Plant Science Bulletin archive

Issue: 1956 v2 No 1 Spring

PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN

A Publication of the Botanical Society of America, Inc.

VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1, JANUARY, 1956

HARRY J. FULLER, Editor 203 Nat. Hist. Bldg., University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
EDITORIAL BOARD
George S. Avery - Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Harlan P. Banks - Cornell University
Harriet Creighton - Wellesley College
Sydney S. Green1ield - Rutgers University
Paul B. Sears - Y ale University

TABLE OF CONTENTS
American Food Plants in China
N.S.F. HIGHLANDS BIOLOGICAL STATION GRANTS
VASCULAR PLANTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Academic Origins of American Botanists
Sweden Has Unique Palynoloogical Laboratory
Attention Phycologists
New Books
MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY FELLOWSHIP
LALOR AWARDS IN BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY
RESEARCH REQUEST
Personal

American Food Plants in China PING-TI HO Department of History, University of British Columbia

Since the problem of the introduction of American food plants into China and its significance to botanists and anthropologists have been systematically dealt with in a recent article of mine,1 I will confine myself here to a brief historical summary of the dissemination of these food plants in China and an appraisal of their effect on China's land utilization and food production. In fact, America's contribution to Chinese agriculture has been far greater than is usually realized by historians and scientists. While it is not possible within a limited space to document the important facts and generalizations, they are based on an exhaustive examination of available Chinese local histories and standard Chinese agricultural and botanical treatises.

The place of American food plants in the history of Chinese agriculture can be better understood after the nature of two major agricultural developments in early-modern and modern China is briefly described. Historically, the core of Chinese agriculture, during the last millennium at least, has always been its cropping system, despite some improvements in agricultural implements and water-control which cannot be called major technological progress. In the absence of major technological inventions such as affected modern western agriculture, the improvement in China's food crops did more than anything else to push the agricultural frontier further from the lowlands, basins, and valleys to the relatively well-watered hills at first and then to the more arid mountains. In retrospect, the first long-range revolution in land utilization and food production in early-modern China was brought about by the development of an ever-increasing number of varieties of early-ripening and relatively drought-resistant rice, consequential to the introduction of the Champa rice from central coastal Indochina at the beginning of the eleventh century.2 Throughout subsequent centuries the early-ripening rice was responsible for the conquest of hilly regions where the topsoil was sufficiently heavy and rainfall or spring water was adequate. With the development of some extremely early-ripening varieties, which matured between fifty and thirty days after transplantation, and their dissemination in the hitherto sub-marginal rice land during the first half of the nineteenth century, rice culture seems to have approached its saturation in China proper. But some three centuries before the apparent limit in rice culture was reached, various American food plants, such as the peanut, the sweet potato, and maize, which after 1700 were joined by the Irish potato, had been introduced into China and had begun to enable the Chinese, hitherto mainly a plain and valley folk, systematically to tackle dry hills and mountains and sandy looms too light for rice and other native cereals. If we call the conquest of relatively well-watered hills by the early-ripening rice the first revolution in land utilization in early-modern China, the conquest of a large area of dry hills and mountains, still virgin land by about 1700, and sandy soils along the southeast coast and inland rivers by these American food plants can justly be called the second revolution in China's food production. In fact, during the last two centuries when rice culture was gradually reaching its limit and beginning to suffer from the law of diminishing returns, the various dryland food crops introduced from America contributed most to the increase in national food production and made possible a continual growth of population.

The dissemination of American food plants in a country as large and varied as China was necessarily a slower and more gradual process than the late Dr. Berthold Laufer of the Field Museum of Natural History would have us believe. Thanks to the unique body of successive editions of Chinese local histories, of which more than three thousand are available in eastern United States, we can trace the main stages in the geographic propagation of these new food plants rather accurately.

