The Perennial Adventure

A TRIBUTE TO

HUce Eastwoob

1859 -1953

BY

Susanna Bryant d AKIN

SAN FRANCISCO

CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

MCMLIV

Friends:

How grateful we should be to those responsible for this beauti¬
ful little volume that is so adequate a tribute to Alice Eastwood!
Members of the Marin Garden Club first thought of this way of
honoring the memory of their dear friend. In executing their
plan, they have had the advice and cooperation of the officers of
the California Academy of Sciences. The entire proceeds are as¬
signed to the Alice Eastwood Hall of Botany Fund. To Mr.
Lawton Kennedy goes the credit for his dedicated service in mak¬
ing this volume so quickly available and for embodying the text
in so choice a manner, and to John Falter for enhancing it with
two delightful drawings.

I should like to emphasize the adequateness of this little book:
first, by telling you something Miss Eastwood would never have
said; and second, by telling you something Miss Eastwood did
say.

No member of a botany class or a garden club ever heard Miss
Eastwood refuse to examine a plant with the disparaging remark,
“Oh, I’ve seen that flower before.” Whenever or wherever she
might have been shown a flower, no matter how common and how
weedy, the truth and the beauty exhibited by the structural for¬
mation of that flower would have at once inspired a spirited lesson
on what she saw and what it meant, just as if she had never before
seen so common a weed. It was this appreciation of truth and
beauty in all botanical manifestations that was the foremost prin¬
ciple of her life. In her high school valedictory that is reprinted
in this volume, she set truth and the search of truth as the loadstar

of her life, and as teacher and scientist she remained faithful to
that course in all the years that followed.

In her pursuit of truth, Alice Eastwood strove to cultivate the
essential, to weed out the unessential, so that the garden of her
life would be open and uncluttered. How well I recall her attempt
to teach me this principle. A minor editorial detail was being dis¬
cussed and the merits of two styles were being compared. At last,
to close my argument, I remarked: “What you propose will not
be consistent.” “Consistency,” she flung back, “is the bane of
small minds.” Indeed, consistency with unessentials was never a
part of Alice Eastwood’s life.

What she gained was an enviable freedom for thought and
action. Her fearless botanical journeying into deserts and moun¬
tains was one of the results, and these trips relate her in fact and
in spirit to the early explorers of our country, for whom she had
a fervent admiration. How exceptionally appropriate is it that
her botanical paper chosen for reproduction in this volume should
be the one on “Early Botanical Explorers ...”!

If we throw to the wind the trivial conventions that shackle us
to earth, our lives too can become as vital, as real, as full as hers.
Little wonder that Dr. Robert C. Miller could write of Miss
Eastwood as he did in his introductory remarks to Carol Green
Wilson’s biography: “A blithe spirit that is ageless, living in a
world of discovery that is ever new.... Men have sought in vain
the fountain of perpetual youth j what they needed instead was
the fountain of perennial adventure.”

John Thomas Howell
California A cademy of Sciences
December 2, 1953

Author’s Preface

Carol Green Wilson has been generous in allowing me to
glean information from her forthcoming biography, titled “Alice
Eastwood’s Wonderland” and completed only a little while be¬
fore the eminent botanist’s death at ninety-four on October 30,
1953. In this book Alice Eastwood’s honors, her world-wide as¬
sociations, her scientific and literary achievements, her exciting
botanical expeditions and her observant travels are detailed. The
total is imposing indeed. It can only be intimated in this sketch
based on Mrs. Wilson’s book—a sketch written and published as
one of many memorials to a unique human being; no less a dedi¬
cated scientist than a well-loved woman.

Always a helpful person is John Thomas Howell, who suc¬
ceeded Miss Eastwood as Curator of Botany at the California
Academy of Sciences when she retired at the age of ninety, after
fifty-seven years of service there. He has chosen illustrations out
of photographs in his possession; and edited the manuscript for
Academy publication.

Besides the outline of Alice Eastwood’s life,* we include her
own understanding account of “Early Botanical Explorers on
the Pacific Coast.”** Her spirit is kindred to Archibald Menzies,
botanist and surgeon of Vancouver’s round-the-world expedition
(1790-1795), who first noted and collected the Coast Redwood
growing near Santa Cruzj to the young Scot, David Douglas of
intrepid spirit and untimely end; to Thomas Coulter, who first
penetrated the rocky fastnesses of the Santa Lucia Mountains
to discover the Santa Lucia Fir and Big-cone Pine; to Thomas
Nuttall, who named and described our picturesque sycamore, the

aliso of the Spanish Californians. Each of these explorers sought
and found “the fountain of perennial adventure.” We envy and
we honor them.

♦Originally written for the Bulletin of the Garden Club of America; pub¬
lished in shortened form, January, 1954.

♦♦Published in the December 1939 issue of the California Historical Society
Quarterly. This was one of more than three hundred botanical writings by Alice
Eastwood published during her lifetime and listed in Proceedings of the Cali¬
fornia Academy of Sciences (Fourth Series) Vol. XXV Alice Eastwood Semi-
Centennial Publications , San Francisco , 'published by the Academy 1943-1949.

The Perennial Adventure

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

There is a simplicity and an inevitability in Alice Eastwood’s
life history. Everything, even disappointment, became grist for
her ever-grinding inner mill. Everybody who entered her life,
even briefly, seemed to contribute eventually to the creation of
this integrated personality. A botanical analogy can be drawn
from the three distinct eras of a long lifetime. In the Canadian
childhood was planted the seed of a true vocation ; in Colorado
this seed rooted and sprouted in the dark ground of poverty and
hardship; in California it flowered for all the world to see.

Her biographer tells us that Alice Eastwood was the only
woman starred for distinction in every volume of “American
Men of Science,” published during her lifetime. Her most prized
citation came the year of her retirement, in the form of an invita¬
tion to serve as Honorary President of the Seventh International
Botanical Congress, meeting in Sweden in 1950. There she went,
flying alone at the age of ninety-one! Though feted in queenly
fashion, her happiest moment was not one of personal tribute.
It happened during a day of pilgrimage to the home of Carolus
Linnaeus, the great eighteenth century scholar. Here she, small
and frail, was invited to sit in the ancient chair which he used
while writing the source book of modern systematic botany.

Miss Eastwood’s traveling hat is noteworthy. She who once

I

2

The Perennial Adventure

earned a living with the needle, never had time to think of
clothes. So some friends helped her in assembling a wardrobe for
the trip to Sweden. One, a fashionable milliner, planted grey silk
mushrooms (complete with lamellae ) on a grey sailor hat. This
seemed apropos, since even the Health Officer customarily con¬
sulted Miss Eastwood about the edibility of wild mushrooms.
With the new hat tilted on her snowy hair, a harmonizing coat
and dress 5 with Irish eyes still twinkling, it is no wonder that she
once again was voted “Sweetheart of the Year” by the San Fran¬
cisco Business Men’s Garden Club—a perennial honor which she
received in a city faithful to its favorites.

For a serious scientist to have frivolous moments and quantities
of friends—this is a phenomenon. Contrast the Curie salon as the
extreme of austerity, containing a straight chair each for Pierre
and Marie, to Alice Eastwood’s home wherever she made it. Her
living-room always became a gathering place for congenial spir¬
its, even when it was her only room—in days of poverty or illness.
Always there was good talk and, often, good food prepared by
the hostess. A colleague once intimated that her contribution to
science might be lessened by an unfailing interest in fellow human
beings, by the love and time she lavished on her friends and their
concerns. She answered, expressing a lifelong philosophy, “My
desire is to help, not to shine.”

Alice Eastwood was born on January 19, 1859, * n Toronto,
Canada, of an Irish mother and an English father. Her relatives
on both sides lacked worldly goods, in most instances, but were
endowed through the generations with integrity and education.

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

3

A grandfather had been a rebel in youth, and later became a
founder of the Unitarian Church in Toronto with her mother’s
cousin, Dr. Joseph Workman, Canada’s leading alienist and
neurologist.

Her early years passed securely and happily in a rather ma¬
cabre setting—the grounds of the Toronto Asylum for the In¬
sane. Here Dr. Workman served as superintendent, and Colin
Eastwood as steward. When little Alice was six her lovely mother
died, leaving the little family rudderless and adrift. For a time
the three children (Alice, the oldest; Catherine, four; and Sid¬
ney, only fourteen months old) stayed with their uncle, Dr.
William Eastwood, at his country place on Highland Creek.

Here was planted the seed of Alice Eastwood’s lifelong in¬
terest in botany. She roved freely and independently in the
meadows and nearby woods, sometimes with cousins but more
often alone. Her uncle recognized a kindred spirit, even in one
so young, and taught her names she never forgot—like the wild
raspberry which she learned to call Rubus odoratus y and Mitchella
refens the red partridge berry.

In 1867 she returned to live with her father (now a store¬
keeper) and took considerable responsibility for the younger
children, even at eight years of age. She made friends and dis¬
tinguished herself at the neighborhood school. Elizabeth Fry’s
“The Prisoner’s Friend” was awarded to Alice Eastwood for ex¬
cellence in spelling. But the father’s store did not prosper and,
once again, the family circle was broken. Mr. Eastwood took little
Sidney out west, and placed his daughters in a convent where they
stayed for six years.

