THOMAS JEFFERSON IN RELATION TO BOTANY
By RODNEY H. TRUE from The Scientific Monthly, Volume 3. 1916
Remarkable as was the breadth and intensity of Jefferson's interests
in affairs, he was not the author of many books. The service demanded
of him by state and country with little intermission from his election
to the House of Burgesses of the Colony of Virginia in 1769 to his
retirement from the Presidency forty years later, gave him at no time
the continuous leisure required for doing any large body of original investigation. We find, therefore, outside of the myriad references more
or less extended to matters of science (and botany in particular) pre-
served in his very voluminous correspondence, but one extended work, a
book appearing first under date of 1782, entitled "Notes on Virginia."
And that book became one through no deliberate intention on the part
of Jefferson to be an author on this subject.
His friend, the French*
representative to America, M. de Marbois, wishing information for
friends in Europe, begged Jefferson to set down answers to a series of
questions dealing with the main points of interest and importance concerning his native state. In response to this request, Jefferson wrote
down rapidly and without great research the series of chapters which
eventually became the book mentioned. These chapters dealt more
completely and scientifically with Virginia than any previous work had
done with any of the sister states and has been referred to by General
Greely as the first great American contribution to scientific geography.
The book ran through many editions in English, and through several in
a very inaccurate French version published without Jefferson's knowl-
edge or consent. A German edition also appeared.
Probably this book represents the first important contribution made
by Jefferson to biological science and serves as a landmark in his career.
The chapter dealing with the flora of the state gives lists of medicinal,
esculent, ornamental and otherwise useful native plants. The com-
mon names as well as the Linnaean names were used. Not finding the
pecan described in Miller, Linnaeus or Clayton, he says, "Were I to
venture to describe this, speaking of the fruit from memory, and of the
leaf from plants of two years' growth, I should specify Juglans alba,
foliolis lanceolatis, acuminatis, serratis, tomentosis, fructa minore,
ovato, compresso, vix insculpto, dulci, putamine tenerrime," (which translated says this : Juglans alba, with leaflets lanceolate, acuminate, serrate,
tomentose, fruit small, ovate, compressed, little sculptured, sweet, shell
thin.) "It grows on the Illinois, Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi."
This description was written in 1781 or early in 1782 and appeared in
print in Paris in 1784, one year before Humphrey Marshall described
the pecan in his "Arbustumi Americanum," the work in which the
nomenclatorial history of this tree is considered by some to have had its
beginning.
In order to contrast the botanical workmanship of Jefferson with
that of Marshall, I will write the description in the "Arbustum Americamim " p. 69, on which Marshall has received credit for first introducing the pecan to science :
"S. Juglans pecan. The Pecan or Illinois Hiekery.
This tree is said to grow plenty in the neighborhood of the Illinois River,
and other parts to the Westward. The young trees raised from these nuts,
much resemble our young Pig-nut Hickeries. The nuts are small and thin shelled.
To my mind Marshall's description fails to distinguish the pecan
plant from the pig-nut hickory he mentions, while the name proposed
by him is left so nearly nude that its title to priority is doubtful. The
earlier, clean-cut, adequate diagnosis by Jefferson, can only on biblio-
graphic technicality fail to secure for him the credit of being the first
scientific sponsor for the pecan.
As a matter of fact, the pecan had been known to several American
botanists almost twenty-five years before either of these books appeared.
Colonel Bouquet obtained them at Pittsburgh and gave them to John
Bartram, who seems to have sent them to several of his correspondents.
Peter Collinson and John St. Clair almost certainly received some in
1760 or 1761. Since at that time Jefferson was still at the Belinda
Burwell-Sukey Potter stage, he could hardly have been interested in the
interchange of letters between John Bartram and Peter Collinson produced by Colonel Bouquet's " seven hard, stony seeds shaped something like an acorn"
It seems probable that Collinson showed these
puzzling nuts to his friend, James Gordon, a prominent nurseryman
living near London, whom the generic name of the Loblolly bay, Gordonia, commemorates. The result amuses Collinson, who writes to his
friend John:
"I do laugh at Gordon, for he guesses them to be a species of Hickory.
Then he continues, this time in the vein of true prophesy.
Perhaps I may be laughed at in turn, for I think they may be what I wish,
seeds of the Bonduc tree, (Kentucky coffee tree), which thou picked up
in thy rambles on the Ohio."
Characteristically enough, Jefferson throughout his correspondence
which turned not rarely on this nut; consistently refers to it as the
pecan or Illinois nut. In France where he represented the United
States in a diplomatic capacity, we find him enthusiastically introducing it to the Frenchmen. Writing from Paris on January 3, 1786, to
his Philadelphia friend, Francis Hopkinson, the early American song
writer and signer of the Declaration of Independence, after indicating
a number of errands to be done for him, Jefferson says,
"The third commission is more distant. It is to procure me two or three
hundred pacean-nuts from the Western country. I expect they can always
be got at Pittsburg, and am in hopes, that by yourself or your friends, some
attentive person there may be engaged to send them to you."
He continues with characteristic explicitness: "They should come as fresh
as possible, and come best, I believe, in a box of sand."
Nearly a year elapses before he hears from Hopkinson who evidently is
not clear that he has obtained the right thing and Jefferson replies to
him from Paris, December 23, 1786. "The paccan nut is, as you conjecture, the Illinois nut. The former is the vulgar name south of the
Potomac, as also with the Indians and Spaniards, and enters also into
the botanical name, which is Juglans paccan" Here it will be noted he
adopts Marshall's proposed name.
