20 Arnoldia 78/5-6 « October 2021 
acres and contained approximately ten thou- 
sand species of trees and plants, with particu- 
lar attention devoted to grapes and mulberry 
trees. Visitors had free access to the outdoor 
gardens every day, except for Sundays. 
At the same time, the commercial operations 
of the nursery expanded rapidly, as evidenced 
by William Jr.’s increasingly thicker plant cata- 
logues. He also began to subdivide the products 
among smaller specialized catalogues. In addi- 
tion to his standard Annual Catalogue for Fruit 
and Ornamental Trees and Plants, which cov- 
ered his earlier offerings, he began to issue cata- 
logues that focused on items such as bulbous 
flowers and tubers, greenhouse plants, chrysan- 
themums, and vegetable and flower seeds. 
William Jr. attracted additional attention 
in 1828 when he published one of the first 
strictly horticultural books to come from the 
United States: A Short Treatise on Horticul- 
ture: Embracing Descriptions of a Great Vari- 
ety of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, 
Grape Vines, Bulbous Flowers, Green-House 
Trees and Plants, #c. The book described all 
the plant offerings at the Linnaean Botanic Gar- 
den and Nursery, in some sense serving as an 
extended advertisement. The treatise also com- 
prehensively covered horticultural topics, such 
as planting, pruning, and propagation. It even 
included information about soil preferences and 
methods for fungal disease control. 
Over the next three years, William Jr. 
worked with his son, William Robert, on two 
additional books, for which his son was the 
primary author. The first, A Treatise on the 
Vine, was published in 1830 and was the first 
significant book written in America on grape 
cultivation. The Princes had systematically 
tested scores of European grape varieties (Vitis 
vinifera), along with improved varieties of 
native North American grapes (like V. labr- 
usca and V. riparia), and interspecific hybrids. 
The book described over two hundred Euro- 
pean grape varieties and eighty American. This 
work helped to establish viticulture as a full- 
fledged branch of American horticulture, and 
for William Robert, grape breeding and cultiva- 
tion remained a lifelong interest. 
The second book, The Pomological Manual, 
published in 1831, was a two-volume cyclope- 
dia that attempted to catalogue all fruit variet- 
ies cultivated in America, other than apples. 
(While the father and son intended to treat apple 
cultivation with a third volume, the work was 
never published.) Like A Short Treatise on Hor- 
ticulture, this book was widely read in America 
and became influential among aspiring horti- 
culturalists. Moreover, the Princes paid particu- 
lar attention to the nomenclature of the fruits 
covered in all of the publications, untangling 
confusion occurring in the field. This interest 
in the accurate classification of horticultural 
plants began with the work of William Sr., and 
it was among the family’s most significant con- 
tributions to American horticulture. 
As a testament to William Jr.’s interest in 
classification, he displayed in his home a bust 
of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who 
formalized the modern system of botanical 
nomenclature. William Jr. received the statue 
in a presentation by New York governor DeWitt 
Clinton at a meeting of European and Ameri- 
can scientists to honor Linnaeus’s birthday in 
1823. A simultaneous celebration in Virginia 
was officiated by Thomas Jefferson, an honorary 
member of the Linnaean Society of Paris. 
—_ 
By the time William Jr. died in 1842, Flush- 
ing had become a vibrant center for Ameri- 
can horticulture. Bloodgood Nursery had been 
established there in 1798 and would become 
known as a specialist in maples. (A common 
Japanese maple even bears the name of the 
nursery: Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’.) G.R. 
Garretson Nursery, a seed company specializ- 
ing in flowers and vegetables, was established 
in 1836 and would grow to cover one hundred 
acres, supplying wholesale seeds to nurser- 
ies across the United States and offering retail 
via mail order. But the most famous of these 
newer operations was Parsons Nursery, estab- 
lished in 1838; the Parsons family would later 
play a central role in introducing plants from 
East Asia, especially Japan. 
Meanwhile, William Robert had been assum- 
ing increasing responsibility for the Linnaean 
Botanic Garden and Nurseries. In the 1820s, he 
expanded the nursery, purchasing three large 
parcels so that his land holdings may have 
totaled up to 113 acres. These properties were 
located adjacent to a house he bought for him- 
self in 1827. The home had a wide center hall, 