4

The Perennial Adventure

Here, at Oshawa, teaching standards were low and reading
was restricted to lives of the saints. But nearby an experimental
orchard had been planted for convent use by a French priest. His
name was Father Pugh. He was experienced in horticulture and
taught little Alice to know many species, and how to make grafts.
She also helped to weed the convent garden, to feed the chickens
and gather eggs.

The serious child studied by herself, as much as she could with
limited facilities j and she learned from the Sisters how to knit,
sew, crochet and cook. Once a year there was a truly happy inter¬
lude, when the Sisters went on Retreat to the Mother House in
Toronto. The Eastwood girls then visited their uncle and his
family at Highland Creek. What bliss to see their cousins and all
the farm animals—to rove freely in woods and meadows, after
the restrictions of convent life!

Like Father Pugh, Dr. Eastwood was an experimental horti¬
culturist. Continually he was growing new vegetables, grafting
fruits, and starting flowering plants from seed. He loved the
little niece, whom he considered a “born botanist.” She shared
his failures as well as his successes and, in appreciation, he started
her botanical library with a treatise on plants. Her sister Kate re¬
ceived a fairy tale at the same time.

Another pervasive influence over Alice was the French-Cana-
dian nun who taught music at the convent, who instilled a grow¬
ing love and knowledge of music in her star pupil. This long
outlasted the Sister’s departure. More than eighty years later,
Miss Eastwood told a friend of her sorrow at parting from the
gentle soul. Yet even this early grief had been transformed to

5

A Tribute to Alice "Eastwood,

something of a blessing in her mind. “Since then,” said the old
lady, “I have never seemed to miss people when they are gone.”

When Alice was fourteen the scene of her life shifted com¬
pletely. Her father sent for her to join him and resume family
life in Denver, Colorado. He had acquired a new store. While
living quarters were being constructed, the oldest daughter
worked as nursegirl for a Frenchman named Jacob Scherrer, to
help pay for the new home. She was responsible for a two-year-
old and a tiny baby, but had the run of a comprehensive multilin¬
gual library when they were asleep. Her starved mind absorbed
language as desert sand the rain. She read voraciously and indis¬
criminately—all through Miss Muhlbach’s historical romances,
Dumas, dime novels, heavy classics, and scientific treatises.

During that summer she made her first discovery of treasure
in the Colorado mountains. On a camping trip with the Scherrer
family, she came upon mountain meadows covered in rich pro¬
fusion with summer-blooming flowers. The experience partook
of revelation.

Descended from the mountains, Alice kept house for her fam¬
ily in comfortable quarters behind the store, and attended public
school. A perspicacious teacher and fine musician named Anna
Palmer introduced her to the delights of choral singing, directed
her reading and, in one year, helped her to catch up with her own
age and enter high school. With avidity the young girl stored up
treasures of the mind and never seemed aware of the fact that her
clothes were shabby and her hands reddened by unending chores
at home and in the store. As she said in later years, “I always felt
superior to such things.”

6

The Perennial Adventure

The East Denver High School principal, James H. Baker
(later President of the University of Colorado) taught his entire
student body in one room. In such a small group Alice Eastwood
could not long remain unknown and unappreciated. She was pop¬
ular with fellow students, received a prize in algebra, and special
attention from the principal. All through high school he directed
her reading, to include Dickens, Thackeray, Scott. John Bur¬
roughs led naturally to Thoreau. Maudsley’s “Body and Mind”
piqued her interest in the insoluble mysteries of life.

Junior year was eventful. Somewhat to her dismay, she learned
that her father planned to marry again, and that she must play
second fiddle. But the stepmother was a teacher, a Unitarian from
Newburyport, Massachusetts, and a kindly woman. Actually life
became easier for Alice, until her father lost money in the new
store. Then she went to work again. By studying alone at night,
and sometimes consulting her stepmother, she kept up with her
class and re-entered it as a senior, to be one of the early graduates
of East Denver High School.

To earn her way senior year, she got up at four every morning
to lay and light furnace fires in the school building. Afternoons
from two to six and all day Saturday she worked in the ready¬
made dress department of a downtown store for $ 12 a week. She
had apprenticed herself the previous summer, without pay, to be
cutter’s assistant j so now, by basting linings in basques and work-
ing innumerable buttonholes, she managed to pay all her own
expenses. And when graduation came, she had friends in two
worlds. Elected class valedictorian, she wore a beautiful white

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

7

silk dress made as a present for her by the girls who worked but¬
tonholes in the ready-made department!

By now Alice Eastwood knew that botany was her calling.
Each visit to the mountains confirmed this conviction. Her bo¬
tanical library was increased by a graduation present of two books,
“Flora of Colorado” and Gray’s Botany. And a summer job in
1879 led to her first collection of botanical specimens. Through
Jacob Scherrer she became shepherd to a flock of pre-schoolers
whom she turned into little naturalists. They brought her rocks,
insects, birds’ eggs, as well as wild flowers, and were good be¬
cause they were interested. During that summer she also learned
to ride horseback, in preparation for field trips.

The immediate necessity of earning a living caused her to ap¬
ply for a teacher’s j ob, and to start teaching eighth grade and high
school Latin. She taught a variety of classes the next few years,
including drawing. Often she corrected as many as two hundred
compositions a week, in natural science, or history, or English, or
American literature, as the case might be. The year she taught
astronomy was distinguished by the transit of Venus. This she
and her students observed through blackened glasses. She got
them out at four in the morning to admire a magnificent comet,
and took them on innumerable night expeditions.

On a salary of $475 a year, Alice Eastwood had to skimp to
finance the summers she lived for—summers in the Rocky Moun¬
tains. Her personal wants were few, and her sole extravagance
the buying of botanical books. She made her own clothes. At first
she rode side-saddle with a long, voluminous skirt, carrying a
long, voluminous nightgown (disguised as a bustle) for over-

8

The Perennial Adventure

night stops. But in time she pioneered among women by design¬
ing and making a more sensible denim costume—and riding
astride when she attacked such a mountain as Grays Peak in the
great Continental Divide. This she did several times, and her
summer adventures should inspire an epic saga. Once when her
horse became terrified during an electric storm, most of her
money was scattered and lost. Telling about it afterwards she
confessed, “As a matter of fact, I always had more concern for
my plants than my money! ”

These precious plants became the nucleus of the State Univer¬
sity’s Herbarium at Boulder. Alice Eastwood’s own work on the
flora of Colorado was begun when she made her first real botani¬
cal discoveries in almost unknown territory. She preferred to
travel alone, but others often wanted to go along, to be guided
by such an erudite and entertaining person. She became increas¬
ingly independent in spirit and unconventional in action, scarcely
realizing it until disturbed by an episode unexpectedly tinged
with sadness.

In 18 81 she took advantage of low train fares, caused by a rail¬
road rate war, to travel east and visit her Uncle William and his
family at Highland Creek. The old man she found congenial as
ever, but the girl cousins with whom she once had played so hap¬
pily and freely—these childhood companions had turned into
“high-toned” young ladies who gazed askance at her queer clothes
and shuddered at her strange adventures. Alice Eastwood, east¬
ern Canadian in origin, now longed for her home in western
America.

But first, before returning to the now, she traveled farther

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

9

back in time. At Oshawa she found the orchard cut down, Father
Pugh nowhere about, and no Sisters she knew in the convent. She
then visited Newburyport, met and enjoyed friends of her step¬
mother and, eventually, found her way into the inner circle of
Cambridge scholars. The Gray Herbarium was on her itinerary,
and Asa Gray she met in his own garden. The Botany written by
this renowned Harvard professor had been her constant com¬
panion during all her summers in the Colorado mountains. With
the simplicity and generosity of true greatness, Dr. Gray en¬
couraged his admirer to tell him of her own tiny discoveries, and
fired her with true botanical zeal. Alice Eastwood could see, from
the eminence of this Cambridge garden, that her mountain time
had been play time until now.

Back home again, her most rewarding expedition occurred
when she guided the English naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace,
up Grays Peak during alpine flowering season. She possessed his
monumental “Malay Archipelago,” and was awed by his exten¬
sive and penetrative knowledge of distant oceanic islands. Dar¬
win’s contemporary who had designated the “Wallace Line”
separating the flora and fauna of Asia and Australia—this world
figure interrupted his American lecture tour to go skylarking in
the Rockies with a young woman in her twenties, as yet unknown
to the world! The catalyzer in this unlikely episode was the high
school principal, James Baker, who recognized the two as con¬
genial spirits—though separated by forty years in age, a conti¬
nent and an ocean in locale.

During a complete decade Alice Eastwood divided her life
between avocation (at which she earned her living) and vocation

IO

The Perennial Adventure

-spending Denver winters with herstudents and summers among
the Colorado flora. Her salary rose to $100 a month, and her
botanical library and herbarium increased in size. She also man¬
aged to save enough to buy a lot in downtown Denver, going in
with her father. When there was a real estate boom she sold her
share for $10,000.

