The Moss Whisperer: Remembering William Starling Sullivant

April 30, 1873

Today marks the anniversary of the departure of William Starling Sullivant, a man who devoted his life to the humble moss - those diminutive verdant pillows that cushion our forest floors while most gardeners are busy gazing upward at showier specimens.

Born to aristocratic origins in Ohio (if one can call frontier America aristocratic), William was the son of Lucas Sullivant, the founding father of Franklinton. His father, with typical American ambition, named the settlement after the recently deceased Benjamin Franklin - a settlement that would transform into what we now know as Columbus.

After graduating from Yale College in 1823 - a fine education for a frontier gentleman - William's life took a dramatic turn with his father's death that August. One might have expected the young Sullivant to simply inherit the family surveying business and march forward in his father's footsteps. Indeed, he did assume control of the family enterprise, but at thirty - an age when most men are settled firmly into their predestined paths - William discovered an entirely new passion: cataloging the secret botanical lives of Central Ohio.

In 1840, William published his flora, but it was merely a prelude to his true calling. Like a society debutante who finally discovers her perfect match, William fell headlong in love with mosses.

Bryology - the study of these diminutive plants - derives from the Greek verb bryōs, meaning "to swell." The same root gives us the word embryo. For those garden enthusiasts struggling to recall this botanical terminology, simply remember how these velvety cushions expand dramatically when drinking in the rain.

William's fascination with moss carried him far beyond Ohio's boundaries. His scholarly pursuits led him to catalog specimens from across the American wilderness and exotic locales from Central America to South America and various Pacific islands. While the rest of society was obsessed with grand explorations and the Industrial Revolution, our hero was bent over minuscule plants with a magnifying glass in hand!

Mosses proved the perfect match for William's particular gifts: patience worthy of a saint, observation keen enough to spot a diamond in coal, and discrimination that would make the finest tea sommelier envious. His first masterpiece, Musci Alleghanienses, was described in the most glowing terms:

"exquisitely prepared and mounted, and with letterpress of great perfection; ... It was not put on sale, but fifty copies were distributed with a free hand among bryologists and others who would appreciate it."

Can you imagine? Creating such magnificence not for profit but for the sheer pleasure of sharing with those who would truly value it? The botanical equivalent of hosting an exclusive salon!

In 1864, William unveiled his magnum opus, Icones Muscorum. Featuring 129 illustrations of eastern North American mosses rendered with such perfection they might have made Audubon himself green with envy, this work cemented William's reputation as America's preeminent bryologist.

Life's crueler ironies revealed themselves in 1873 when William contracted pneumonia - an affliction where one's lungs swell with fluid, not unlike his beloved mosses absorbing rainwater. He succumbed on April 30th of that year.

For four decades, William maintained a lively correspondence with Asa Gray, that titan of American botany. It seems only fitting that upon his death, William's herbarium - containing some 18,000 moss specimens (imagine the dedication!) - found its final home at Gray's beloved Harvard University.

When Asa Gray summoned his curator at Cambridge, Leo Lesquereux, to assist William, he wrote enthusiastically to his friend, the botanist John Torrey:

"They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of William in muscology are magnifique, superbe, and the best he ever saw.'"

On December 6, 1857, Asa confided to Hooker with the warm familiarity of true friendship:

"A noble fellow is [William Starling] William, and deserves all you say of him and his works. The more you get to know of him, the better you will like him."

Four years after William departed this mortal coil, Asa Gray wrote to Charles Darwin himself, describing Sullivant as his "dear old friend" and declaring with finality that:

"[William] did for muscology in this country more than one man is likely ever to do again."

In 1898, the Sullivant Moss Society was founded in his honor, later evolving into the American Bryological and Lichenological Society. While most of us struggle to leave any mark upon this earth, William Sullivant's legacy lives on in the study of the very organisms that cushion our forest floors - a fitting tribute to a man who found extraordinary beauty in what others might overlook as ordinary.