So far as can be ascertained from written records, the peanut was the first American food plant introduced into China, probably by the Portuguese, who arrived in the Canton area in 1516 and subsequently traded at southern Fukien ports and Ningpo, which is within a day's voyage from Shanghai. By the 1530's peanuts were already grown in certain localities not far from Shanghai and attracted the attention of some gentry-scholars. Despite this early debut, it took more than one and a half centuries for peanuts to be extensively disseminated in the sandy loams north and south of the lower Yangtze and in the southeastern coastal provinces. Although before 1700 not a few of the coastal localities had specialized in large-scale peanut and peanut-oil production, sometimes for export to the rest of China, peanuts were not yet a common and cheap food in the southeast, as may be evidenced by the fact that they were regarded as a delicacy and served at formal banquets. By the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries peanuts made

PAGE TWO

systematic inroads into the hitherto under-developed western Kwangtung, including the Leichow peninsula and north coast of Hainan island, and other inland southwestern provinces. On the sandy bars of the numerous rivers and streams of Szechwan peanuts were grown particularly extensively. They were also to be found in a number of localities in central Yangtze provinces, such as Hunan and Kiangsi. Thanks to the peanut, the poor and hilly southwestern corner of Kiangsi had been transformed into a prosperous area of specialized farming. In north China, however, save for very few scattered areas, peanuts remained a comparative rarity down to the late eighteenth century. A scholar of central Yangtze testified in 1787 that "longevity nuts" (one of the common vulgar names for peanuts) were a "must" in any formal banquet at the nation's capital, while today peanuts are a very common food in north China, even for the poor . Various local histories of Hopei, the second largest producer of peanuts in twentieth-century China, took pains to explain that peanuts began to be planted extensively during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was not until the early twentieth century that the T'ai-an area, at the foot of T'aishan mountain, and the localities in the lower Yellow River alluvium in Shantung became the leading peanut- producing area in China. Throughout the last three centuries peanuts have brought about a revolution in the utilization of sandy soils along the lower Yangtze, the lower Yellow River, the southeast coast, and numerous inland rivers. Even in the crowded cropping system of some rice districts peanuts usually have a place in the rotation, because peasants, without knowing the function of the nitrogen-fixing nodules of the roots of the peanut plant, have learned that the peanut helps to preserve soil fertility. Peanuts are necessarily a secondary crop in a large country like China, but China, excluding Manchuria, with an average annual output of 2,800.000 metric tons during 1931-1937, ranks with India as a leading peanut-producing country.

The sweet potato was first recorded in some local histories of Yunnan in the 1560's and 1570's, a fact which suggests an overland introduction from India and Burma. But, it was also independently introduced into coastal Fukien two or three decades before it was officially propagated by the governor in the famine year 1594. Since then it made rapid headway in the southeastern coastal provinces. Ho Ch'iao-yüan, a scholar of Fukien and the compiler of the 1629 edition of the history of Fukien province, and the famous Christian prime minister and agriculturist Hsü Kuang-ch'i (1562-1633) were great enthusiasts for this new plant. Its unusually heavy per-acre yield (only next to rice), its pleasant taste, keeping quality, and value as an auxiliary food, its relative immunity from locusts, its greater resistance to drought as compared with native Chinese yams, and the fact that it can easily adapt itself to poorer soils and hence does not compete with other food crops for good land, are among the many advantages systematically pointed out by these two scholars. As the southeastern coastal provinces were always deficient in rice and the people were long accustomed to Chinese yams as a secondary food, the sweet potato suited the dietary habit of the maritimers and was welcomed. It soon became the poor man's staple. In the red rescripts of the Yung-cheng Emperor (1723-1735) officials of these southeastern provinces annually estimated the degree of regional sufficiency and the portion of food imports in terms of rice and sweet potato harvests. In the eighteenth century the sweet potato gradually spread to all inland Yangtze provinces, among which Szechwan was a leading producer. As China's population was increasing rapidly after 1700, a series of imperial edicts and provincial circulars exhorted the northern peasants to grow sweet potatoes on a large scale, in order to stave off famine. By about 1800 sweet potatoes, in the north as well as in the southeast, had become the poor man's staple. Along the rocky Shantung coast, for instance, sweet potatoes accounted for nearly half a year's food for the poor. The selling of roasted and boiled sweet potatoes by peddlers became a familiar scene in many large northern cities, particularly Peking. During 1931-1937 China, excluding Manchuria, with an average annual output of 18,500,000 metric tons, was easily the world's largest producer of sweet potatoes. Next to rice and wheat, sweet potatoes are the most important source of food for the Chinese.