“I felt like a millionaire,” Miss Eastwood confessed to Mrs.
Wilson. With a keen business sense, she then invested $5,000 in
a building with her father; bought two more lots and built two
small houses for rent income, all this for the remaining $5,000!
“Now,” triumphantly she told herself, “I can retire and devote
all the rest of my life to Botany! ”

From reading, she decided that Ponce de Leon was right, Flor¬
ida must truly be the “Land of Flowers.” She accompanied an
ailing friend on a train headed that way. But it was a year of a big
freeze, and she found seashells far more plentiful than flowers.
Leaving the beautiful beaches after a few weeks, she visited St.
Augustine and started north on her first sea voyage—from Jack¬
sonville to Charleston, South Carolina. Here she switched back
to train travel, destination Washington, D. C. She called on fel¬
low botanists in the National Herbarium; and also took in the art
galleries, seeing great paintings and sculpture for the first time.
She attended concerts, and several sessions of the Senate.

Cincinnati was her next stop—where Alice Eastwood added to
her enjoyment of untamed beauty a lasting appreciation of the
art of landscaping and plant cultivation. She reveled in planned
gardens abounding with spring bulbs in full bloom, lilies-of-the-

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood,

11

valley, crocus, tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. This new interest
would have its most tangible manifestation when she helped to
plan and plant Golden Gate Park, and the floral “Magic Carpet”
on Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay.

California she eventually reached by accompanying and caring
for an old lady with a broken hip whose destination was San
Diego. This seaside town beloved by invalids became Alice East¬
wood’s temporary home. She was quite free to wander over mesas
and explore the arroyos; and she carried two prized books with
her, “Botany of the California Geological Survey,” which she
had purchased from the Gray Herbarium, and Asa Gray’s own
“Synoptical Flora.” She had read tantalizing scraps of the lives
of early adventurer-botanists who collected along this coast. She
resolved someday to fill in gaps of biographical information and
write her own account of such intrepid scientists as Archibald
Menzies, Thomas Coulter, Thomas Nuttall and the Scot, David
Douglas, after whom so very many kinds of plants have been
named. This study would take form and eventually be published
as “Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast, and the Trees
They Found There.”

Alice Eastwood contributed to botanical magazines and met
contemporary botanists of note like C. R. Orcutt and Daniel
Cleveland, a pioneer San Diego botanist who had assisted Brewer
orr the Geological Survey. With Kate Sessions, the well-known
nursery-woman, she formed a lifelong friendship. But her new
friends were not all botanically bent. In San Diego, as every¬
where else that she went, Alice Eastwood entered more than one
world.

12

The Perennial Adventure

A specific study of trees (not to materialize until 1905 in “A
Handbook of the Trees of California”) drew the young botanist
north to Santa Cruz, where Menzies first sighted the Coast Red¬
wood. Breaking the trip was a stopover in Pasadena. Friends of
friends took Miss Eastwood on a picnic to Altadena’s poppy
fields 5 and also to call on Mrs. Ezra Carr at her home in “Car-
melita Gardens,” near the intersection of Orange Grove Avenue
and Colorado Street. Here, among plants and trees from all over
the world, she saw her first Sequoia gigantea. This had been
brought down from the Sierra and planted by John Muir, whose
lifelong friend and mentor was Jeanne Carr. Wife of a one-time
Berkeley professor, Mrs. Carr had friends in the Bay region to
whom she referred her young visitor from Colorado.

Santa Cruz lived up to expectations, as did redwood and ma-
drone. But Alice Eastwood’s final goal was San Francisco. She
arrived in mid-May, 1891? to find the California Academy of
Sciences in the midst of moving to its own new headquarters on
Market Street between Fifth and Sixth. The past fifteen years
had been spent in inadequate, rented space. A new era of expan¬
sion seemed at hand, in which Botany as well as other Academy
departments would be benefited.

With characteristic directness and disregard of unimportant
details, she pressed through the mess of moving and ascended to
the sixth floor botanical work rooms. Quickly she found the
people she wanted to find—Katharine Brandegee, Curator of
Botany, and her husband with whom she edited and published the
biological magazine Zoe> meaning “Life.” Miss Eastwood wanted
to become a botanical writer and this already (in its second year)

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

13

was the best outlet in the West. Also the Academy had pioneered
in recognition and encouragement of women scientists. As early
as 1853 Dr. Albert Kellogg, one of the founders, had introduced
a resolution to that effect.

Although they had not met before, the young botanist fre¬
quently had encountered the name of Brandegee in her well-
worn Gray’s Botany and Coulter’s Manual. As botanist with
Hayden’s Survey in the ’70’s, T. S. Brandegee collected and
named many species found in Colorado. During the interview
Miss Eastwood secured an assignment to write an article for Zoe y
plus an invitation for Sunday lunch. Several Sundays she went
on botanical expeditions with the congenial pair, including one
unforgettable ascent of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County,
where one day she would have a week-end home and growing
ground.

The California visit in 1891 was followed by a return to Colo¬
rado, and a summer spent in and around cliff dweller ruins.
Alice Eastwood’s “Notes on the Cliff Dwellers” appeared in Zoe y
January ’93. Her first article for that magazine was called “The
Common Shrubs of Southern Colorado.” It came out in July ’91,
along with advice on “The Fertilization of Geraniums.” The
Brandegees were delighted with their versatile new feature
writer and begged her to return for the winter, to help organize
the Academy Herbarium. For this purpose she extended her
leave from East Denver High School, finding Principal Baker
cooperative as always.

Living on a salary of $50 a month in an unheated room, work-

The Perennial Adventure

l±

ing in inadequately heated and furnished quarters at the Acad¬
emy, she could warm herself with summer memories of mountain
meadows. The October issue of Zoe contained a paean of praise
for the “Mariposa Lilies of Colorado” commencing:

“So distinct, so individual are those blossoms that they seem
to have souls. They speak a wonderfully enticing language to
draw the wandering insects to their honeyed depths ... the bands
of color on both divisions of the perianth are bewildering, im¬
possible to describe 5 but more than aught else, they cause each
flower to say proudly, with uplifted head, ‘I am myself; there is
no other like me.’

“To see the different kinds of insects hovering over these
plants, alighting on the flowers and crawling slowly through the
viscid hairs of the honey glands is to understand how this race of
lovely hybrids came to be. Not in vain do these flowers set off
their beauty and store their sweets.”

A “biological” magazine, as Zoe professed to be, seemed cus¬
tom-made for Alice Eastwood. She enjoyed reading and writing
essays on a variety of subjects, such as appeared in Zoe during its
decade of publication. Contents in the bound volumes include
dissertations by authorities on “The Strange Nesting Place of the
Bam Owl,” “The Vegetation of ‘Burns/ ” “Ferns of Tamal-
pais,” “Studies Among Mollusks,” “Notes on the Land Mam¬
mals of California,” “The Cape Region of Baja California.”

The Brandegees tried hard to keep Miss Eastwood in San
Francisco beyond her allotted time. In April ’92 she was elected
a resident member of the California Academy of Sciences, and
assigned responsibility (to help support Zoe) in founding the

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

15

California Botanical Club, whose activities she directed ever
after. But she had no thought of permanent severance from the
Colorado scene.

She wanted to write, at home, and continue to spend her sum¬
mers in the mountains, going on exciting expeditions and col¬
lecting rare botanical specimens for her own herbarium. An
exploratory trip through a little-known section of the Great
American Desert was next on schedule. The winter she would
divide between her family, her students, and her writing. A full-
length book was nearing completion, after years of preparation.
This she finally published at her own expense, calling it “Pop¬
ular Flora of Denver, Colorado.” She lost a good deal of money
on the venture, knowing nothing of promotional methods, and
so enraged her father that he burned a large pile of unsold copies
which were cluttering up their small home.

Perhaps for consolation, his oldest daughter then joined a
Philosophy seminar presided over by a Unitarian minister and
meeting in the living-room of the Denver Librarian, John Cotton
Dana. Presently, as a commission, she arranged a botanical port¬
folio of local plants for the Public Library. From time to time she
sent presents to her friends in San Francisco, including five rare
birds’ eggs and two nests, as well as carefully mounted herbarium
specimens.

- At summer’s end in ’92, Katharine Brandegee wrote offering
Alice Eastwood her own salary of $75 a month if she would re¬
turn to the California Academy of Sciences as Joint-Curator of
Botany. She added that her husband’s resources now made it pos¬
sible for them both to work there without pay. The prospect of

The Perennial Adventure

16

daily association with such congenial spirits, such unworldly and
whole-souled scientists j the proximity of a fine reference library
and comprehensive herbarium—these were attractions hard to
resist.

After nursing her sister Kate through typhoid, Alice Eastwood
came at last to live in San Francisco, in December 1892. She was
thirty-three years old, in the full bloom of young womanhood,
already recognized nationally as a field botanist and essayist on
botanical subjects. The appointment was a popular one, and she
received a heart-warming welcome on the West Coast.

