History of the Statewide Floras of California
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Within California's 158,706 square miles of diverse climates, landscapes and plant communities nearly 8,000 species of native and introduced vascular plants have been identified. This rich and diverse flora, the largest of any state in the continental United States, has been documented in a series of five major statewide floras that include all of California and one that also encompasses Washington and Oregon (Edwards, 1993). In addition to these six statewide floras there are a large number of local and regional floras and dozens of check lists that have been published for various parts of California. Most of these are listed in James P. Smith's California Floras: Literature on the Identification and Uses of California Vascular Plants. (HSU Library - Ref QK 149 .S67 2003) This brief history covers early botanical exploration in the state, institutions supporting early botanical exploration and details of the six statewide floras. |
Botanical Exploration
The history of botanical exploration in California can be divided into three phases: 1) exploration by European expeditions and collectors; 2) exploration by the United States government and eastern institutions; 3) and exploration by resident botanists (Thomas, 1969). European botanical exploration in California began in 1786 when the naturalist Jean-Nicole Collignon of the French La Perouse Expedition collected seeds at the Spanish mission settlement in Monterey which were eventually transported and grown at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. In 1791 one of the resulting plants, the Pink Sand-verbina (Abronia umbellata), was described and named by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck as California's first plant species. In the same year Thaddaeus Haenke of the Spanish Malaspina Expedition went ashore in Monterey and collected the first specimens of California plants. These included the coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) and the valley oak (Quercus lobata) which were described in a Spanish scientific journal in 1801 by Luis Nee who was the co-botanist with Haenke on the Malaspina Expedition (McClintock, 1989). During the first half of the 19th Century other English, Russian and American expeditions followed that included naturalists who collected botanical specimens in California. Their names--Menzies, Chamisso, Eschscholtz, Douglas, Hartweg, Jeffrey, Lobb, Coulter, Fremont, Parry, Bigelow, and Thurber-- are associated with prominent California species. (Alden, 1943; Eastman, 1939; Ewan, 1955; McClintock, 1989; McClintock, 1990; McKelvy, 1956; Spencer, 1986).
Institutions Supporting Botanical Exploration
In latter half of the 19th Century a number of institutions of natural history were founded in California that played a key role in collecting, describing and archiving specimens of the state's flora . These institutions were the California Academy of Sciences, the Geological Survey of California, the University of California and Stanford University (Ertter, 2000; Ertter, 2004). In 1853, three years after California statehood, the California Academy of Sciences was established in San Francisco. One of the stated goals of the Academy was "...a thorough survey of every portion of the State and the collection of a cabinet of her rare productions" (Miller, 1942). The early herbarium in the Botany Department included specimens collected by Albert Kellogg, a physician and one of the founders of the Academy. Over the next fifty years, Kellogg's collections were augmented by other collectors. These early collections of California flora and other parts of western North America were some of the most important of their day. Unfortunately, most of the specimens were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire (California Botanical Club, 1953).
In 1860 the California state government approved a Geological Survey of California that was to map California and to prepare "a full and scientific description of its rocks, fossils, soils, and minerals, and of its botanical and zoological productions, together with specimens of the same, which specimens shall be properly arranged and deposited in such place as shall be hereafter provided for that purpose by the legislature" (Merrill, 1920).
In 1868 the University of California was established which included in its founding legislation a requirement that specimens collected by the Geological Survey of California "shall belong to the University, and ... be arranged by the resident Professors of the University in a building by themselves, which shall be denominated the 'Museum of the University' " (Ertter, 2004).
Statewide Floras
The first statewide flora has its origins with William H. Brewer. From 1860-1864 he was the Principal Assistant in charge of botany with the Geological Survey of California that undertook extensive botanical surveys of unexplored areas in California. (On a related note, Brewer's journals of these explorations, Up and down California in 1860-1864; the journal of William H. Brewer are a classic chronicle of early California.) After funding for the Survey lapsed Brewer joined the faculty at Yale University and deposited a full set of the specimens he collected at Harvard University . There he was advised on their description and classification by Asa Gray, professor of botany and one of the most eminent American botanists of the day. Brewer began work on a flora of California using these specimens and also invited Sereno Watson, assistant to Asa Gray and Curator of the Gray Herbarium, to work on this endeavor. The first volume of the botany portion of the Geological Survey of California was commercially published in 1876 by Brewer, Watson and Gray. Its formal title was just Botany but it was widely known as The Botany of California. It was published as a second edition in 1880 with minor corrections along with a Volume 2 written solely by Watson (HSU Library - microfilm MF 2189). Within these two volumes 3450 vascular plant species were described. The Botany of California was the first modern flora of a western state. It was a remarkably good flora and written in the best contemporary style of the period.