Like the sweet potato, maize was introduced into China through both the overland India-Burma and the maritime routes before the middle of the sixteenth century. The overland introduction probably slightly preceded the maritime introduction. Owing to mountainous terrain and relatively backward economic conditions, maize scored an early success in Yunnan, wherefrom it gradually spread to Kweichow and Szechwan. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, perhaps much earlier, many mountainous districts in the southwest depended on maize as a primary food crop. An exhaustive examination of nineteenth-century Szechwan local histories reveals that maize was grown in practically every county except the lofty mountains of the northwestern corner, with heavy concentration on the peripheries of the Red Basin. Despite its early appearance in coastal Fukien and Chekiang, maize remained relatively neglected partly because of people's preference for rice and sweet potatoes and largely because of the fact that maize competed with native cereal plants for good land. Up to 1700, therefore, maize was grown mostly in the southwest and some scattered districts in the southeast. In the eighteenth century, when the Yangtze lowlands had been entirely filled up, hundreds of thousands of migrants from the over-congested southeast

PAGE THREE

found in maize the key crop with which to tackle hills and mountains of the inland Yangtze provinces. One stream of these migrants went as far as Szechwan and Yunnan, and another stream populated the whole drainage of the Han River, an area which comprises southern Shensi, western Hupei and southwestern Honan. Although the sweet potato was also grown, maize reigned supreme. By about 1800 the most of the once well-forested hills and mountains of inland Yangtze and the Han River area had been turned into maize fields. As the population of these areas grew rapidly, the Irish potato, which made its debut in northern Fukien sometime before 1700, was belatedly introduced and made possible the utilization of mountains too lofty and soils too poor for maize and sweet potatoes. By the middle of the nineteenth century a keen observer testified that "all the deep ravines and secluded mountains have been developed into thoroughfares." The ruthless onslaught on forests and consecutive intensive maize farming brought about serious soil erosion which in turn accounted for the silting of river and lake beds and more frequent inundation of the Yangtze. Although maize was early known to a few scattered districts in north China, its dissemination in the north was a very slow process. So far as can be ascertained from local records, maize was not systematically grown on the low plain of north China until relatively late in the nineteenth century, undoubtedly due to maize's keen competition for land with native cereal crops. In view of the large amount of maize produced by Hopei, Shantung and Honan provinces in modern times, there is reason to believe that during the last hundred years maize has been slowly gaining at the expense of some native cereal crops. The Irish potato, too, has been steadily making headway into the cold regions of northwestern China and Inner Mongolia. During 1931-1937 the average annual output of maize amounted to 6,500,000 metric tons. Maize thus ranks with millet and sorghum as an important dryland crop.

America's contribution to China's food production may best be shown in the changes that have taken place in the internal balance of Chinese agriculture during the last three centuries. Sung Ying-hsing, a foremost authority on traditional Chinese technology, estimated in 1637 that rice accounted for approximately 70% of China's total cereal production, an estimate which may not be an exaggeration in view of the overwhelmingly important role that early-ripening rice had played in the economy of early modern China. In 1931-1937, however, the percentage in total national plant-food production accounted for by rice dropped to 36. This was partly because of the expansion of the area under various native dry land crops, especially when rice culture was approaching its limit, and subsequentially owing to the dissemination of American food plants which in 1931-1937 contributed approximately 20% to the entire estimated plant-food production of China, excluding Manchuria. The long-range effect of American food plants on China's land utilization, food production, and population growth is too obvious to need elaborate explanation.

1 "The Introduction of American Food Plants into China." American Anthropologist, vol. 57, no, 2. Part 1. April, 1955. 2 For a detailed discussion of the first long-range agricultural revolution in early-modern China, see my "The Early-Ripening Rice in Chinese History," which has been completed and is ready for publication.

