LIBRARY 

 NEW YOI 



BOTANlCAi 



GARDEN 



AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF DESCRIPTIVE FLORAS 

 FOR CALIFORNIA, 1838 TO 1880 



The first publication that may in a wide and rather loose use of the term be 

 called a "flora" of the Californian area is the "California Supplement" (1838- 

 1841) in Hooker and Arnott's Botany of Beechey's Voyage. In this Supplement 

 are described the collections made by David Douglas during the years 1831 and 

 1832 in the Coast Ranges, chiefly in the central region. About five hundred and 

 seventy-six species of vascular plants are listed. Some of these plants were ob- 

 tained by other collectors and a few were gathered far northward beyond the pres- 

 ent boundaries of California. In so early a day, the term California, extremely 

 indefinite, was not infrequently compelled to do duty as far as the basin of the 

 Snake River or the snowy volcanic peaks that look northward to the gorge of the 

 Columbia River. 



Several collections earlier than those of Douglas had been made in California. 

 The La Perouse Expedition visited Monterey in 1786 but later perished in the 

 South Seas. The botanist of the Malaspina Expedition, Thaddeus Haenke, col- 

 lected around Monterey in 1791. A few of his California plants were published in 

 Presl's Reliquiae Haenkeanae (1830-1831), but the greater part were destined to 

 lie at Prague for many decades and over one hundred and forty years elapsed be- 

 fore the California collection was taken up as a whole for serious study. Archibald 

 Menzies, botanist of Vancouver's Voyage, made at a half-dozen points along our 

 coast line important collections at intervals from 1791 to 1795, but his plants, 

 nearly all new, were published in a scattered manner by various authors, mostly 

 one or two at a time, over a long period of years. The Russian Kotzebue Expedi- 

 tion visited San Francisco Bay in 1816 and small collections were made by the 

 naturalists, Adelbert von Chamisso and Johann Friederich Eschscholtz. Cha- 

 misso's new California plants were not given to the botanical world separately 

 but were published periodically in connection with various materials gathered 

 elsewhere by the expedition. Eschscholtz is the author of a paper with the title 

 "Descriptiones Plantarum Novae Californiae", containing twelve Californian 

 species described as new. This is the first paper, almost exclusively Californian, to 

 bear the word California in its title (Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, ser. 

 6, 10:281-292,-1826). 



After David Douglas came Thomas Nuttall in 1836, whose collections along our 

 south coast, rich m new species discovered and described by him, were mainly pub- 

 lished in Torrey and Gray's Flora of North America (1838-1843). The small 

 collections of the "Sulphur" Expedition, made by Hinds and Barclay along the 

 California coast in the autumn of 1837, were included in the general botanical 

 report of the expedition. The various governmental Pacific Railroad Surveys 

 brought survejang parties to the Pacific Coast from 1853 to 1855, each with its 

 botanist or naturalist. The botanical reports in the various volumes of the Surveys 

 were, in the absence of other literature, extremely useful to those educated men 

 who as gold seekers from the eastern United States lived in California from the 

 year 1848 onward. There were other expeditions by sea, many other expeditions 

 by land (notably those of John C. Fremont), and there were numerous lone in- 

 dividual explorers, but from the beginning of scientific collection in 1786 no pub- 

 lication resulted for full ninety years that could be called a "flora" for our area, 

 save the "California Supplement" appearing in the Botany of Beechey's Voyage. 



With the rapid cultural development which came with the inrush of the argo- 

 nauts, the need for a flora of the entire state became apparent, and expectation of 

 such a treatise developed as part of the working plans of the California Geological 



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