In 1909 Willis Linn Jepson, Professor of Botany at the University of California, Berkeley and the state's leading systematic botanist, began publication of his monographic A Flora of California (HSU Library - QK149 J4 1909a) with the first part of Volume 1 which was completed in 1922. Volume 2 was published in 1936 as a complete volume. The first two parts of Volume 3 were published in 1939. In 1979 Lauramay Dempster published a treatment of the Rubiaceae as Part 2 of Volume 4. The Flora contains exceptionally detailed taxonomic treatments and original line drawings. For many species in California it contains the most comprehensive account of their morphological characteristics, habitats, ecology, and original descriptions. The Flora's publication history currently spans 70 years and its completion remains one of the goals of the Jepson Flora Project.
In 1916 LeRoy Abrams, Professor of Botany at Stanford University, persuaded President Wilbur and the Board of Trustees at Stanford to support the publication of a flora covering the Pacific states, including California. His early botanical education and research concentrated on southern California prior to his coming to Stanford. Volume 1 of An Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States, Washington, Oregon, and California was published in 1923. The depression and war years delayed the second volume until 1944; the third volume was published in 1951; and the fourth volume, written in large part by Roxana Ferris, was published in 1960. Abrams' An Illustrated Flora is the only completely illustrated flora for California. Each species is provided with a common name, many of which were fabricated by Abrams.
In 1923 and 1925 Jepson published in several parts A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California. In effect Jepson stopped work on his A Flora of California and rushed forward with his Manual that resulted in the first complete modern flora of California that contained descriptions of 4019 species. This one volume work was the first attempt to account for all the native and introduced higher plants (ferns, conifers, and flowering plants) growing wild in California. Jepson's concept of species was influenced primarily by studies of morphological variation and patterns of ecological and geographical distribution (Wilken, 1993). Jepson's Manual served as the standard California flora for almost 35 years.
In 1959 Philip Munz of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, in collaboration with David Keck, published A California Flora that was followed by a lengthy 224 page supplement in 1968. This monumental work that was produced essentially on their own contained descriptions of 6002 native and introduced species (Howell, 1972). Munz's Flora was philosophically different from Jepson's Manual, being more technical in scope and written for the professional botanist rather than the general public. It also used a phylogenetic system rather than an alphabetical arrangement by family within major groups. Each family was illustrated and descriptive and distribution data at the species level was extensive. Munz's Flora served as the major guide to California flora for almost 35 years.
Following his death in 1946 Willis Linn Jepson left a large endowment to fund the continuation of his work. One of the results was the establishment in 1950 of the Jepson Herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980 James C. Hickman and Lawrence R. Heckard, both of the Jepson Herbarium, determined that it was time to revise Jepson's A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California (Hickman, 1986; Hickman, 1993). This ten-plus year project with over 200 collaborators led to the publication of the Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California by the University of California in 1993 that included descriptions of 6885 native and naturalized species. Jepson's original philosophy of producting a manual accessible to both the amateur and professional botanist was followed as much as possible. To the standard species descriptions information was added on horticultural requirements (from the Horticultural Advisory Committee), endangered status (from the California Native Plant Society), toxicity, weed status, and sensitive species management. Illustrations were provided for 4000 species. The Jepson Online Interchange for California Floristics from the Jepson Flora Project serves as an update to the manual and provides for a "fast paced means of conveying the most current state of floristic knowledge about the California flora to professional botanists and the general public."
Bibliography
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California Botanical Club. 1953. Our First Hundred Years: Botany at the Academy from the Days of Gold. Leaflets of Western Botany 7(3):43-104.
Eastman, Alice. 1939. Early Botanical Explorers on the Pacific Coast and the Trees They Found. California Historical Society Quarterly 18(4): 3335-346.
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Ertter, Barbara. 2000. People, Plants, and Politics: the Development of Institution-Based Botany in California 1853-1906. IN Ghiselin, Michael T. and Leviton, Alan E. Cultures and Institutions of Natural History: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science. Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences No. 25. San Francisco, California Academy of Sciences, pp 203-248.
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McClintock, Elizabeth. 1989. Early Plant Exploration in the West--Part I. Fremontia 17(3):15-19 (reprinted from the January 1967 issue of the California Horticultural Journal 28(1)).
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McKelvey, Susan D. 1956. Botanical Exploration of the Trans-Mississippi, 1790-1850. Jamaica Plain, Mass., Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. (Excerpted in part in Fremontia July 1994, January 1996, July 1996, July 1998 and July 1999)
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Spencer, Larry T. 1986. Naturalists of the Pacific Shore: Early Explorer/Naturalists of California. American Zoologist 26: 321-329.
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