N. S. F. HIGHLANDS BIOLOGICAL STATION GRANTS

Eleven National Science Foundation Grants-in-Aid will be made for research at Highlands Biological Station, Highlands, North Carolina for the summers of 1956-1958. Applications for awards will be reviewed by the Board of Managers of Highlands Biological Station, and grants will be made on the merits of the research proposals and the qualifications of the applicants. The proposed research must be concerned with the fauna or flora of the Southern Appalachians and may involve any of the fields of biology. Applications will be received from any College or University, must be submitted in triplicate not later than March 1 of each year.

The following Grants will be available: four (4) postdoctoral grants of $500 each, open to advanced investigators; three (3) predoctoral grants of $400 each, open to advanced graduate students capable of engaging in independent investigations; and four (4) grants to graduate students with little experience in independent research, who must carry out their research under direct supervision of a principal investigator.

Application blanks for the above grants will be available about the end of November, 1955. Application blanks and further information concerning the grants may be obtained from the Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station, Prof. Thelma Howell, Department of Biology, Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia.

VASCULAR PLANTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

The University of Washington Press announces the launching of a 25-year publishing project, Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. This extensive flora will include keys, descriptions, and illustrations of the vascular plants of Washington, northern Oregon, Idaho north of the Snake River plains, the mountainous sections of Montana, and southern British Columbia. At least 4.000 species will be described. C. L. Hitchcock, chairman of Botany at Univ. of Washington, directs the project, which will include five volumes of at least 300 pages each. Principal contributors are A. J. Cronquist of New York Botanical Garden, Marion Ownbey of Washington State College, and John W. Thompson, curator of the Univ. of Washington Herbarium, in addition to Hitchcock. This major taxonomic project is being financed in part from funds of the Univ. of Washington, Washington State College, and New York Botanical Garden, in part from an appropriation from State of Washington Initiative Measure No. 171 (concerned with income from liquor licenses), in part by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society.

The first volume, Compositoe, by A. J. Cronquist, has already appeared. Forthcoming volumes, in probable order of their appearance will be Other Gamopetalous Families, Leguminosoe Through Cornaceoe, Other Dicotyledonoe, and Monocotyledonoe.

PAGE FOUR

Academic Origins of American Botanists VICTOR A. GREULACH, University of North Carolina

Botanical education has four main functions: contributing toward the general or liberal education of college students in general, providing background or service courses for students specializing in related fields such as zoology and the applied plant sciences, aiding in the preparation of high school biology teachers, and training the coming generation of botanists. This study is concerned with the last of these functions. Although Knapp and Goodrich (3) have made an extensive study of the origin of American scientists in general the present report provides more specific information about the academic origins of American botanists. A portion of this material has previously been published elsewhere (2).

The information on which this report is based was secured principally by tabulating the college or university from which each botanist listed in the seventh edition of American Men of Science (1) secured his bachelor's and doctor's degrees, this formidable task having been made possible by the availability of an NY A student assistant. The task was simplified by not tabulating master's degrees, though this may have been unfair to universities particularly strong at the master's level. Those listed in the volume under their botanical specialty such as plant physiology were included, but those listed as bacteriologists or applied plant scientists such as agronomists or horticulturists were not, except for plant pathologists. It is quite likely that a number of botanists was missed in going through the volume, but the number was probably not large. The 2015 botanists tabulated compare favorably with the 1381 members of the Botanical Society of America, the 2041 botanist members of the AAAS, and the 2079 botanists registered in the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, all at the time of the study.

Of the 2015 botanists, 1939 took their bachelor's degrees at colleges in the United States or Canada, 64 at foreign institutions, while 121isted no bachelor's degrees. For the purpose of this study, our territories and possessions were considered to be foreign. Universities in the United States and Canada provided 1640 of the doctorates and foreign universities 37. Three botanists listed no degree at all, 96 listed only a bachelor's degree, and 239 no degree higher than a master's.

