Charles Vancouver Piper

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Charles Vancouver Piper (born June 18, 1867 in Victoria (British Columbia) , Canada, † February 11, 1926 in Washington, DC , USA) was an American botanist and agricultural scientist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Piper ".

Life

Born in Victoria (British Columbia) , Canada , the fifth of nine children of Andrew William and Minna "Minnie" (Hausman) Piper, he spent his youth in Seattle in what was then the Washington Territory . At the age of 10 he began studying the local indigenous flora. At the age of 16, he was the chairman of the Young Naturalists Society , an association of youth devoted to the study of the flora and fauna of the western Washington Territory. At 18 he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1885 . In the same year he belonged to the third known group of climbers who reached the summit of Mount Rainier . After obtaining a Masters of Science (1892) he taught botany and zoology at the Washington Agricultural College (today State College of Washington ) in Pullman (Washington) from 1893 and remained a professor until 1903. During a summer school at Harvard University in 1900 he obtained a second Master of Science.

Piper created the first authoritative guide to the flora of the northwestern United States. Together with his colleague R. Kent Beattie, he explored the Palouse region in southeastern Washington and published with him in 1901 his first book, The Flora of the Palouse Region . In 1906 he expanded the studies to the entire state. That same year the Smithsonian Institution published its catalog as the Flora of the State of Washington . He also published the Flora of Southeast Washington and Adjacent Idaho (1914) and the Flora of the Northwest Coast (1915). This work earned him recognition as an authority on the flora of the northwestern United States.

In 1903 he began a career with the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, which lasted until his death. He was initially entrusted with the grass herbarium and from 1905 with the Office of Forage-Crop Investigations . He worked on the breeding and introduction of grasses . On a trip to Africa he got to know Sudan grass and introduced the plant to North America as a forage plant . Piper wrote that there were far fewer studies on forage crops compared to studies on cotton , grain, and other crops. He attributed this to the lack of economic incentive.

In 1907 he was one of the 5 initiators and one of the 43 founding members of the American Society of Agronomy and in 1914 its 7th President for one year, during this time also chairman of the Committee on Standardization of Field Experiments . From 1909 he published the Proceedings of the American Society of Agronomy , which gave an annual report on the development of the society. In 1911 he was commissioned by the War Department to investigate ways to supply the US Army with hay in the Philippines. His four and a half month journey took him beyond the Philippines to Java, India, Egypt and Europe; during this trip he collected seeds for the Ministry of Agriculture and also visited botanical gardens and museums. In 1916 he published four articles in the Journal of the American Society of Agronomy , each as Contributions to agronomic terminology. titled. In the same year he was also - as again in 1918 - assessor in the Committee on agronomic terminology . Piper's knowledge of grasses made him chairman of the United States Golf Association's Green Section , a position he held from 1921 until his death.

Soybeans were another subject of study by Piper. In 1923 he wrote - together with William J. Morse - The Soybean , a complete and nowadays classic monograph on the species. The botanist helped establish the species as a successful cultivated plant. Since then, soy has established itself as a staple of US agriculture and has been the second largest and most productive crop in the US after corn and ahead of wheat since the 1970s.

Services

Piper was the first in the United States to recognize the importance of soybean as a major crop. As early as 1907 - the bean was nothing more than a botanical curiosity - he began to study the species. He hired William J. Morse, a recent graduate from Cornell University , to fully exploit the potential of the soybean. With The soybean , they published the first comprehensive book on the species, which is now considered a classic.

He was the first to study golf courses from the perspective of a botanist and agrostologist . With his Turf for Golf Courses , published in 1917, he created a basic work that is still recognized today by golfers in the USA.

As an outstanding botanist, he wrote several standard works. His specialty was the flora of the Pacific Northwest . He has described more than 1,700 plant species.

Very few botanists were interested in commercial exploitation of their findings - especially in crop research. To remedy this, Piper became one of the founders of the American Society of Agronomy , which still exists today and is a successful organization.

Honors

a The genus is currently used as a synonym for Platanthera .

Works (selection)

  • Piper, Charles V. & Beattie, R. Kent (1901) The Flora of the Palouse Region, Washington Agricultural College and School of Science, Pullman (Washington), 208 pp. In the Biodiversity Heritage Library
  • Piper, Charles V. (1906). Flora of the state of Washington. Washington, Govt. Print. Off., 637 pp. [1]
  • Piper, Charles V. & Beattie, R. Kent (1914) Flora of southeastern Washington and adjacent Idaho. Lancaster, Pa., Press of the New era printing company, 296 pp. [2]
  • Piper, Charles V. & Beattie, R. Kent (1915) Flora of the northwest coast, including the area west of the summit of the Cascade Mountains, from the forty-ninth parallel south to the Calapooia Mountains on the south border of Lane County , Oregon. Lancaster, Pa., Press of the New era printing company, 418 pp. [3]
  • Piper, Charles V. & Oakley, RA (1917) Turf for Golf Courses. The Macmillan Co., New York, 262 pp.
  • Piper, Charles V. & Morse, William J. (1923) The soybean. McGraw-Hill Book, New York, 329 pp. [4]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ PIPER, Charles Vancouver . In: The International Who's Who in the World . 1912, p. 858.
  2. ↑ Author entry . IPNI . Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  3. ↑ Perkins; Woods; WSU libraries.
  4. ↑ Shurtleff, William; Aoyagi, Akiko. 2011. William J. Morse - History of His Work with Soybeans and Soyfoods (1884-1959). Lafayette, California: Soyinfo Center. 481 pp. (With many documents by and about Charles V. Piper. Free on the Web)
  5. ^ List of described plant species for Charles Vancouver . IPNI . Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  6. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter P. (PDF; 649 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved November 6, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  8. ^ Piperia Rydb. Retrieved August 7, 2019 .

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personal data
SURNAME Piper, Charles Vancouver
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piper, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Victoria, British Columbia , Canada
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1926
Place of death Washington, DC , USA