A year later the Brandegees left the Academy forever and
moved to San Diego, taking their own botanical library and pri¬
vate herbarium which had served the institution so well during
a difficult transition period. Alice Eastwood succeeded the wife
as Curator of Botany, and the husband as acting editor of Zoe.
This dual responsibility she took very seriously. According to her
biographer, “She was the only person who understood haphazard
Brandegee methods. Her orderly mind offended by lack of sys¬
tem, she set herself sternly at the task of organizing the accumu¬
lation of years of collecting. Far into the night, week after week,
she patiently prepared proper labels .... Thousands of invalu¬
able specimens of early California plants were then mounted in
accessible form,” for the use of hundreds of students through the
years.

Periodic collecting trips relieved the tedium of curatorial tasks.
Katharine Brandegee had arranged an unlimited railroad pass for
her friend and, beyond railway terminals, Alice Eastwood trav¬
eled by stage, on horseback and afoot. In due time, the automo-

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

17

bile and airplane eased her transportation problem. She went on
notable expeditions up Mount Shasta, to Del Norte County, the
Santa Lucia Mountains, and interior valleys in California3 be¬
sides to Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Baja Cali¬
fornia—returning always with valuable additions to the Academy
collection.

The Bay region she explored thoroughly, from “The Flora of
the Nob Hill Cobblestones” to the wooded slopes of Mount
Tamalpais. Southern California native plants and trees became
best known to her through a long-time affiliation with the Rancho
Santa Ana Botanic Garden founded by Susanna Bixby Bryant in
memory of John Bixby, her pioneer father. In the Santa Ana
Canyon, where Miss Eastwood went faithfully in spring and fall
for councilors’ meetings, she encountered a former student of
Dr. Jepson from Berkeley, employed as the Garden Botanist.
This was Tom Howell, who later became her companion on many
botanizing expeditions, her associate in the publication of Leaf¬
lets of Western Botany and, finally, her successor as Curator of
Botany at the Academy. Miss Eastwood’s long and understand¬
ing friendship with this much younger person rivals the most
satisfactory mother-son relationship.

The only break in Miss Eastwood’s ceaseless activity at the
California Academy of Sciences, during her fifty-seven-year ten¬
ure of office there, occurred in April 1906—as a result of San
Francisco’s catastrophic earthquake and fire—and lasted until the
Academy constructed and moved into permanent headquarters in
Golden Gate Park. The institution rose like the city, from ruins
and ashes. Meanwhile Alice Eastwood spent six years in study at

18

The Perennial Adventure

the great herbaria of the Smithsonian Institution in "W ashington,
D. C., the New York Botanical Garden and Arnold Arboretum
near Boston $ also in London’s Kew Gardens and British Museum,
the University of Cambridge, and Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

Returning home in June 1912 to participate in the Academy’s
reopening in magnificent new buildings, Alice Eastwood found
herself a legend—a celebrated heroine of the great disaster. Her
own account of course is modest, but she is credited with saving
complete Academy records and irreplaceable botanical type speci¬
mens which became the nucleus of all the collections that now¬
adays distinguish the Academy’s botanical department. This feat
was accomplished by extreme personal risk, while the Market
Street building was collapsing from earthquakes and threatened
by fire. Her personal possessions she unhesitatingly consigned
to the flames, save for a favorite pocket lens.

Contributing to “Science” only a few weeks later (in May
1906), describing the destruction of the Academy and most of
its collections, she wrote: “I do not feel the loss to be mine, but
it is a great loss to the scientific world and an irreparable loss to
California. My own destroyed work I do not lament, for it was
a joy to me while I did it, and I still can have the same joy in
starting it again ... to me came the chance to care for what was
saved from the ruins of the Academy, and with the help of my
devoted friends I was able to do it.”

This indomitable spirit characterized Alice Eastwood through
each era of a long lifetime. Lately lying in bed, mortally ill, she
would reassure her visitors, “Of course I’ll get well. I’ve always
been a healthy person.” Approaching ninety-five, she said, “I
count my age by friends, and I am rich in friends.”

A Tribute to Alice Eastwood

19

Finis

Early Botanical Explorers
on the Pacific Coast
and the Trees They Found There

by Alice Eastwood

Alice Eastwood’s Bookplate
Presented on her eightieth birthday
by members of the California Botanical Club.
The familiar vista of her beloved
Mt. Tamalpais

was drawn by Alice B. Chittenden

Early Botanical Explorers
on the Pacific Coast
and the Trees They Found There

The Earliest Botanical Specimens
from the New World

Long before anything was known of the flora of the Northwest
Coast of North America, plants useful to man had been intro¬
duced from South America into the gardens of Europe by the
Spanish explorers and conquerors. Columbus was the first, for
when he returned to Spain in 1492, after his famous discovery of
a new world, he brought back seeds which had been given to him
by an Indian who called them “maize.” Since the Spanish and
Portuguese were the greatest navigators of that time, Indian corn
was early distributed to remote parts of the known world, and
because of its wide distribution its American origin has been
doubted. 1 When he returned to England in 1580 from his voyage
around the world, Francis Drake also brought back plants which
were named and some of them illustrated by Clusius 2 in Atrobatis
Exoticorum in 1605. The flora of the Eastern United States had
also become known, many species having been described by Lin¬
naeus. 3

23

24 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

The La Perouse Expedition

In 1785 an expedition was sent out by the French Government,
under the command of Jean-Frangois Galaup de La Perouse,
who was noted for his prowess in war, his noble character and his
efficiency in all he undertook. It was well equipped to continue
and increase what had been learned from the voyage of Captain
James Cookj and able scientists in geology, botany, geography
and astronomy eagerly joined the expedition. During their stay
at Monterey, in September, 1786, the gardener-botanist, Col-
lignon, sent seeds of a lovely herbaceous plant to the Jardin des
Plantes, where they were planted. This, the first plant from Cali¬
fornia to be grown in the Old World, proved to be the rose-
colored Sand Verbena, common on the coast of California. It was
named Abronia by Jussieu 4 and later Lamarck 5 named it Abronia
umbellata. Collignon also sent a cone containing ripe seeds, and
from them twelve trees were grown in the Jardin des Plantes.
The pine was named Pinus calif ornica. Since the exact locality
was uncertain and the trees were no longer living, what was prob¬
ably the Monterey Pine was later named from the collection of
Thomas Coulter, Pinus radiata. La Perouse’s last letter was from
Botany Bay. The exact fate of the expedition is unknown, but
many years later relics were found on one of the small islands of
the New Hebrides and were taken to Paris, where I unexpectedly
ran across them in the Louvre in 1911 . fl

An expedition sent out by the Spanish Government, under the
command of Alejandro Malaspina, left Spain in July, 1789, on
a voyage of discovery. 7 One of the objects was to find a passage

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 25

from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The botanists accompanying the
expedition were Luis Nee and Thaddeus Haenke, both well
trained in their science. Haenke, who seems to have been the only
botanist at Monterey, which the expedition reached in 1791, col¬
lected the California Fuchsia ( Zauschneria californica) and Da-
tisca glomerata. The Coast Live Oak ( Quercus agrifolia') and the
Valley Oak ( Quercus lobata) were named by Nee from speci¬
mens brought to him from Monterey by two of the ship’s officers,
but most of the botanical collecting was done in Mexico and South
America. After Haenke’s death several years later in Peru, Reli¬
quiae Haenkeanae was published by Presl from his notes and
drawings. 8 It is one of the most valuable publications on the flora
of South America.

Vancouver and Menzies

Vancouver’s voyage around the world in the years 1790 to 1795
was most important in bringing plants from the Pacific Coast of
North America to the notice of the world. Archibald Menzies,
botanist and surgeon of the expedition, was not only a well-
trained botanist, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, but
also a cultured gentleman. His journal is in the possession of the
British Museum. The part pertaining to Oregon, Washington
and British Columbia was published in 1923, in the Archives of
British Columbia , Memoir No. 5, and that covering California
was published in the Quarterly of the California Historical So¬
ciety, Vol. II, No. 4, January, 1924. In the former is given a list
of the species credited to him in the North. As he was in Califor¬
nia in the late fall and early winter months only, he made but few

26 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

collections, and the specimens were generally either too old or
too young for satisfactory naming. All that could be identified
from his descriptions in his journal were named by myself.

Menzies was the first to collect the Coast Redwood which he
found at Santa Cruz. A * Specimens were sent to Lambert and
named by him Taxodium sempervirens . 10 One of them is in the
Herbarium of the British Museum, where I had the privilege of
seeing it. Menzies discovered the Douglas Spruce on the shores
of NootkaSoundin 1792, and also the Nootka Cypress ( Chamae-
cy'parts nootkatensis) y the Madrono ( Arbutus Menziesit) near
Vancouver j and the California Laurel ( Umbellularia calif or-
nica) in California. At Sitka he was the first to collect the Sitka
Spruce ( Piceasitchensis) , the Oregon Cedar [Thuja plicata) and
the Hemlock Spruce ( Tsuga Mertensiana) . These were not
named from Menzies’ specimens, but from those of Mertens 11 by
Bongard. 12 Menzies’ specimens were not always named at once,
and many first collected by him were named from collections
made later by others. Indeed, some of Menzies’ specimens today
are in the Herbarium of the British Museum still unnamed. I feel
sure that from seeds of the Yellow Bush Lupine collected by him,
the plants were raised to which the name Eupinus arboreus was
given by Sims in the Botanical Magazine , plate 682, with locality
unknown. 13 About the same time it was growing in the Botanic
Garden at Oxford. The fruiting specimen collected by Menzies
was later named Eupinus macrocarpus y showing that it was in
fruit. There has been some mystery about the tobacco which he

♦Notes “A” to “F” have been added by John Thomas Howell.