Distribution by Schools. Table 1 lists all colleges and universities represented by 10 or more bachelor's degrees or two or more doctor's degrees. The 51 colleges and universities listed provided 1226, or 63 % of the bachelor's degrees, while the 46 universities provided 1605, or 98%, of the doctorates. It is obvious that a very few institutions provide the bulk of our botanists. While Table 1 provides an accurate picture of the origin of our more mature botanists, it fails to provide a complete picture of the origin of all currently active botanists such as would be provided by a study based on the ninth edition of American Men of Science.

A tabulation of the graduates of the mote productive institutions by decades revealed a marked fluctuation in productivity from one decade to another. Bachelor's degrees previous to 1900 were lumped, and then recorded by decades up through the thirties. Based on the per cent of the total degrees during a decade none of the colleges maintained a stable position, five main patterns of fluctuation emerging.

TABLE 1. American universities and colleges ranked as to the number of graduates in botany.

Bachelors in Amer. Men of Sci.
Doctors in Amer. Men of Sci.

Wisconsin

192

California

Chicago

176

Minnesota

Cornell

174

Cornell

Harvard

100

Nebraska

Minnesota

Michigan

California

Chicago

Columbia

Mass. State

Michigan

Illinois

Iowa State

Ohio State

Iowa State

Illinois

Harvard

Wash. U

Mich. State

Johns Hopkins

Missouri

Pennsylvania

Wash. State

Maryland

Penn. State

Nebraska

Wabash

Toronto

Kansas State

Missouri

Toronto

Yale

Oregon State

Rutgers

Stanford

Indiana

Iowa

Oberlin

Pittsburgh

Miami

Mich. State

Syracuse

Wash. State

Clemson

Virginia

Columbia

Duke

Pennsylvania

Indiana

McGill

of Wash

DePauw

Catholic

Utah State

Penn State

of Washington

Texas

Wellesley

McGill

Purdue

Radcliffe

Smith

Cat. Tech

West Virginia

Purdue

Colorado State

Geo. Wash

Dartmouth

North Car

Texas

Syracuse

Maine

Cincinnati

Queens (Canada)

Colorado

Dak. State

Louisiana

Vermont

Kansas

Idaho

Oregon State

Rutgers

Vermont

Maryland

West Virginia

Miss. A. & M.

Saskatchewan

Butler

Geo. Washington

PAGE FIVE

One group, including Nebraska, Stanford. Toronto and Michigan, showed a marked and rather steady decline. A second group, including Cornell, Indiana, Iowa State, Minnesota and Kansas State had much less marked, but rather steady, declines. On the other hand the third group, consisting of Ohio State, Washington State, California, Massachusetts and Miami, showed consistent, but not marked, increases. The largest group had a definite productivity peak during one of the middle decades, usually the 1910 decade, followed by a sharp decline and in some cases a slight subsequent recovery. This group consisted of Chicago, Michigan State, Missouri, Oberlin, Oregon State, Pennsylvania State, Wabash, Wisconsin and Illinois. The final group included only Harvard and Syracuse. Harvard showed a marked drop to the 1910 decade, followed by a slight but steady recovery. Syracuse showed a marked drop from the pre-1900 period to the 1900 decade, a recovery to the 1920 decade, and a subsequent decline. The remaining colleges as a group fluctuated markedly, their per cent contribution of bachelor's degrees for the five periods being 40, 58, 45, 55, and 58 in order. The dip during the 1910 decade is associated with the peak productivity of Chicago and the other schools in its group during this period.

Among the 15 most productive universities at the doctorate level only Illinois maintained a relatively stable position as regards the per cent of the total doctorates which it awarded. Johns Hopkins. Michigan, Columbia and Harvard showed a rather steady decline, while Chicago declined to the 1930 decade and then recovered slightly during the early forties. California, Ohio State, Iowa State and Maryland showed a gradual but rather steady increase. The final group had marked productivity peaks, Cornell, Pennsylvania, and Washington of St. Louis in the 1910 decade and Wisconsin and Minnesota in the 1920 decade. Cornell also had a secondary peak in the early forties. The remaining graduate schools as a group rose sharply and steadily from only about 4% of doctorates in the 1910 decade and earlier to almost 20% in the early forties, indicating a dispersal of graduate education in botany during this period.

