The Manuscript of Epling and Ewan’s Flora of Northern Idaho 
Early in his career, Carl Epling did a considerable amount of fieldwork in northern 
Idaho, and wrote a flora of the area. I don’t have the exact dates, but I believe the original 
manuscript was completed no later than ca 1930. Unfortunately, due to the arrival of the 
Depression, he was unable to get it published. He found one publisher who was 
interested, and extensive revisions were made to the manuscript to conform to this 
publisher’s wishes. The revisions were mostly done by Joe and Nesta Ewan, and Joe was 
added as second author in recognition of the work he put in on the project. However, the 
publisher needed a $1000 subsidy, and neither Epling nor the Ewans were able to raise the 
money. The single copy of the typescript, heavily altered by the revision process, has been 
in the possession of Joe and Nesta Ewan since then. 
The revisions mainly fall into two categories. First, extensive lists of specimen 
citations were deleted in order to shorten the manuscript. Some of these were simply 
crossed out, and can still be read on the manuscript; some were covered up by gluing strips 
of paper over them, so they can only be seen by holding the page up to a bright light; and in 
many cases, Epling’s manuscript was cut up and the relevant pieces glued onto new sheets 
of paper; in such cases the deleted matter is lost. 
Second, the taxonomy was modernized. This involved altering the sequence of 
families, so the page numbers are no longer in order for large parts of the manuscript. 
Handwritten lists of the corrected sequence of pages are present with the manuscript, so we 
can be confident that the current order of pages is the intended one. Alteration of the 
familial classification also caused other changes in parts of the manuscript: for instance, 
many genera are crossed out in the key to genera of Liliaceae, because the circumscription 
of the family was changed. 
Because of these changes, the manuscript is a bit confusing to use. However, it 
provides careful and detailed account of the flora of a phytogeographically interesting 
region where plant distributions are not well documented in the contemporary literature. It 
has been inaccessible for far too long, and we are glad to finally make it available to the 
research community. 
Alan Whittemore 
St. Louis, March 1995 
