Asa Gray Archives

November 18, 2022 William Shenstone, Leo Lesquereux, Asa Gray, Margaret Atwood, We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich, and November Garden Work Inspires

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1714 Birth of William Shenstone, English poet, and landscape gardener. In the early 1740s, Shenstone inherited his family’s dairy farm, which he…

Remembering Florida Botanist Alvan Wentworth Chapman: an Apalachicola Naturalist and Namesake of the Chapman Botanical Garden

“If [you are] really anxious to make [plant] discoveries… buckle on your knapsack and make a tour of Florida.” April 6, 1899 Today is the anniversary of the death of the botanist and physician Alvan Wentworth Chapman. Alvan spent the last fifty years in Apalachicola, in territorial Florida. Alvan adored botany and devoted all his…

Asa Gray and Goldenrod or Solidago

A Letter from a Friend November 18, 1881 On this day, Asa Gray received a letter from his botanical friend and colleague George Engelmann. Asa wrote him back in December: “My dear old Friend, It is shabby of me to wait so long in response to your kindly greetings, which were dated on my birthday,…

Asa Gray

For Team Darwin November 18, 1810 Today is the birthday of one of the leading American botanists of his time and a member of Team Darwin, Asa Gray, who was born on this day in 1810. In 1857, Asa Gray received a confidential letter from Charles Darwin. In the letter, Darwin confided: “I will enclose…

November 18, 2020 Winter Garden Plants, William Shenstone, Leo Lesquereux, Asa Gray, Beverley Nichols, The Kew Gardener’s Guide to Growing House Plants by Kay Maguire, and Goldenrod

Today we celebrate the man who was a gardener and a poet and he inspired the trend toward the picturesque natural Landscape. We’ll also learn about the Swiss botanist who specialized in mosses. We’ll remember the birthday of the Father of American botany. We’ll take a look back at a popular November fruit – I…

November 5, 2020 Humphrey Marshall, the Chrysanthemum, John Redfield, Henry Rollins, The New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle, and the Vancouver Chinese Garden Otter

Today we celebrate the man remembered as the “Father of American Dendrology” (the study of woody plants, trees, and shrubs). We’ll also learn about the November birth flower, which was celebrated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1883. We also recognize the botanist, who was Philadelphia’s botany man during the 1800s. We hear some…

Asa Gray

A Person of Action On this day, the botanist Asa Gray resigned from the Wilkes Expedition. Gray was frustrated by all of the delays, he was a person of action, and he also disliked Captain Charles Wilkes. Gray disagreed with Wilkes about the Latin descriptions of the new taxa, and he also disagreed with Wilkes’s…

July 10, 2020 The Berries Migratory Birds Prefer, Favorite Garden Blogs, Parsley & Shade Trees, Asa Gray, Melville Thurston Cook, Elvin McDonald, Spiranthes parksii, Roy Lancaster, Summer Poetry, The Flower-Powered Garden by Andy Vernon, and Peruvian Black Rose Sickness

Today we celebrate the man who established the science of botany in America. We’ll also learn about the botanist who survived a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness – an incredible story. We celebrate a presentation from 1977 that encouraged, “Take a pill if you will; I say take a plant to cope with everyday…

January 30, 2020 Good Garden Decisions, African Violets, George Ehret, Adelbert von Chamisso, Yerba Buena, Louise Beebe Wilder, Asa Gray, Ann Taylor, The Seed Underground by Janisse Ray, Garden Cloche, and Elizabeth Wirt

Today we celebrate the botanical illustrator who was wrongfully fired from his first job and the French botanist who spent a month in California with a boatful of Russians. We’ll learn about the botanical name of the city where people leave their hearts, and we’ll fall in love with a classic garden writer from Bronxville,…

January 15, 2020 Scent in the Winter Garden, Top British Garden Shows, William Starling Sullivant, Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Sarah Plummer lemon, Cultivating Delight by Diane Ackerman, Buffalo Plaid Garden Apron, and The British Museum

Today we celebrate a bryologist who Asa Gray called, “a noble fellow” and the botanist who, along with his wife, helped found the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx. We’ll learn about one of the first and most prolific professional female garden photographers and the female botanist with a mountain named in her honor.…

Asa Gray

Letters to The Smithsonian On this day in 1852, the Harvard botanist Asa Gray wrote to Joseph Henry, first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Gray wrote the letter because he couldn’t lecture at the Smithsonian due to his demanding schedule. But he also sent his reassurance in that Smithsonian was establishing itself as the scientific…

December 6, 2019 Dianthus Syrup, African Flora Threatened, The Potato Exhibit, Johann Zinn, a Smithsonian letter, J Bernard Brinton, Joyce Kilmer, Plants Are Terrible People by Luke Ruggenberg, Fiskars Snip, and the Cincinnati Herbarium

Today we celebrate the botanist who made his mark in human anatomy and the botanist who lost his civil war specimens to a confederate raider. We’ll hear the most popular poem about trees written by a poet who was killed in WWI. We Grow That Garden Library with a self-published humorous garden book by one…

November 20 Horticultural Fleece, School Horticulture Clubs, John Merle Coulter, Penelope Hobhouse, Lespedeza, August Henry Kramer, No-Waste Kitchen Gardening by Katie Elzer-Peters, Holiday Planters, and the Smallest Rose Park

Today we celebrate the botanist who started the Botanical Gazette back in 1875 and the incredibly down-to-earth yet inspiring garden designer and writer who turns 90 years old today. We’ll learn about the naming error based on the name of an early Governor of Florida and the almost 500 watercolors by a St. Louis botanist…

Asa Gray

Flora of North America Today is the birthday of one of the leading American botanists of his time and a member of Team Darwin, Asa Gray, who was born on this day in 1810. In 1857, Asa Gray received a confidential letter from Charles Darwin. In the letter, Darwin confided: “I will enclose the briefest…