We don't often think of ourselves as participants of history during our normal every day comings and goings. Culling through photographs in the vertical files, there are moments in time captured as far back as the late 19th century. Some photographs call out and pique our curiosity, begging for inquiry. Within the vertical files of the Mertz Library a picture and a name may be the only thing found. Sometimes there are a few more clues to share part of the story. Many individuals are trained scholars and many are also self-taught. We are all shaped by the contextual history around us and at the New York Botanical Garden there is always something to discover and bring us closer to the world of plants and the people who love them.
In this photograph Ruth Alampi and her husband Phil Alampi (former N.J. Secretary of Agriculture) are hosting the home gardening television show "Around Your Home and Garden" for ABC Network. The flowers center pieced, are likely a semi-cactus flower. Ruth Alampi had been honored with a flower in her name, in the same year (1953), by the American Dahlia Society. The seedling was created by Edward Lloyd of Montclair N.J. and the flower is described as a "flowering semi-cactus variety measuring between ten to eleven inches across and of a deep lavender phlox purple color."
Caroline Kathryn Allen was a botanist and taxonomist at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard and the New York Botanical Garden. In 1926 she graduated from Vassar College where she studied botany and chemistry. She then received her Master of Science (1929) and PhD (1932) from Washington University, in Missouri. Her career was dedicated to the research of Lauraceae (laurel) and her publications span between 1933 and 1972. Due to family responsibilities, she had to temporarily halt research between 1949-1959. However, she continued to contribute as a "Collaborator in Lauracea" without a stipend. In 1950, a document was presented to her by NYBG which granted "all and any privileges of working, studying, loafing or snooping in the herbaria…of the New York Botanical Garden, whenever and in whatever manner shall to her seem fitting
Side note: Photographer Bradford Bachrach specialized in portraits of women including Eleanor Roosevelt. His family firm has photographed nearly all of the Presidents since Abraham Lincoln.
In the winter of 1901-1902, Alexander Pierce Anderson was offered laboratory use in the brand new Museum Building of the New York Botanical Garden. He was researching the effects of heat and pressure on grains. A series of experiments with cereal grains, (such as wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, and rice,) began with the grain being placed in sealed glass test tubes and oven fired at 400 degrees Fahrenheit with a pressure of 200 pounds per square inch. When the tubes were taken out of the oven Anderson smashed the test tubes causing an explosive reaction resulting in the grain now transformed into a larger dried puffed version of itself that retained its shape. The puffed grain eventually became a highly marketed, produced, and familiar cereal via Quaker Oats Co.
In 1889, John S. Armstrong, moved from Ontario Canada to Ontario California at the age of 24 to improve his health after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. As the sunny environment helped him improve, he ventured to work in a nursery. Eventually he started his own Armstrong nurseries business. He developed new varieties of roses in the 1940's and was known as the "Rose Man". The rose by his name is accordingly described as a "dark red rose which never fades and is a vigorous plant that resists the common challenges of nature."
John Gilbert Baker was Assistant Keeper at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London from 1866-1890 and Keeper until his retirement in 1899. He was interested in phytogeography and in addition to writing Elementary Lessons in Botanical Geography, he wrote several handbooks including of the Fern-allies, Amaryllideae, Bromiliaceae, and Irideae. In addition to his writings, lectures, and awards, he was also known for his indiscriminate "unfailing kindness and tender beauty of character" as described in a tribute in The Garden Nov. 9, 1901. A photographic reading might interpret this kindness via the loving attention he gives to the plant.
Alma Barsksdale (pictured on the left) was a mycologist. botanist and taxonomist at the Arnold Arboretum and the New York Botanical Garden. She worked at NYBG from 1955-1974. Dr. Barskdale was a 1937 graduate of Maryville College and received her Masters in Botany (1939) and PhD (1941) degrees from the University of North Carolina. She was a Carnegie Fellow (1941-1942) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1951) She contributed to the research of Achyla or aquatic fungi. She discovered cycloheximide which was an antifungal mitigator of spot diseases in cherries and on turfs. She also discovered a steroidal hormone that induces antheridia in Achlya reproduction. Alma Barksdale was Senior Botanist at NYBG until her retirement due to failing health.
