June Program of the Hernando Chapter
The Early Botanists of Florida: An Amusing Review of our Floral Pioneers

featuring Gary Maidhof, Citrus County Planning Department
Monday June 2, 2008 – 7:00 pm
Hernando County Cooperative Extension Service

Meet Florida's famous botanists, those naturalists who explored, discovered and named much of the rich flora of Florida. Our state’s unique landscapes have enticed botanists for over two hundred years, and their stories enliven the history of our state. Mr. Maidhof's humorous and informative narrative depicts the Florida of the early 1800s as a botanical hunting ground for naturalists and collectors. Moving the clock forward, naturalists endure the Seminole wars, and lay foundations for the work of John Torrey and Asa Gray, botanical giants of late 1800s.

This program also surveys the role of foreign and immigrant collectors, and naturalists among U.S. Army personnel, responsible for extensive botanical surveys around military establishments such as Ft. Brooke, Ft. Micanopy, and Ft. King. You will hear how John Muir walked from  Indiana to Cedar Key, Florida with his plant press,  and how the expansion of the railroads spurred the influx of both professional and amateur collectors who continued to explore and document Florida’s great botanical diversity.

Join us to learn how the explorations continue to this day.  Our local orchid expert Paul Martin Brown recently  identified a new orchid at Pott’s Preserve—Pteroglossaspis pottsii.

Monthly meetings and programs of the Hernando Chapter are open to the public, free of charge. They are held at the Hernando County Cooperative Extension Office – 19490 Oliver Street (next to the County Fairgrounds) in Brooksville. For more information about this program or the Florida Native Plant Society, contact Cindy Liberton, liberton@earthlink.net or (evenings) 352-583-2384.

For more on the early botanists, click here to see Sid Taylor's notes!

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Chapter News

Hernando Chapter: Little Chapter, Big Voice

Once again, Hernando Chapter members were omnipresent at the annual Conference of the Florida Native Plant Society in Bradenton, FL. Our own Gene Kelly was elected President of the Society (see sidebar), and we wish him much success in this critical leadership role. Cindy Liberton was awarded a Silver Palmetto award for service by the departing president, Shirley Denton. Our Chapter President, Miki Renner's conference presentation Relevance of Native Plants to Smart Growth and Low Impact Development was authoritative and well received. As Committee Chairs for the Society, Annie Schmidt, Gene and Cindy led Society organizational meetings on Government Policy, Conservation, and Communications, respectively. Our Chapter Webmaster, Bruce Vanderveen, Conservation Chair Mark Hutchinson and our Chapter Representative, Jim Clayton were also in attendance, and Hernando County's most eclectic band, The Beagles, performed during the Friday night social, featuring members Steve and Lynn Dicks, Dean Rusk, Cheryl Hill and Jack Stites. Next year, we all travel to Palm Beach; don't miss it!

New Publicist for Hernando Chapter

Ann Licate (pronounced La cot), has accepted the invitation from the Board of Directors of the HCFNPS to serve as publicist for our chapter. Ann has worked for both the Saint Pete Times and the Tampa Tribune and is acquainted enough with their respective organizations to help create some much needed exposure and publicity. She and her family have been members of HCFNPS since early this year. I hope you will all extend a warm welcome to this new member of our team at the up coming meeting.

Chapter asks for an End to Cypress Mulch Sales

Mark Hutchinson, our Chapter's Conservation Chair, has helped the board draft letters to Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart to ask them to replace Cypress landscape mulch sales with renewable alternatives. Please consider reinforcing our message when you visit these establishments. For example, ask the garden shop managers to carry Melaleuca mulch instead. The following is a draft of the letter that will be received by Home Depot's corporate headquarters.

Sample Letter from the Hernando Chapter to Home Depot
The Home Depot has pledged a "commitment to environmental sustainability", assuring investors and consumers that "you can count on us to be actively involved in pursuing environmental excellence". This pledge commits The Home Depot to "resource conservation" and to actively "support companies that use recycled content". I am writing on behalf of the more than seventy members of the Hernando County Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society, who appreciate the spirit these goals and commitments embody. In that spirit we are writing to request that The Home Depot discontinue the sale of Cypress mulch.

Cypress trees in Florida are being cut down solely to produce Cypress garden and landscape mulch; data indicate that close to half of the Cypress cut in Florida is used for mulch production - essentially throwing it away. The rate at which Cypress are being harvested can not be maintained, the supply of this majestic tree is far from endless. Cypress trees are a native species that are an integral part of the Florida wetlands ecosystem. These natural systems are not only vital to the flora and fauna of Florida, but are also enhance water quality through the natural filtration of water recharging the aquifer. The wetlands sustained by Cypress trees provide storm surge and flood protection to the coastal communities in our County and through-out the Southeast. There is no reason for the destruction of a tree essential to such a valuable ecosystems when a variety of mulch alternatives are readily available. Chemical free, sustainable mulch alternatives exist, including brush mulch, pine straw, pine bark and even pecan shells. In keeping with The Home Depot's pledge, mulch made from Melaleuca, an invasive exotic species that is harming Florida’s Everglades and wetlands systems in south Florida, is readily available. Removing Melaleuca from natural systems and recycling it as mulch is a win-win for Florida’s Everglades, the Cypress tree, and The Home Depot.

The Home Depot can continue it's leadership role in innovative retailing and environmental sustainability through the cessation of Cypress mulch sales. Please help us in preserving the wetland infrastructure essential to the quality of life we cherish here in West Central Florida.

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Thanks to Sid Taylor for the following notes on our early botanists.