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 27

collected and reported as smoked by the Indians. At the Royal
Herbarium at Kew is a specimen consisting of some root leaves
which differ in shape from any of the native species of North
America. In the Herbarium of the British Museum is a specimen
collected by Captain George Dixon, from Queen Charlotte
Island, as Indian Tobacco. It is badly mutilated by insects and
consists of the upper flowering part of a stem. The only perfect
leaf resembles those of Menzies’ specimen, and the only good
flower differs from the flowers of all other native tobaccos. As
Menzies was on Queen Charlotte Island when Captain Dixon
was there (on a previous voyage with Captain Colnett), I feel
convinced that the two specimens represent a still-unnamed Nico-
tianaP

Vancouver was not always fair to Menzies. The man who was
supposed to care for the living plants which Menzies had in a
glass case Vancouver assigned to other duties j and on the second
visit to San Francisco when the expedition was not so hospitably
received, he would not allow Menzies to leave the boat. After
their return to England he demanded that Menzies deliver his
journal to him, but Menzies refused and referred him to the
officials of the British Museum who were the real owners.

Karl Heinrich Mertens was born in Germany and was well
educated, especially in botany, for his father (Franz Karl Mer¬
tens) was a well-known botanist in whose honor the genus Mer-
tensia is named. He was keen to explore and tried to join the
Kotzebue expedition but failed. Later he joined another under
Captain Feodor P. Liitke. Among the places visited was the island
of Sitka. From Mertens’ Sitka collections Bongard wrote his

28 Early Bo tanical Explorer^ on the Pacific Coart

Flora Sitchensis , 15 in which some of our Californian coast trees
were named. He collected both species of Tsuga (or Pmus, as
they were then called), one named P. Mertensiana and the other
P. canadensis. The latter was supposed to be the same as the east¬
ern species. He also collected the Coast Spruce, Picea sitchensis,
and the Coast Alder, Alnus rubra. There was confusion concern¬
ing the identity of Tsuga Mertensiana until Professor C. S. Sar¬
gent, of the Arnold Arboretum, identified it with what had been
known in California as Tsuga Pattoniana , the lovely Hemlock
Spruce of the Sierra Nevada. What was considered T. canadensis
is now known as T. heterophylla. Menzies was the first to dis¬
cover and collect specimens of these trees, but they were named
from the collections of Mertens.

The Kotzebue Expedition

The next important expedition was that sent out by the Russians
in 1815 under Captain Otto von Kotzebue in the Rurik } which
had been fitted out by Count Nikolai Petrovitch Romanzoff. 16
Two eminent scientists were aboard: Adelbert von Chamisso and
Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz. The former was of French par¬
entage but born and reared in Germany. Not only was he known
as an able botanist, but also as a poet and the author of the story
of Peter Schlemihl who sold his shadow to the devil. Eschscholtz
was interested in all branches of natural history, especially en¬
tomology. They were in San Francisco, Bodega, San Jose and
Monterey in 1816. Most of their collections were made in San
Francisco, probably at the Presidio. Their species could be found
there forty years ago, but have been killed by the dense forest of

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 29

cypress, pine and eucalyptus planted years ago, and more recently
by the Mesembryanthemum. The following list of plants named
by them, or named by others from their collections, may be of
interest: Abronia latifolia (Yellow Sand Verbena), Ceanothus
thyrsiflorus (California Lilac), Eschscholtzia calif ornica (Cali¬
fornia Poppy), Hypericum anagalloides (Swamp St. John’s-
wort), Lupinus Chamissonis (Blue Bush Lupine), Frankenia
grandifolia (Salt-weed), Rhamnus calif ornica (Coffee-berry),
Horkelia calif ornica. Aster Chamissonis, Lessingia germanor um,
Franseria Chamissonis, Eriophyllum artemisiaefolium (Golden
Yarrow), Tanacetum camphoratum (Tansy), Artemisia calif or¬
nica, Phacelia malvaefolia, Micromeria Chamissonis (Yerba
Buena), Myrica calif ornica (Wax Myrtle), Cryptantha Chori-
siana (White Forget-me-not), Rubus ursinus and Rubus vitifo-
lius (Blackberry), Solanum umbelliferum (Blue Nightshade),
Scrophularia calif ornica (Bee-plant ). B

Another Russian Collection

Extensive collections were made by others 3 and seeds of many of
the trees which had been named from the specimens collected by
Menzies, Douglas and others, were sent to the Imperial Botanic
Garden at St. Petersburg (as it was then known) and distributed
to other countries. A collection made by I. G. Vosnesensky in
1840 and 1841 was recently discovered and sent to the Arnold
Arboretum for determination. Mr. John Thomas Howell, of the
California Academy of Sciences, was asked to name the specimens
and undertook the interesting task. If these had been named when
received, many species of Californian plants would today have

30 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

different names, probably more difficult to spell and to pro¬
nounce. 17 This set of plants had been lost for one hundred years,
and before being named had gone around the world. Vosnesensky
was in the party that ascended Mount St. Helena when that
mountain received its name. 18 Collections were made at Bodega
Bay and at Fort Ross. In 1904 I went by sea to Bodega Bay to
follow the route of the many expeditions that had sought the
shelter of that harbor. An iron ring was still to be seen where the
old wharf had been, and outside the fence surrounding the point
the flowers grew as when the Russians saw them.

David Douglas

The most important collections on the Pacific Coast were made
by the dauntless David Douglas. 19 He began his career as a gar¬
dener’s apprentice, but became so greatly interested in plants that
when he went to Glasgow to work in the Botanic Garden, he at¬
tracted the attention of Sir William J. Hooker, Professor of
Botany at Glasgow University. He accompanied him on botani¬
cal excursions; and when the London Horticultural Society was
looking for someone to send on an expedition in search of new
plants for the gardens of Great Britain, Sir William Hooker
recommended David Douglas. He visited the Columbia River
region in 1825 and 1829, and in December, 1830, he made a
journey to Monterey and remained in California until August,

1 8 3 2-. To enumerate all the species that he collected as botanical
specimens, the seeds of plants which were raised in the garden of
the Society and distributed to members, and named chiefly by
John Lindley, would fill a book. After his tragic death in the

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 3 1

Hawaiian Islands, a sketch of his journeys in North America and
some of his letters were published in Hooker’s Companion to the
Botanical Magazine™ In 1914 some of this material was repub¬
lished, together with his complete journal, by the Royal Horti¬
cultural Society of England. 21 That he was able to collect what he
did seems incredible when one reads of the hardships that he en¬
dured—rain day after day, often without food, and in continual
danger from the Indians. He never gave up, even when he be¬
came ill, but tried above all to keep his specimens and seeds from
spoiling. An enumeration of the trees alone can be given. Many
were named from botanical specimens collected by him and from
which seeds were planted. Taxus hrevifolia (Yew), Juniperus
occidentalis (Mountain Juniper), Pinus Lambertiana (Sugar
Pine), P. contorta (Coast Pine), P. monticola (Mountain Pine),
P. ponderosa (YellowPine), P. Sabiniana (Digger Pine), P. ra-
diata (Monterey Pine), Abiesamabilis (Lovely Fir), A. grandis
(Coast Fir), A. nobilis (Noble Fir), and the Santa Lucia Fir
(A. venusta ) . c Among the oaks, he discovered Quercus Garry ana
(Garry Oak), Q. Douglasii (Douglas Oak), Q. densiflora (Tan-
bark Oak, now known as Eithocarpus) . He discovered Castanop-
sis chrysophylla (Chinquapin) and Negundo californica (Box
Elder), also known as Maple. It took him fifteen hours to climb
the mountain, near the cascades of the Columbia River, where he
found the two mountain firs, because the brush was so dense and
the trees were in an unbroken forest. 22

The following extracts from his journal tell of some of his
trials and show his character:

32 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

1826. Sunday, January 1st.—Commencing a year in such a far re¬
moved corner of the earth, where I am nearly destitute of civilised society,
there is some scope for reflection. In 1824, I was on the Atlantic on my
way to England; 1825, between the island of Juan Fernandez and the
Galapagos in the Pacific; I am now here [at Fort Vancouver], and God
only knows where I may be the next. In all probability, if a change does
not take place, I will shortly be consigned to the tomb. I can die satisfied
with myself. I never have given cause for remonstrance or pain to an in¬
dividual on earth. I am in my twenty-seventh year. 23

In November, while in what is now western Oregon, he wrote:

Saturday, 1 ith.—Last night, after lying down to sleep, we began to
dispute about the road, I affirming we were two or three miles off our way,
they that we were quite close to our former encampment; all tenacious of
our opinions. The fact plainly this: all hungry and no means of cooking
a little of our stock; travelled thirty-three miles, drenched and bleached
with rain and sleet, chilled with a piercing north wind; and then to finish
the day experienced the cooling, comfortless consolation of lying down
wet without supper or fire. On such occasions I am very liable to become
fretful. 24

The following is an account of his collecting the Sugar Pine
which he named Pinus Lambertiana in honor of the author of
Lambert’s Pinetum in which many Pacific coast coniferae were
first described.

