From Gold Rush to Green Rush: The Remarkable Journey of Charles Mohr
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
January 1, 1901
On this day, the esteemed botanist Charles Theodore Mohr penned a letter that would prove to be among his last significant correspondences. In it, he expressed what can only be described as the profound relief of a man who has finally set down his life's heaviest burden—the completion of his magnum opus, **Plant Life of Alabama**.
With an almost palpable sense of liberation, he wrote:
"With the completion of this life work, a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I feel free to take on other tasks. As long as there is work, I will go to Tuscaloosa to the Herbarium which I helped start 20 years ago. Completing my work on the herbarium is my botanical goal for the remainder of my life."
How poignant these words become when one learns that Mohr would depart this earthly garden a mere two months after writing them! At the impressive age of seventy-seven, when many men have long since retired to their armchairs, Mohr was still plotting botanical adventures and scholarly pursuits.
One cannot help but marvel at the dedication required to amass the knowledge contained within his masterwork.
Decades of trudging through Alabama's swamps and forests, specimen collection bag slung over one shoulder, notebook in hand—a botanical detective cataloguing nature's secrets!
Mohr was no provincial academic, mind you. This was a man whose life reads like an adventure novel. Born in Germany and educated among Stuttgart's finest minds, he refused to be contained by European borders. Like some botanical buccaneer, he collected specimens in Surinam, then boldly crossed the Atlantic to America in 1848, just in time to join the frenzied California gold rush! Evidently finding gold less interesting than greenery, he continued his peripatetic lifestyle through Mexico, Indiana, and Kentucky before finally dropping anchor in Alabama.
In 1857, he established Chas. Mohr & Son Pharmacists and Chemists in Mobile, Alabama, applying his botanical expertise to the practical matters of health and healing. Yet all the while, he was meticulously building his collection—a botanical treasure trove that would eventually comprise 33,000 specimens divided between the University of Alabama Herbarium and the United States National Herbarium.
Such was Mohr's contribution to botanical science that nature herself now bears his name in perpetuity. The next time you find yourself wandering through Alabama's wilder places, keep watch for Mohr's bluestem (Andropogon mohrii), Mohr's threeawn (Aristida mohrii), or the charming Mohr's Barbara's buttons (Marshallia mohrii). The list continues with Mohr's thoroughwort, coneflower, and rosinweed—all members of the Aster family that now carry his legacy. Even the sturdy Mohr oak (Quercus mohriana) stands as a living monument to this remarkable man.
Perhaps there is something to be learned from Mohr's late-life productivity—a reminder that one's greatest work may come at any age, and that the true gardener never truly retires but simply plants different seeds as the seasons of life change.
