TORREYA 







July, 1916. 

 Vol. 16 No. 7 



THE BOTANICAL WORK OF EDWARD LEE GREENE* 



By Harley Harris Bartlett 



Edward Lee Greene was born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, 

 August 20, 1843. His appreciation of the beauty of plants 

 showed itself at a very early age, and was wisely fostered by his 

 mother. At the meeting of this Society which was devoted to 

 the celebration of his seventieth birthday he told us that his 

 earliest vague childhood memories were of the geraniums in his 

 mother's window. By the time he was eight years old he had a 

 neighborhood reputation for his knowledge of the wild flowers. 



His first serious botanical work was done after his family 

 moved west. It was probably in 1859 that he came under the 

 influence of an inspiring friend and teacher, who encouraged 

 him to make botany his life work. Dr. Greene has written of 

 this friend: "A purer, nobler type of the naturalist of the re- 

 served and quiet, non-advertising class, there probably was not, 

 in his day, than Thure Ludwig Theodore Kumlien. ... It was 

 evident, not only from the friendly correspondence which was 



* A paper prepared for presentation before the Botanical Society of Wash- 

 ington, of which Society Dr. Greene was in a sense the first President. The 

 present Society was formed in 1901, by the union of the Botanical Seminar, an 

 informal organization without officers, dating from 1893, and the Washington Bo- 

 tanical Club, of which Dr. Greene was the President from the time of its founding 

 in 1898 until the reorganization took place. 



For material the writer is under obligations to friends and relati%'es of Dr. 

 Greene whose contributions will be explicit^ acknowledged in a more extended 

 biography which is in preparation. More than to any others, however, the writer 

 is indebted to President John Cavanaugh, C.S.C.and Dr. J. A. Nieuwland, of the 

 University of Notre Dame. The plate for the picture of Dr. Greene appearing 

 with this article has been loaned by the University of Notre Dame through the 

 kindness of Dr. Nieuwland. 

 [No. 6, Vol. 16, of ToRREY.\, comprising pp. 125-150, was issued 15 June, 1916] 



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