Reveal, J.L. 2014. John Torrey: A botanical biography. Phytoneuron 2014-100: 1–64. Published 14 October 2014. ISSN 2153 733X JOHN TORREY: A BOTANICAL BIOGRAPHY JAMES L. REVEAL School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Biology, 412 Mann Building Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853-4301
[email protected] ABSTRACT The role played by the American botanist John Torrey (1796–1873) in the development of floristics and the naming of plants, especially from the American West, is shown to be fundamental not only for present-day taxonomists in their monographic and floristics studies, and to historians in understanding the significance of discovering new and curious objects of nature in the exploration of the West but also the role Torrey directly and indirectly played in the development of such institutions as the New York Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution. For the author of this 2014 paper, the name of John Torrey dates back to his earliest years of interests in botany, some 56 years ago, as even then Torrey was the kind of hero he could admire without resorting to comic books or movies. John Torrey has long been a “founding father” of North American systematic botany. Even so it was probably a bit unusual that a high school kid from the Sierra Nevada of California should know the name and even something about the man. It was Torrey who described plants with the explorer John Charles Frémont 1, and so by fate the three of us were thrown together while I penned a paper for a history class at Sonora Union High School in the spring of 1958.