30,000 Specimens and One Boiled Leg: Aven Nelson’s Yellowstone Legacy

July 26, 1899

On this day, dear garden friends,  a tale of botanical ambition and scalding mishap unfolded in the steaming wilderness of Yellowstone, where two young men learned that Mother Nature's garden comes with rather more severe consequences than a simple thorn prick.

It was the 120th day of Aven Nelson's grand botanical expedition—a 14-week affair that would ultimately yield collections substantial enough to make any serious gardener weak at the knees. While your ordinary garden might host several dozen species, Nelson's team would eventually return with some 30,000 specimens.

Such abundance! Such botanical avarice!

One can hardly contain one's envy.

The cast of characters in this wilderness drama included young Leslie Goodding, hired as the expedition's "chore boy" for the princely sum of $10 per month.

I daresay most of us spend more on a single packet of specialty seeds these days!

The University of Wyoming, where Nelson taught, practically buzzed with excitement over this venture, with students clamoring for the chance to join the botanical crusade.

"Some three or four months were to be spent in Yellowstone park collecting plants...

Many students... were anxious to accompany Dr. Nelson on [the] expedition, and were willing to work for nothing just to see the Park...

This was in the days when autos were much like hen's teeth and trips through the Park by stage were expensive."

One must pause to appreciate young Leslie's euphemism. "Hen's teeth," indeed!

For those whose botanical knowledge surpasses their familiarity with poultry anatomy, this delightful phrase refers to something exceedingly rare—nonexistent, really, as hens possess no teeth whatsoever. Rather like finding a truly blue rose or a humble gardening columnist.

Joining Leslie was another botany student, Elias Nelson (no relation to Aven, though one wonders if shared surnames predispose one to botanical pursuits). The two young men ventured near the eerily named Artist Paint Pots—a treacherous tableau of over 50 springs, geysers, vents, and mud pots that would make even the most dramatic water feature in your garden seem positively tame by comparison.

Let it be known that geothermal features, while splendid for contemplation, make for deadly gardening companions. Yet to this very day, park rangers must rescue hapless visitors who, much like slugs to beer traps, find themselves irresistibly drawn to danger, falling from boardwalks or wandering from designated paths, only to punch through the earth's thin crust into boiling water below.

Curiosity, that most dangerous of human traits (and one particularly endemic to gardeners), led young Elias to ignore the warning signs and stray from the path.

What followed was as predictable as aphids on roses in June.

The lad suddenly found himself with one leg plunged into boiling mud!

He managed to extract himself—one imagines with considerable haste and vocalization—whereupon Aven's wife applied the period's sophisticated medical treatment: soda and flour bandages.

The local physician, displaying the medical wisdom of the age, suggested Elias might do well to return home for treatment. One suspects this advice was delivered with the same tone one uses when suggesting that perhaps Japanese knotweed has taken a bit too firm a hold on one's property.

Despite such scalding setbacks, Professor Nelson and his team persevered, ultimately collecting those 30,000 specimens—though representing only about 500 species. Nelson, showing the foresight that distinguishes the true botanical mind, had gathered 20-30 duplicates per species, correctly anticipating that institutions and collectors would clamor for authentic Yellowstone specimens. A shrewd botanist knows the value of propagation, whether of plants or of reputation.

Today, Nelson stands immortalized as the Father of Wyoming Botany, though this columnist believes his greatest legacy is surely the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, birthed from those very Yellowstone plants. While other men might leave behind fortunes or titles, Nelson left something far more enduring: pressed plants, meticulously labeled, for generations of eager botanists to admire.

And as for young Elias with his scalded leg?

Let his misadventure serve as a reminder to all gardeners: some boundaries in nature's garden are not merely suggestions.

Unlike the occasional rule about deadheading roses, these are rather more imperative to one's continued botanical pursuits—and indeed, to one's very existence.