Anyone who is acquainted with the history of botanical education in any of the institutions mentioned above will probably be able to correlate the changes in their relative productivity of botanists during the first part of the century with changes in staff and administrative policies. However, the introduction of graduate work in botany by more and more universities from 1910 on was undoubtedly an important factor in the steady declines, percentage-wise, of the productivity of some of the pioneer graduate schools. An up-to-date tabulation including changes in productivity during the past decade would undoubtedly increase markedly the productivity ranks of such currently active institutions as Duke and California Institute of Technology.

It should be pointed out that a percentage decrease in productivity of graduates does not necessarily mean a decrease in the number of graduates, since there was a marked and steady increase in the total number of graduates with time, which undoubtedly was due both to an absolute increase and to the death of many of the earlier graduates. At the bachelor's level the increase was from 127 in the period before 1900 to 679 during the 1920 decade. At the doctor's level there were only 17 graduates before 1900 and 711 in the 1930 decade.

That a relatively small number of the American colleges provides our botanists is indicated by the fact that while there were about 800 four-year colleges at the time the study was made only 303 of them had graduates in botany listed in American Men of Science. Only 88 colleges produced more than five botanists at the undergraduate level. Of the 85 universities offering the Ph.D. degree in at least some sciences 68 had graduates in botany, but only 39 had more than five graduates.

It is significant that, with very few exceptions, the colleges and universities listed in Table 1 have (or at least did have during their periods of productivity) separate botany departments rather than botany courses in a biology department.

Distribution by Type of School. The distribution of graduates by type of school is shown in Table 2. It is evident that the state land grant universities, which have the land grant agricultural college associated with the main university, are the most fertile sources of botanists at the undergraduate as well as at the graduate level. At both levels they have been far more productive than all the separate state universities and land grant colleges combined.

TABLE 2. Distribution of degrees in botany by type of institution, exclusive of Canadian institutions.

Type of institution

Undergraduate

Graduate (Ph.D.)

Number of colleges

Number of graduates in botany

Number of universities

Number of graduates in botany

Total

With grad. In botany

With over 5 grads.

Total 1

With grad. In botany

With over 5 grads.

State land grant Universities

532

762

State land grant colleges

257

103

State universities

171

141

Private universities 2

234

577

Liberal Arts Colleges

360

145

410

Women's Colleges

124

Teachers colleges

154

Municipal universities

TOTAL

775

288

1815

1598

Number of universities offering the Ph.D. degree in at least one science. 2. Includes institutes of technology.

PAGE SIX

This is an indication that this type of state institution is most favorable for the development of a strong program in botany. Taken as a unit, the various types of state institutions granted 53% of all bachelor's degrees in botany and 63% of all doctorates in botany.

The outstanding productivity of certain liberal arts colleges is worthy of particular note. Although only 145 of the 360 liberal arts colleges had graduates in botany, these 145 colleges granted about 23% of all bachelor's degrees in botany. Even more noteworthy is the fact that the 12 colleges which produced more than five graduates each had a total of 154 graduates, or about 39% of the liberal arts total. The twelve, in order of number of graduates, are Wabash, Oberlin, Miami, DePauw, Dartmouth, Butler, Earlham, Ohio Wesleyan, Bucknell, Ohio University, Wooster and Lebanon Valley. A striking fact is that 11 of the 12 colleges are located in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Although Miami and Ohio Universities are technically state universities they are, or at least have been, essentially liberal arts colleges and have been considered as such throughout this study. Although no productivity index like that of Knapp and Goodrich (3) was calculated, these twelve colleges would probably outrank most of the state institutions on this basis. Some of the group are no longer productive, but others such as DePauw, Miami and Butler which are currently active would rank higher in a study based on the new American Men of Science. There is little doubt but that the productivity of this small group of liberal arts colleges, as contrasted with the lack of productivity of most colleges of this type, is due to outstanding and inspiring teachers of botany. However, there also seems to be a regional milieu favoring strong undergraduate botany departments and attracting and holding superior teachers.