Thursday [October] 26th [1826] I left my camp [near the Umpqua
River in Oregon] this morning at daylight on an excursion, leaving my
guide to take care of the camp and horses until my return in the evening,
when I found everything as I wished; in the interval he had dried my wet
paper as I desired him. About an hour’s walk from my camp I was met by
an Indian, who on discovering me strung his bow and placed on his left
arm a sleeve of racoon-skin and stood ready on the defence. As I was well
convinced this was prompted through fear, he never before having seen
such a being, I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and waved my hand
for him to come to me, which he did with great caution. I made him place

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 3 3

his bow and quiver beside my gun, and then struck a light and gave him to
smoke and a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone
and pine I wanted and showed him it, when he instantly pointed to the
hills about fifteen or twenty miles to the south. As I wanted to go in that
direction, he seemingly with much good-will went with me. At midday
I reached my long-wished Pinus (called by the Umpqua tribe Natele),
and lost no time in examining and endeavouring to collect specimens and
seeds. New or strange things seldom fail to make great impressions, and
often at first we are liable to over-rate them; and lest I should never see
my friends to tell them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely
large tree, I now state the dimensions of the largest one I could find that
was blown down by the wind: Three feet from the ground, 59 feet 9
inches in circumference; 134 feet from the ground, 17 feet 5 inches; ex¬
treme length, 215 feet. The trees are remarkably straight; bark uncom¬
monly smooth for such large timber, of a whitish or light brown colour;
and yields a great quantity of gum of a bright amber colour. The large
trees are destitute of branches, generally for two-thirds the length of the
tree; branches pendulous, and the cones hanging from their points like
small sugar-loaves in a grocer’s shop, it being only on the very largest trees
that cones are seen, and the putting myself in possession of three cones (all
I could) nearly brought my life to an end. Being unable to climb or hew
down any, I took my gun and was busy clipping them from the branches
with ball when eight Indians came at the report of my gun. They were all
painted with red earth, armed with bows, arrows, spears of bone, and flint
knives, and seemed to me anything but friendly. I endeavoured to explain
to them what I wanted and they seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke,
but had no sooner done so than I perceived one string his bow and another
sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and hang it on the
wrist of the right hand, which gave me ample testimony of their inclina¬
tion. To save myself I could not do by flight, and without any hesitation
I went backwards six paces and cocked my gun, and then pulled from my
belt one of my pistols, which I held in my left hand. I was determined to
fight for life. As I as much as possible endeavoured to preserve my cool¬
ness and perhaps did so, I stood eight or ten minutes looking at them and

34 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

they at me without a word passing, till one at last, who seemed to be the
leader, made a sign for tobacco, which I said they should get on condition
of going and fetching me some cones. They went, and as soon as out of
sight I picked up my three cones and a few twigs, and made a quick retreat
to my camp, which I gained at dusk. The Indian who undertook to be my
guide I sent off, lest he should betray me. Wood of the pine, fine, and very
heavy; leaves short, in five, with a very short sheath bright green; cones,
one 14/4 inches long, one 14, and one 13 , and all containing fine seed.

Douglas’ California journal was lost in a shipwreck on the
Fraser River in 18 33, 26 so we know very little about his collecting
in California, 27 but it must have been very easy compared to his
trials in the north. He collected around Monterey, San Francisco
and Santa Barbara. I feel sure that he must have been on Mount
Diablo, because he collected Calochortus pulchellus which has
never been found elsewhere. For a long time it was confused with
the other yellow globe tulip which was named by Carl Purdy,
Calochortus amabilisy when I showed him the Mount Diablo
flowers.

Other Botanical Explorers

Thomas Coulter was born at Dundalk, in Ireland, and became
interested in natural history when quite young. He was educated
at Trinity College, Dublin, and was especially noted for his
knowledge of botany and entomology. He also studied botany
under the elder DeCandolle at Geneva. When he was about
thirty, he accepted a position as medical officer to the Real del
Monte Mining Company of Mexico for three years. In 1831, he
came to Monterey, where he met David Douglas. They collected
together until Douglas went to the Hawaiian Islands and Coulter
began an overland trip through the Salinas Valley to Southern

Early Botanical Explorers on t he Pacific Coast 3 5

California and Arizona. He is said to have collected fifty thou¬
sand specimens representing fifteen hundred to two thousand
species. His notes and journals were all lost, but his specimens are
in the herbarium of Trinity College. He was made curator and
spent the rest of his life arranging his collections. He was not in¬
terested in introducing plants into cultivation, but only in collect-
ing botanical specimens. However, several important trees were
named from his collections. He went into the Santa Lucia Moun¬
tains, where he collected the Santa Lucia Fir, the Big-cone Pine
{Pinus Coulter!) and the Prickle-cone Pine (Pinus muricata ). c
Seeds of these were sent by other collectors to England and trees
were raised from them, but they were named from Coulter’s
specimens. 28

Thomas Nuttall was born in Yorkshire, England, and at an
early age was apprenticed to his uncle, a printer. In 1808, when he
was 22 years of age, he came to the United States and became as¬
sociated with the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. In 1809 and
1811, he and John Bradbury went on an exploring and collecting
trip to the Upper Missouri. In 1819, he explored Arkansas terri¬
tory. In 1834, he joined the Wyeth Oregon expedition, and
finally reached Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia River. 29 Dif¬
ficulties, hardships and dangers did not prevent him from collect-
ing. To transport and dry botanical specimens and the paper in
which to collect them under these conditions was extremely hard.

It is said that he would sit for hours before a hot camp fire, with
the sweat pouring down his face, to dry his papers. In 1836, he
came by sea to California and collected at Monterey, Santa Bar¬
bara and San Diego. Richard Henry Dana, in Two Years Before

3 6 Early Botanic al Explorers on the Pacific Coast _

the Mast, states that he was a passenger on the Pilgrim on its re¬
turn voyage, and that he had formerly occupied the chair of Bot¬
any and Ornithology in Harvard University. It is said that, in
order to avoid interruptions, he worked in a garret which he en¬
tered by a ladder through a trap-door, and after he was securely
in, the ladder was pulled up. He made large collections in Cali¬
fornia, but the chief trees are Platanus racemosa (Sycamore), at
Santa Barbara j Aesculus calif ornica (Buckeye), and Alnusrhom-
hifolia (Alder) at Monterey. D In Oregon, he was the first to
collect the Oregon Ash {Fraxinus oregona ), also the Blue Elder¬
berry (Sambucus glauca ), both common in California. Nuttall
gave his herbarium to the British Museum, though some of the
specimens are in the herbarium of the Philadelphia Academy of
Sciences. Many specimens in the British Museum have manu¬
script names which were never published.

Acer macrophyllum was collected in 1805 in Oregon, on the
Great Rapids of the Columbia, by Meriwether Lewis of the
Lewis and Clark expedition.

Theodor Hartweg was a German gardener, following the pro¬
fession of his ancestors. At one time he was employed at the Jar-
din des Plantes, in Paris, and later he went to England. He was
then twenty-four years of age. The London Horticultural Soci¬
ety sent him on a collecting expedition to Mexico, on which he
spent seven years and sent back valuable collections of seeds and
botanical specimens. In 1845, he was sent to California and spent
some time in the region around Monterey. The Monterey Cy¬
press was named Cupressus macro carp a by him. He also discov¬
ered Cupressus Goveniana at Monterey. Seeds and specimens of

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 37

Cupressus macrocarpa had been given to Lambert and named by
him but never published, and where the seeds came from was un¬
known. Hartweg also collected Quercus chrysolepis y at Mon¬
terey, which was described from his collection. He tried to obtain
seeds of the Santa Lucia Fir, Abies venusta , but found them
frozen. He visited Sonoma, where he discovered Quercus Kel-
loggii . Later he went into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, near
the present site of Marysville, and was the first to make known
plants from the Sierra of California. The results of his collection
were published by George Bentham under the title, Plantae
Hartwegianae . 30 In the Quarterly of the California Historical
Society for December, 1933, is a reference to Hartweg in “The
Memoirs of Theodor Cordua.” 31 Cordua accompanied Hartweg
on trips and gives a lively, interesting account of one they made
together to Bear Valley. On this trip, Hartweg collected the
Knob-cone Pine ( Pinus attenuatd) and many species well known,
such as the prostrate Ceanothus (Mahala Mats), Chamaebatia
foliolosa (Mountain Misery), the yellow-flowered Honeysuckle
(Lonicera interrupta ), the red Fritillaria recurua and the com¬
mon Brodiaea capitata . B

William Lobb began his career as a gardener, and while in the
employ of William Veitch, who had a large nursery at Exeter,
England, became greatly interested in botany. He showed such
intelligence and ability that Veitch sent him to South America to
collect seeds and plants. He was then 31 years of age and spent
several years in Mexico, making valuable collections. Veitch next
sent him to the Pacific Coast of North America, especially to col¬
lect seeds of the trees discovered by Menzies, Coulter, Douglas

38 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

and others. He landed in San Francisco in 1849. Later he learned
through Dr. Albert Kellogg, of the California Academy of Sci¬
ences, of the recent discovery of the big trees at Calaveras by a
hunter named Dowd. At once he set out to collect specimens and
seeds of this remarkable tree. He sent them to England, where
the name Wellingtonia gigantea was given the tree by the bota¬
nist, John Lindley. Dr. Kellogg had sent specimens to Drs. Tor-
rey and Gray and planned to describe and publish it as a new tree,
but learned too late of the earlier publication. Lobb was a great
collector and succeeded in getting seeds of almost all the trees
that had been previously discovered in Western North America,
many of which were first introduced to England from his seeds.
Several species of plants are named in his honor. He died in San
Francisco in 1863 and was buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery
(now Laurel Hill). 82 His grave was located by the California
Botanical Club several years ago, and the remains were moved
to a new location and the grave put in good condition.

