Edward Lee Greene

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Edward Lee Greene

Edward Lee Greene (born August 20, 1843 in Hopkinton , Rhode Island , † November 10, 1915 in Washington, DC ) was an American botanist and theologian. Its botanical author abbreviation is " Greene ".

Live and act

Edward Lee Greene was born on August 20, 1843 in Hopkinton, about 30 miles southwest of Providence . As a child he was interested in plants. In 1855 the family moved to Illinois , soon afterwards to small Albion in Dane County in southern Wisconsin . Greene joined the Albion Academy in 1859 , which was operated by the Northwestern Seventh Day Baptist Association (until 1894). Thure Kumlien , a Swedish naturalist who studied at Uppsala University, taught at this strongly religious institution . Kumlien went on field excursions with students. Kumlien encouraged Greene in his botanical interests, and also an interest in classical and modern languages ​​- which would last Greene's life - was aroused in him. The two were in contact until Kumlien's death in 1888.

In August 1862, Greene joined the Union Army's Thirteenth Wisconsin Infantry, along with his father and two brothers . He was little involved in fighting and made ample use of the opportunity to gather plants. Greene did not rise above the rank of private and left the Union Army on July 13, 1865.

He then returned to Albion Academy, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1866 . He then began teaching in rural communities near Decatur , Illinois. In addition to his interest in plants, he also devoted himself to other scientific topics such as taxidermy . He stayed with a German family for a long time, where he learned German so well that he was allowed to teach the language at the Albion Academy in 1869. After a dissent with the school administration, he gave up his teaching license and turned back to Illinois.

In 1870 Greene decided to move further west. He contacted Asa Gray and George Engelmann who supported him and expressed interest in his services as a plant collector. In April 1870, Gray arrived in the Denver area , where he gathered plants the following summer. In the autumn he turned back to his religious side. Raised in a Baptist family, he was a Methodist in Illinois. Now in Colorado he reoriented himself religiously. He visited the bishop of the Episcopal Church in Denver and decided in early 1871 to work in a double role at the newly opened College Jarvis Hall in Golden in 1870 - as a teacher of botany and at the same time as a candidate for the holy order . In September 1871 he was admitted to the Sacred Order of Deaconry . He became head of a congregation in Greeley , Colorado and was ordained a priest in late January 1873. He was pastor of a parish in Pueblo, Colorado . Greene's botanical interests temporarily faded into the background. In August 1872, at the invitation of Asa Gray, he joined a group (including Gray and Charles Christopher Parry) that climbed the Parry's Peak and Gray's Peak mountains in Colorado.

In February 1874 Greene took over as pastor of a church in Vallejo California near San Francisco ; in April 1875 he returned to Colorado as rector of a church in Georgetown . In March 1876, Greene moved to Yreka California as a missionary . In the spring of 1877 he toured Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. He stayed in the Silver City area through the summer . His next stop was Creswell, Colorado , where he stayed until 1879. During this time he collected plants in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. On February 21, 1880, he returned to Silver City. Here he botanized among other things in the Mogollon Mountains and the Piños Altos Range . In the same year he began publishing plants from New Mexico in the Botanical Gazette . In the following year 1881 he took over the mission as rector at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley, California . With his arrival in California he changed his religious attitude, away from the Episcopal doctrine towards the Roman Catholic faith. In 1883 his parish had melted in half, whereupon the Episcopal Church expelled him from the church. He resigned his offices there and became a Roman Catholic in 1884. At about the same time, Greene turned away from botanists from the eastern states like Asa Gray, and turned towards botanists from the western states like Parry. Henry Hurd Rusby and John Gill Lemmon sent him plants. In September 1882 he began lecturing at the University of California . From 1883 he published California plants in the Botanical Gazette; he became curator of the herbarium at the California Academy of Sciences . In 1885 he received the position of instructor in botany at the University of California. In the same year he was formally accepted into the Roman Catholic Church.

Greene founded Pittonia magazine in 1887 . In 1890/91 the university set up its own botanical chair, which Greene received; In 1891 he became a full professor. In 1892 he was - together with John Merle Coulter and Nathaniel Lord Britton - one of the three US representatives on the International Committee on Botanical Nomenclature . In 1893 he was elected President of the Botanical Congress in Madison , Wisconsin. During this time he became an aggressive advocate for reforming the nomenclature; there were differences of opinion with other botanists as well as the university president. In 1894 Greene accepted a professorship in botany at Catholic University in Washington, DC . There he held the School of Biological Sciences alone and had only a few students. He resigned his position in September 1904 and worked as an unpaid associate . His interest now shifted from taxonomy and systematics to the history of botany. His extensive language skills helped him to work through literary material that was made available to him by the Smithsonian Institute (in addition to a small monthly salary). In 1907 the first volume of his multi-volume work was ready; it was published as Landmarks of Botanical History Part I. 1909. Greene started the second volume, but never completed it. It was produced as a typewriter copy by the Smithsonian Institute in 1936 and was not properly published until 1983.

In 1907, after contacting a former Catholic University student - who became professor of botany at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana - Greene expressed an interest in moving there. After visiting and negotiating with the president there, Greene came to South Bend in the spring of 1915. In October 1915 he went to Washington DC again, where he wanted to continue writing his Botanical History. He fell ill and was taken to Providence Hospital , where he died on November 10, 1915.

Honors

In 1894 he received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. The plant genera Green Ella A.Gray of the family Asteraceae (Asteraceae), Greeneocharis Gürke et Harms from the family of Borage Family (Boraginaceae) and Legenere McVaugh (the latter as an anagram) from the family of Bellflower Family (Campanulaceae) are named in his honor.

Fonts (selection)

  • Flora franciscana . (1891-1897).
  • Manual of the Botany of the Region of San Francisco Bay . 1894.
  • Edward Lee Greene: Landmarks of Botanical History . Ed .: Frank N. Egerton. Part 1. Stanford University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-8047-1075-9 .
    • originally published as: Edward Lee Greene: Landmarks of Botanical History 1st Prior to 1562 AD . Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1909, OCLC 174698401 .
  • Edward Lee Greene: Landmarks of Botanical History . Ed .: Frank N. Egerton. Part 2. Stanford University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-8047-1075-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See entry in Dictionary of Wisconsin History.
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
personal data
SURNAME Greene, Edward Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH Hopkinton (Rhode Island) , USA
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1915
Place of death Washington, DC , USA