Women's colleges, teachers colleges and municipal universities are noteworthy for their lack of productivity. Only Wellesley, Smith, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke and Radcliffe among the women's colleges have made a significant contribution, having granted 36 of the 62 degrees in this group, while all the others came from just 11 other colleges, out of a total of some 124 women's colleges in the country. The lack of productivity of municipal universities, which are located in large or medium sized cities, is paralleled by a general lack of support for botany in other types of city universities. With out few outstanding exceptions, most of the universities located in metropolitan centers are either missing from Table I, or rank relatively low. While many private universities almost entirely ignore botany, those which do stress it have made most significant contributions to botanical education, both as regards quality and number of graduates.

Distribution by Regions. Table 3 shows that the bulk of American botanists have been educated in two regions of the country: the northeast and the middle states (Ohio, Ind., Ill., Mich., Wisc., Minn., la., Mo.). These two regions provided 62% of all bachelor's degrees in botany and 83 % of the doctorates. However, the northeast ranked rather low on a per capita basis, while the northwest, the far west and Canada ranked high on a per capita basis, along with the middle states. The southwest was by far the most unproductive region at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, on a per capita basis as well as regards number of graduates. Both at the graduate and undergraduate levels there was a chronological trend throughout the period covered toward greater productivity in the other regions, resulting in a percentage decrease in productivity in both the northeast and the middle states. Regional differences are probably less marked now, at least on a per capita basis, than they were at the time of this study.

Summary. A relatively small number of American colleges and universities produced the bulk of the botanists listed in the seventh edition of American Men of Science. (1944). State land grant colleges and universities provide the backbone of botanical education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the state land grant universities being particularly strong, but significant contributions at both level of instruction have been made by a select group of private universities. A small group of liberal arts colleges has made a remark- able contribution at the undergraduate level though liberal arts colleges as a whole are probably less productive

TABLE 3. Regional distribution of degrees in botany.

Region

Number of schools in each region

Number of schools with graduates in botany

Number of schools with over 5 graduates

Number of graduates

Graduates per�10,000 students (1930)

Bach.

Ph.D.1

Bach.

Ph.D.

Bach.

Ph.D.

Bach.

Ph.D.

Bach.

Ph.D.

Northeast

225

501

562

14.7

16.5

Middle States

223

697

805

24.4

28.2

Northwest

� 69

� 5

� 4

218

32.9

5.4

Far West

� 47

� 8

187

146

1.2

16.5

Southwest

� 54

� 4

� 3

8.4

1.8

Southeast

�157

� 9

� 7

160

12.5

2.9

Canada

� 25

� 7

� 6

124

30.0

10.2

Total

�800

303

1939

1640

19.1

16.2

PAGE SEVEN

as regards botanists than scientists in general. The majority of botanists received both their undergraduate and graduate education in either the northeastern or the middle states. The middle states emerge as the strongholds of botany during the first part of the century, but there has been a consisten trend toward increasing productivity in regions other than the middle states and the northeastern. Marked chronological fluctuations in productivity of individual colleges and univeristies can probably be correlated with changes in botany department personnel and administrative policies.

LITERATURE CITED 1. Cattell, Jacques, Ed. American Men of Science. Seventh Edition. Lancaster: The Science Press. 1944. 2. Greulach, Victor A. Botanical Education in Southwestern Colleges and Universities. Trans. Texas Acad. Sci. 30:114-120, 1948. 3. Knapp, R. H. and H. B. Goodrich. Origin of American Scientists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1952.

Back to overview

Items posted on the Botanical Society of America's website by the author/creator are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
We value sharing, growing and learning together. In the spirit of fairness, we believe in the attribution of materials and ensuring the appropriate voices are in place when considering further use.