John Jeffrey was sent to the Pacific Coast as botanical collector
by the Scottish Oregon expedition, about 1850. The members
raised the money by subscription, and each one was to receive a
portion of the seeds. Jeffrey was expected also to keep a journal
but failed to do so. He did very well at first but became neglectful
and was later discharged. He collected over five hundred species
of plants and sent seeds of most of the trees that had been brought
to the notice of the world by earlier explorers. Pinus Balfouriana y
Pinus Jejfreyi and Cupressus Lawsoniana (now called Chamae-
cyparts) were first discovered by Jeffrey/ The last was collected
on the southern flanks of Mount Shasta. It grows now near Shasta

Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast 3 9

Springs, which might perhaps be where it was first found. After
his discharge, he remained for awhile in California, but did not
even visit the Consulate for his letters. Later he joined a party
going to Yuma and was never again heard from. The cost of post¬
age on one box is interesting. Sent from San Francisco in 1842,
the postage on the box amounted to £135—about $670. How¬
ever, much to the relief of the subscribers, it was remitted by the
postal authorities. 33

The Incense Cedar ( Libocedrus decurrens ) observed by Fre¬
mont in 1844 s4 was described by Dr. Torrey in 1853 from speci¬
mens obtained by Fremont on the upper waters of the Sacramento
in 1846. 35 It did not become well known until 1852, when Jeffrey
sent seeds and specimens to Scotland. The name Thuja Craigiana
was given to it there, and in the gardens of Great Britain it was
known by this name. 36 Fremont reported seeing the Sierra Live
Oak in March, 1844, on the south fork of the American River,
but collected no specimens. 37 It was later described from speci¬
mens collected by Dr. F. A. Wislizenus on the American River
in 1851J and in 1868 named Quercus Wislizeni in his honor. 88
Fremont collected many plants, but made poor specimens, as he
was not a botanist. Fremontia is named in his honor, besides many
species. The localities are often doubtful, as is to be expected in
unknown regions where the physical features are unnamed.

The California Walnut

The California Walnut ( Juglans californica) was first noted in
i8 37j by Richard Brinsley Hinds, the surgeon and botanist of
H.B.M.S. Sulphury which made a voyage around the world in

40 Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast

the years 1836-42 under the command of Sir Edward Belcher. 39

It was late in the autumn of 1837 when an expedition up the Rio Sacra¬
mento penetrated from San Francisco to some distance into the interior.
... Occasional clumps of fine oaks and planes imparted an appearance of
park land. They were already shedding their leaves; a small grape was
very abundant on the banks, and we sometimes obtained a dessert from the
fruit of a juglans. 40

The next reference is that of Torrey in the Botany of the Mex¬
ican Boundary Survey, where he mentions a Juglans in flower
which was found by Dr. Parry at San Fernando beyond Los An¬
geles. 41 Sereno Watson named the walnut, Juglans calif ornica y
and stated that it ranges from San Francisco to Southern Cali¬
fornia. 42 Willis L. Jepson has separated the northern from the
southern form, giving the former the name Juglans Hindsii y and
restricting the latter to J. californicaf*

Notes will be found on pages 43 to 48.

Valedictory

1

Valedictory

delivered to the Class of '79

by Alice Eastwood

Classmates. For four years we have been together, sharers in
the same studies and in the same thoughts. Our pleasant compan¬
ionship is now at an end, and we are to bid farewell to our school¬
days, those happy days which have done so much to fit us for the
real duties of life. Our lives, hitherto mingling together so pleas¬
antly, will now be divided-each one starting forth on his own
chosen path. Though our paths in life may widely diverge, yet
the bond of truth may unite them. If we pursue truth, we shall
not wander hither and thither, according to the opinion of men,
but move straight forward, and the same goal will be our aim.

There will be found a compensation for all hardships, a solace
for all troubles, and a rest from all labors. Joy and sorrow visit
all, they are strangers to the lives of nonej but may our lives be
so ordered that happiness may prevail, and may our troubles be
only passing clouds, obscuring for a moment the sun of pros¬
perity. However widely fate may divide us, let the bond of
friendship be unbroken j let the memory of these years that we
have spent together be preserved, and let our school and every¬
thing regarding it ever be an object of affectionate interest.

Good-bye is always a hard word to say, but doubly so when
addressed to what we hold dear. With that one word we take
leave of the school whose benefits we have received; of the
schoolmates, to whose society we owe so many pleasant hours; of

our teachers whose care and kindness will never be forgotten, and
of one another.*

*The above was found by Mr. Howell among Miss Eastwood’s papers, in a
torn and yellowed copy of THE TRIBUNE: Denver , Colorado , Thursday
Morning , June 12 , 1879. In that far-off, innocent era the High School Com¬
mencement was headlined as “Denver’s Delight.” Besides the Valedictory, Alice
also read her essay on

“Pygmies are Pygmies still, though perched on Alps,

And Pyramids are Pyramids in Vales.”

Notes

1. The New International Encyclopedia y under “Maize,”

2. Charles de Lecluse, 1526-1609.

3. Carl Linne (usually called by the Latin name, Carolus Linnaeus),
a Swedish naturalist (1 7 ° 7 “ 7 ^)> proposed new systems of classification in
zoology and botany and was the author of many botanical works.

4. Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836) was a professor of bot¬
any at the Paris Botanical Gardens. His Genera Plantarum (1789) laid
down the principles upon which modern botanical classification is based.

5. Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monnet, Chevalier de Lamarck,
French naturalist (1744-1829).

6. The records of the first two years and the collections of natural his¬
tory were sent overland from Kamchatka. From the manuscripts which
were saved, four volumes (and an atlas) were published in Paris in 1797
under the title, Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde ) fublie conforme-
ment au decret du 22 Avril 1791, et redige par M.L. A. Milet-Mureau.
Numerous editions have been issued in English and other languages. The
one used in connection with this paper is that published in London in three
volumes in 1807.

In 1937 Le voyage de Laperouse sur les cotes de VAlaska et de la Cali¬
fornia (1786), with an introduction and notes by Gilbert Chinard, was
published in Baltimore by the Johns Hopkins Press. In looking over the
part relating to Monterey in this volume, I was especially interested in the
identity of the plants noted by M. Collignon (on p. 106). My determina¬
tions in regard to them are as follows:

L’absinthe maritime, Artemisia pycnosephala DC.

L’armoise, Artemisia heterophylla Nutt.

Le grand absinthe, probably Artemisia calif ornica Less.

L’aurone male, perhaps Artemisia ludoviciana Nutt. (This was the
identification of the white-downy artemisia related to A. heterophylla of
Asa Gray in the Synoptical Flora of North America.')

La. verge d’or du Canada, Solidago calif ornica Nutt. Goldenrod.

L’aster (oeil de christ), probably Aster chilensis Nees.

La morelle a fruit noir, Solanum Douglasii Dunal. Nightshade.

La perce-pierre (criste-marine), Salicornia ambigua Michx. Samphire.

La menthe aquatique, probably Mentha canadensis L.

Le the du Mexique, Micromeria Chamissonis (Benth.) Greene. Yerba
Buena.

La millefeuille, Achillea Millefolium L. Milfoil or Yarrow.

7. Viaje folitico-cientifico alrededor del mundo for las cor betas Des-
cubiertay Atrevida al mando de los cafitanes de navio y D. AlejandroMa-
lasfinay Don Jose de Bustamante y Guerra desde 1789 a 1794 > published
with an introduction by Pedro de Nova y Colson, Madrid, 1885, gives the
account of this expedition. Excerpts from this work were printed in the
California Historical Society Quarterly y III (Oct. 1924), 215-37.

8. Karel Boriwog (C. B.) Presl, Reliquiae Haenkeanae, Prague
[1825-36], 2 vols.

9. Malaspina had mentioned “the red pine, a tree much taller than the
rest” in the vicinity of Monterey. See the California Historical Society
Quarterly y III (Oct. 1924), 221.

10. From Aylmer Bourke Lambert, A Description of the Genus Pinus
(London, 1832), the description of the Taxodium semfervirens is quoted
by Willis Linn Jepson in his The Silva of California (Berkeley, 1910),
p. 138.