When Florida became part of the United States, it was a fertile botanical hunting ground.  Naturalists and collectors in Florida did other jobs such as topographical engineer, civil engineer, botanist, soldier, entomologist, and sheriff. James Grant Forbes (1769-1826) was a native of Florida.  He traveled extensively collecting the describing the natural history including a brief account of the plants and their physical setting.  His book, Sketches of the Floridas (1821), was the first book published on Florida after the area became a U.S. territory.  About the same time, Charles Blacker Vignoles (1793-1875) published Observations upon the Floridas (1823) which was a more superior book.  Both books were intended to attract settlers to the new territory of Florida.
 
During the three Seminole wars, collection of flora was difficult.  The Seminoles began migrating from Georgia and Alabama in the early 18th century and caused difficulty for the Americans by raiding across the international boundary, then fleeing into Spanish Florida.  The First Seminole War occurred in 1818 when General Andrew Jackson followed the Seminole tribesmen back to Florida.  After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, they were no longer able to flee to Spanish ground. In 1830, Congress enacted legislation calling for the removal of the Seminoles from Florida.  This resulted in the Second Seminole War of 1835-42.  The Third Seminole War or Billy Bowlegs War was fought from 1855-57.
 
Era of Torrey and Gray (1821-1901)—John Torrey and Asa Gray were botanical giants of their time and Florida was fertile ground to feed their production of books.
 
Torrey, the foremost American botanist of his time, was one of the founders of the influential Lyceum of Natural History of New York, and professor at Columbia and Princeton universities.  He was the recipient of many collections made in Florida.  Gray was one of his students.  They produced the monumental Flora of North America (1838-43) from the flora that they identified from other collectors who traveled around Florida.  Both Torrey and Gray visited Florida in 1872, the first and last time they came to the Sunshine State.  They were on a pilgrimage to see Torreya taxifolia discovered by H.B. Croom.  Torreya taxifolia is commonly known as the Florida Torreya, Stinking Yew, or Stinking Cedar although not closely related to the true cedars. The plant now faces extinction due to habitat destruction and widespread infection by a chronic fungal disease.
 
Many U.S. Army personnel were naturalists who did extensive botanical collecting around the military establishments of Ft. Brooke (Tampa), Ft. Frank Brooke (four miles from the mouth of the Steinhatchee River in Dixie County), Ft. Micanopy in Alachua County, and Ft. King east of Ocala.  Lt. Bradford Ripley Alden (1811-1870), a West Pointer, collected around Forts Brooke and King.  Lt. John Howard Allen (d. 1898) also collected around Ft. Brooke and Melines Conkling Leavenworth (1796-1862) collected around Ft. Micanopy and Fort Franke Brooke when he was there as an Army surgeon.  All sent their collections to Torrey and Gray and were cited in their publications.
 
A number of naturalists collected for John Torrey and Asa Gray.  Reverend Alva Bennett (d. 1841) was the first person to make significant collections in the Florida Keys.  Hezekiah Gates (d. 1850), a native of New England and a pharmacist for many years collected in Alabama and western Florida in the late 1830s and early 1840s.  
 
The French naturalist Francois Louis de Laporte (Comete de) Castelnau (1810-1880) collected plants in Middle Florida in 1837-38.  Another important Florida collector was German-born American botanical explorer, pharmacist, and surgeon was Ferdinand Ignatius Xavier Rugal (1806-1878).  Among his collecting trips in the southeast, he made at least three visits to Florida.  In 1843 he collected nearly a thousand specimens in northern and western Florida, then returned to southern Florida and Key West in 1846, and eastern Florida around St. Augustine in 1848.  Rugel’s specimens are well represented in many herbaria throughout the world, including the University of Florida, the University of South Florida, and Fairchild Tropical Garden.
 
Fifteen years after the close of the Second Seminole War, the Florida population doubled to 140,000.  Cattle, lumber, and citrus were becoming important. By then botany had risen from an avocation to a profession.  Asa Gray, a former student of Torrey was the leader during this period.  Gray was professor of natural sciences and director of the botanical garden at Harvard from 1842-1888, and a prolific writer.  He co-authored A Flora of North America with Torrey, and wrote Gray’s Manual of Botany which went through eight editions.  Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809-1899) practiced medicine for more than fifty years.  He collected extensively in western Florida, sending his materials to Torrey and Gray for identification.  Chapman also made brief trips along both coasts, collecting wherever possible.
 
Alphonso W. Wood (1810-1881) was a first-class field botanist who wrote Class-Book of Botany. He was a teacher who popularized of botany.  His textbooks were in great demand and were widely used into the 1890s.  Although he was a rival of Asa Gray in the textbook field, he was also one of the few botanists that Gray did not dominate.  He did not have the scientific ability and accuracy of Asa Gray, but he wrote with clarity which made his books easy for student use.
 
The most important early botanist in southern Florida was John Lomis Blodget (1809-1853).  During the fifteen years he lived in Key West, he collected in the Keys and on the mainland, including a monumental solo trek from Cape Sable to the custard apple swamps near the south shore of Lake Okeechobee and back out across the Big Cyprus in 1850. Horticulturist Pliny Ward Reasoner (1863-1888) established the Royal Palm Nursery at Oneco in Manatee County.  The nursery is still in operation.  In 1885 his brother Egbert joined him, and they botonized all over southern Florida.  

John Muir (1838-1914) came to Florida in 1867 and walked from Jeffersonville, Indiana to Cedar Key, Florida with his plant press.  His experiences in northern Florida are vividly described in his Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916).

The expansion of the railroads brought both professional and amateur collectors who explored and documented Florida’s great botanical biodiversity.  Even today new species are being found.  Our local orchid expert Paul Martin Brown just identified a new orchid at Pott’s Preserve—Pteroglossaspis pottsii.