Tradescant, John, the elder (d,1638) 
The scanty data available on the Tradescants 
seem important because of the plants introduced 
in Great Britain in their times, many of them 
being collected for them by correspondents, and 
distributed by them to other connoisseurs* 
Gunther, in his "Early British botanists end 
their gardens" (Oxford, 1922), gives a reprint 
of Tradescant's garden catalogue of 1634, also 
illiaminating data from contemporary MSSj and in 
his "Early science in Oxford" (Oxford, 1925), 
he summarizes the more important data hitherto 
known on the Tradescants* It has been implied 
by some persons that the elder Tradescant sent 
collectors into North America, but Gunther does 
not show this to be a factj he does, however, 
quote a letter written by him in 1625, while he 
was gardener to the Duke of Buckingham, to a 
correspondent in Virginia, in which he said it 
was the Duke’s wish that he should "deal with 
all merchants from all places, but especially 
from Virginia, Bermudas, Newfoundland, Guinea, 
Binney, the Amazon, and the East Indies, for 
all manner of rare beasts, fowls and birds, 
shells, furs, and stones." 
The following source material on the Trades¬ 
cants is available, unless specially noted, in 
the U, S, Dept* Agr. Lib. or Lib. Cong* 
B., G, W. The Tradescants. Gard. Chron* (3) 43:361* 
(Jime 6, 1908) 
Boulger, G. S* The first Russian botanist. Jour. Bot. 
^33-38 (1895) 
_ A seventeenth-century botanist friendship* Jour* 
Bot* 56:197-202 (1918) 
Bxmyard, E. A. John Tradescant, senior. Jour. Pomol* 
1:188-196 U920) 