11. Karl Heinrich Mertens, naturalist of the Luetke expedition, 1827.

12. Heinrich Gustav Bongard (1786-1839), botanist at St. Peters¬
burg.

13. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine . . . continued by John Sims, M.D.,
London, 1803, Vol. XVII.

14. See “The Tobacco Collected by Archibald Menzies on the North¬
west Coast of America,” by Alice Eastwood, in Leaflets of Western Bot-
any y Y ol. II,No. 6, April, 1938. Menzies’ first voyage was made in 1786,
when he sailed on the Prince of Wales y commanded by Captain Colnett.
The ship arrived at Nootka in July, 1787; and early in August, as they
were leaving for Alaska, Captain Dixon met them just outside the harbor
and persuaded them to accompany him to the Queen Charlotte Islands.

15. “Observations sur la vegetation de L’ile de Sitcha,” St. Petersburg
Academy of Sciences Memoirs, II (1833), 120-77, plates 1-6.

16. Kotzebue’s own account of this expedition is given in his Entdeck-
ungs-Reise in die Sud-See und der Berings-Strasse zur Erforschung einer
nord-ostlichen Durchfahrt ... 1815,1816,1817 y und 1818 . .. auf dem

Schiffe Ruricky Weimar, 1821 (3 vols.). It was translated into English
and published in London in 1821. Chamisso’s account of the voyage was
published in Leipzig in 1836 under the title, Reise um die Welt mit der
Romanzoffischen Entdeckungs-Exf edition in den Jahren 1815-18 auf
der Brigg Rurik. . . . Louis Choris, the artist of the expedition, also has
recorded the voyage in his Voyage pittoresque autour du monde , Paris,
1822. In 1932, the Stanford University Press issued as Vol. II, No. 2, of
its Publications in History, Economics, and Political Science, The Visit of
the <( Rurick ,> to San Francisco in 1816, by August C. Mahr, which con¬
tains extracts from the works mentioned above. The plants collected by
Chamisso are given on pp. 127-77.

17. See “A Russian Collection of Californian Plants,” by John
Thomas Howell, in Leaflets of Western Botany , II (April 19, 1937),
17-20, for an account of this collection.

18. See “Historic Mount Saint Helena,” by Honoria Tuomey, in the
California Historical Society Quarterly, III (July, 1924), 171-77.

19. Names of plants collected by Douglas that are in the herbarium of
the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leningrad, are given in “A Collection
of Douglas’ Western American Plants,” by John Thomas Howell, in
Leaflets of Western Botany , Vol. II, Nos. 4-10, Nov., 1937, to April,
I 939*

20. “A Brief Memoir of the Life of Mr. David Douglas, with Ex¬
tracts from His Letters,” in Companion to the Botanical Magazine , by
Sir W. J. Hooker, London, 1836, II, 79-182.

21 . Journal Kept by David Douglas During His Travels in North
America , 1825-1827 ... with Appendices Containing a List of the Plants
and an Account of His Death in 1854 , London: William Wesley & Son,
1914, hereafter cited as Douglas Journal.

22. Ibid., p. 60; Companion to the Botanical Magazine, II, p. 93.

2 3. Douglas Journal, p. 152.

24. Ibid.,pp. 235-36.

25. Ibid.,pp. 229-31.

26. See Douglas’ letter to Hartnell in Madrono , 11 (1933), 98-99,
and. Leaflets of Western Botany , II (1937), 61.

27. A letter from Monterey, dated November 23, 1831, was printed
in the Companion to the Botanical Magazine , II, 149-51, and reprinted
in the California Historical Society Quarterly , II (Oct. 1923), 223-27,

from a copy in the Douglas correspondence in the Provincial Library at
Victoria, B. C. The latter is dated November 20 and differs slightly from
the previously printed version.

28. Veitch’s Manual of the Coni ferae, London: James Veitch & Sons,
Ltd., 1900, p.326.

29. In Madrono,!! (1934), 143-47, is a biographical note on Nuttall
by W. L. Jepson entitled, “The Overland Journey of Thomas Nuttall.”

30. George Bentham (1839-1894), Plantae Hartwegianae, London,
1 839"5 7- The California plants collected by Hartweg in 1846 and 1847
are given on pp. 294-342.

31. Vol. XII, No. 4, pp. 279-311. Cordua’s Memoirs were also re¬
printed in pamphlet form by the California Historical Society.

32. Veitch, of. cit., pp. 243-44.

33. “John Jeffrey and the Oregon Expedition,” in Notes from the
Royal Botanic Garden, XX (Edinburgh, July, 1939), 1-53.

34. John Charles Fremont, Memoirs of My Life, Chicago and N. Y.,

i 88 7 >P- 335 -

35. Jepson, Silva, p. 149.

36. Veitch, of. cit., p. 254.

37. Fremont, of. cit., p. 345.

38. Jepson, of. cit., p. 232. Adolph Wislizenus (1810-89) was a
physician and botanist of German birth who came to America in 1835 and
to California for a brief visit in 1851.

39. Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Performed in Her Maj¬
esty’s Shif Sulfhur, During the Years 1836-1842, by Sir Edward Belcher,
London, 1843,11,347.

40. Jepson, of. cit., p. 196, quoting from the preface to Bentham’s
Botany of the Sulfhur.

41. United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1859, Part I> P- 205.

42. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Proceedings, 1857,

349-

43. University of California Agricultural Experiment Station Bulle¬
tin,^. 203 (1909), p. 27.

Additional Notes by John Thomas Howell

A. That material of the Redwood was brought to Spain by Malaspina
now appears most certain. Trees at Granada, because of their size and ap¬
parent age, must certainly have been grown from seed collected as early
as the Malaspina Expedition. See “Sequoia sempervirens in Granada,”
Madrono , I (Sept., 1929), 242.

B. Kotzebue was in command of two Russian expeditions which vis¬
ited the west coast of North America, the first in the Rurik as described
by Miss Eastwood which visited California in 1816, the second in the
Predfriatie which visited San Francisco in 1824. Chamisso and Esch-
scholtz were the naturalists in 1816, with Chamisso attending to the bo¬
tanical collections. In 1824, Eschscholtz alone was naturalist and it was
from his own collections that he named such well-known California
plants as the Yellow Sand Verbena, California Lilac and Coffee-berry.
See “The Botanical Collections of Chamisso and Eschscholtz in Cali¬
fornia,” by Alice Eastwood, in Leaflets of Western Botany , IV (April
28,1944), 17-21; MarinFlora, p. 29, by John Thomas Howell (1949).

C. Among the trees listed by Miss Eastwood as having been named
from specimens collected by David Douglas is the Monterey Pine. This
well-known California pine received two names about the same time:
Pinus radiata D. Don, the older and acceptable name, based on a collec¬
tion made by Thomas Coulter at Monterey; and Pinus insignis Douglas,
published later and based on Douglas’ own collection.

In this connection it is interesting to note the relation of Coulter and
Douglas to the Santa Lucia Fir. Coulter was the first botanist to discover
this remarkable endemic and it was perhaps he who told Douglas where
it could be found. But when it came to the naming of it, Douglas came
out ahead—that is why the tree is called Abies venusta (the name based
on Douglas’ collection) and not Abies bracteata (the name based on Coul¬
ter’s collection).

D. Although Thomas Nuttall is the author of the name Aesculus cali-
fornica i that early botanical visitor to California did not make the original
collection as is inferred by Miss Eastwood. The California Buckeye was
first collected by Paolo Emilio Botta, naturalist on a French expedition
which visited California in 1827. His material was the basis for a new

genus and species, Calothyrsus calif ornicus, but it was Nuttall who recog¬
nized the true generic affinity of the tree and referred it to Aesculus. In
California botany, Bottais commemorated in the name of our Farewell-
to-spring, Godetia Bottae; and in ornithology he is remembered as the
first collector of the California Road-runner. Botta did not pursue natural
history as his life work but became interested in archaeology and his fame
in that field rests on his excavation of the ruins of Nineveh. See “Early
Naturalists in the Far West,” by Roland H. Alden and John D. IfiFt, in
Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences, XX (April
3°> J 943 )> 3 L 3 2 *

E. The original collection of the Knob-cone Pine, Pinus attenuate,
was made by Theodor Hartweg in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not in the
Sierra Nevada. According to Sargent, the pine Hartweg collected in Bear
Valley was P. contorta var. Murrayana. See “Notes on West American
Coniferae,” by J. G. Lemmon, in Erythea, I (Nov., 1893), 229-231;
Charles Sprague Sargent, The Silva of North America y XI (1897), 9 1 *

F. According to Sargent, the Lawson Cypress was first discovered by
Mr. William Murray “on the south flanks of Mt. Shasta in California
. . . in the autumn of 1854,” Sargent, Silva, X (1890), 120. However,
the original specimens of the Lodgepole Pine, Pinus Murrayana, named
in honor of Andrew Murray, were collected in the Siskiyou Mountains
by Jeffrey. Sargent, Silva, XI (1897), 93 -

2000 Copies

Designed, and printed, by Lawton Kennedy
January 1954