Rupert Barnaby was an English, self-taught botanist, plant taxonomist and senior curator at the New York Botanical Garden. He and his lifelong partner Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley (1908-1973) met as teenagers and shared interests in nature and plants. They annually collected botanical specimens from the Mediterranean and later the American West. In the 1950's, Rupert Barnaby came to the New York Botanical Garden's with specimens in hand and remained there for nearly fifty years. He published over 6500 monographs journals and specialized in Fabaceae (Leguminsae). For some time, he also lived over a loft in the Pierre Lorillard Stone Stable, where his room contained Persian rugs, an oil painting by Miro, two transitional drawings by Jackson Pollock, foxed botanical Astragalus prints, a landscape by Edward Lear and other notable collectibles. He received his BA in History and Modern Languages from Cambridge in 1932 and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from CUNY in 1978.
In 1940 a memorial plaque was dedicated in honor of Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton. This photograph shows workers moving a ten ton schist boulder for the New Wild Flower Garden. Today this boulder and plaque is fittingly at the junction of the woodland, meadow, and wetland paths in the Native Plants Garden. The plaque dedicated by the New York Bird and Tree Club in May 9,1940 reads:
A vertical file contains only two photographs and a name. Mary Louisa Butcher, we learn, is also known as "Polly Hill." She was an horticulturalist, and an "amateur scientist, botanist, and plant geneticist. As a child, she attended an "Open-Air School" for girls, "where the classrooms had roofs but no walls". In 1929, after graduating from Vassar College (1928), she traveled to Japan for a year to teach English and gym. She also studied Japanese flower arranging. She would return to Japan in 1956, where she met Dr. Tsuneshige Rokujo,who shared seeds with her for over thirty years. At the age of fifty, she began managing her parents farm, which for another fifty years thrived into the Polly Hill Arboretum on Martha's Vineyard. She is known for experimenting with how plants survive in colder climates defying the notion of zonal gardening. "Her motto: Experiment and Document. Her approach: Plant Everything from Seed."
Andrew Carnegie (far left), was a philanthropist and patron of science who made his fortune in the steel industry. He was also one of the founding fathers and Vice President of the New York Botanical Garden. A lesser-known fact is that on Nov. 02, 1902, after determining the saguaro belonged to its own genus, N.L. Britton asked Mr. Carnegie for permission to name the saguaro cactus after him. It is known as the Carnegiea gigantea. The Saguaro is found in the Sonoran Desert and can live up to 200 years. It grows between 40-80 feet tall. The flower blooms at nighttime for one day each spring. Andrew Carnegie went on to fund the Botanical Desert Laboratory in Tucson, AZ for the study of how plants survive in arid climates.
Edward Chamberlain was a botanist and bryologist. He was born in Bristol Mills, Maine, received his BA from Bowdoin College and Master's in Botany from Brown University. While at Brown, he was given a collection of mosses to study and identify. This turned into a lifelong interest and he continued to study and collect specimens for the rest of his life during his spare time. He had been employed at the Franklin School (a preparatory school for boys in NYC) and became head of the math and science department. until three days before his death. After taking his students for a trip to Bear Mountain to see the total eclipse of the sun he caught pneumonia and passed away a few days later, at the age of 47.
Edward Chamberlain was especially interested in Mosses, Hepatichs, and Lichens. His contributions can be found in The Bryologist and his correspondence letters to James Franklin Collins are in the BioDiversity Heritage Library collections. He was a member of many botanical societies in New England as well as the Torrey Botanical Club. He was also Secretary Treasurer of the Sullivant-Moss Society for ten years. It is known today as the American Bryological and Lichenological Society which was founded by Elizabeth Britton.
This exhibit was created by Marguerite Montecinos-Deppe under the guidance of Rose Octelene and Stephen Sinon. Kelsey Miller worked to design and install the physical component of this display in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
Images courtesy of Marguerite Montecinos-Deppe and Kelsey Miller.
Thank you to everyone who worked on this exhibit.
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