. Nutall had brought in a cat-brier, or Smilax (which I can tell you...are quite unpleasant to remove from a place you don't want one to be) for identification. After a quick tutelage in botany, he was doing field botany work for Barton, collecting plants in the salt marshes of Delaware and Chesapeake Bay.
Smilax rotundifolia (those thorns hurt).
Fascinating isn't it? Those weird moments and plants in life that pull us in a direction? I was once (jokingly?) threatened that my job depended on being able to ID a plant. As life would have it I had just researched it a few days before. Mine was Ipomea hederacea. Whew. Close call.
After a successful trip in the summer of 1810 to the Great Lakes region Nuttall ignored Barton's instructions to return to Philadelphia and instead took a trip down the Missouri river to ...St. Louis! After another brief stint at a local newspaper, he met fellow botanist John Bradbury (Liverpool botanical gardens) and the two began to collect specimens and catalog many plants. The area had been visited by Lewis and Clark in 1804 but their entire 1805 spring collection was destroyed by floodwater. Meaning that Nuttall's documentation and samples are some of the first introductions of many North American species. Cool.
Later he would travel further up the Missouri River where he would discover the Calochortus nuttallii or sego-lily. Unfortunately the threat of war between England and America loomed and he had to return to London with his vast collections. If I'm Barton, I'm definitely wondering if I'm ever going to see all these specimens.
Back in London, he publishes a small pamphlet with Fraser's Nursery and validly publishes new species like Eriogonum flavum, Oenothera cespitosa, Penstemon grandifloram, Yucca glauca, and one of my favorites, Oenothera macrocarpa. If you ever see a 'Nutt.' at the end of any of these species, now you know why. Basically because a guy ignored his boss and struck off on his own.
He did come back after the conclusion of the War of 1812 and headed to the Southeast, later writing about the Eriogonum genus (Greek - erios and gonos meaning wooly knees). He surmised it would be a large genus when the west was fully explored, despite only knowing 4 species. It's around 245 now (good guess!). He also proposed the genus Collinsia. You might know Collinsia verna, the Spring blue eyed Mary.
Photo Credit: zen Sutherland (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
After that round of trips he shortly published, in 1818, his Genera of North American Plants in Philadelphia. Back out on the Mississippi and then the Red River, he made it down to Fort Smith and spent time in Arkansaw and Oklahoma before turning south to New Orleans and sailing back to Philadelphia. He then wrote Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the year 1819. If you ever want to see what feuding botanists do, check out the interaction between Pursh and Nuttall. I side with Nuttall.
In 1825 he became the curator of the botanical gardens at Harvard University during which he published his Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. In 1834 he resigned his post and again went out west through Kansas, Wyoming, and Utah and eventually sailing across the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands. All of this he did in a year and then came back and botanized in the Pacific Northwest in 1835. He did a stint at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, contributed to the Flora of North America and North American Sylva which was the first book to include all the trees of North America before moving back to England to inherit property from his uncle. He lived in St. Helens, Lancashire until 1859 and is buried at Christ Church in the nearby village of Eccleston.
What a life and a legacy. This was all before cars and roads and planes people. He saw a HUGE chunk of North America and has dozens of marine species, plants, and birds named after. He was truly an amazing and driven human being. I'll see his name over and over again throughout my life, and every time I do, I'll try to imagine how this country must have looked back then. I'm sure it was stunning and beautiful and helped make the long treks, hot hikes, and bugs much more bearable.
Certainly makes me feel like I should be doing more with my life. Cheers mate. Life well done.
nice writeup! I also keep imagining about how it must have looked then . . .
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