Nathaniel Lord Britton

Botanical gardens are important factors in public education, and are, at the same time, places for public recreation and enjoyment.

Nathaniel Lord Britton (January 15, 1859 – June 25, 1934) was an American botanist, taxonomist, and one of the co-founders of the New York Botanical Garden. Noteworthy for his botanical research in the West Indies, he was elected a Member in 1914 of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow in 1925 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member in 1928 of the American Philosophical Society.

Quotes

• The cultivation of plants within small areas for their healing qualities by the monks of the middle ages appears to have been the beginning of the modern {[w|botanical garden}}, although these mediæval gardens doubtless took their origin from others of greater antiquity. Botanical gardens were thus primarily formed for purely utilitarian purposes, although the æsthetic study of planting and of flowers must doubtless have appealed to their owners and visitors. Their function as aids in scientific teaching and research, the one which at present furnishes the dominating reason for their existence, did not develop much, if at all, before the 16th century, and prior to the middle of the 17th century a considerable number existed in Europe, in which the function was recognized to a greater or less degree, of which those at Bologna, Montpellier, Leyden, Paris and Upsala were, perhaps, the most noteworthy. The ornamental and decorative taste for planting had meanwhile been slowly gaining ground, as well as the desire to cultivate rare or unusual species, and during the 18th century gained a high degree of development. Many persons of wealth and influence fostered this taste and became, through the employment of men skilled in botany and horticulture, generous patrons of science.
  • (4 September 1896) "Botanical Gardens. Origin and Development." 4 (88): 284–293. DOI:10.1126/science.4.88.284.

• The ancients knew and described plants by generic names. Their knowledge of them was general and superficial. According to Adanson, ... Conrad Gesner, 1559, was the first to indicate the distinction of plants into genera and species, although this advance in also claimed for Columna. Subsequent authors in general, for about a century, arranged species of plants under generic names, but without definite rules for the limitations of genera. Morison (1655), Ray (1682), and Tournefort (1694), defined genera with reference to their fruits and were followed by Linnæaus.
  • (1908) . "The taxonomic aspect of the species question". The American Naturalist 42 (496): 225–242. DOI:10.1086/278927.

• Botanical gardens are important factors in public education, and are, at the same time, places for public recreation and enjoyment. They are highly specialized parks in which the plantations are formed and arranged primarily with regard to botanical facts and theories. Inasmuch as the great majority of their visitors have little time to spend, the information they carry away is more generally by impression than by closer observation, although individual plants and groups of plants will often be remembered by casual visitors for long periods of time. Botanical gardens are, therefore, in effect museums of living plants, and the plants, suitably labeled, are installed to illustrate not only the objects themselves, but their relation to other objects. This museum feature is then a direct and immediate function in imparting information to the public.
  • (29 April 1910) "Relations of Botanical Gardens to the Public" 31 (800): 641–644. DOI:10.1126/science.31.800.641.

• The native plants of Bermuda have originated from seeds or other parts brought from the American mainland or the West Indies by the natural agencies of wind, ocean currents and birds. About 80 per cent. of the native land plants inhabit the West Indies or southern Florida or both. About 8.7 per cent. of the total native flora is endemic, there being 61 species in Bermuda or its waters not known to grow naturally anywhere else in the world. These plants are of the greatest interest to naturalists, as they presumably developed in Bermuda from related plants formerly existing but now mostly extinct here; some of them may yet be found elsewhere as botanical exploration proceeds.
  • "Introduction". Flora of Bermuda. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918. pp. v–xi.  (quote from p. vii; 585 pages)

Quotes about Nathaniel Lord Britton

• His magnum opus, prepared in association with J. N. Rose, is the “The Cactaceae”, a four volume, copiously illustrated monograph of this most difficult plant family, published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919-23. In this work 124 genera and about 1,237 species of this perplexing family are described. No matter what future botanists may attempt or achieve in their consideration of this great family of plants, this Britton and Rose monograph forms a datum plane from which all future work must proceed.
  • Elmer Drew Merrill, (1938) . "Biographical Memoir of Nathaniel Lord Britton". Biographical Memoirs of the U.S. National Academy of Memoirs XIX: 147–202.} (quote from p. 150; bibliography by John Hendley Barnhart)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Nathaniel Lord Britton on Wikipedia
• Data related to Nathaniel Lord Britton on Wikispecies