HISTO RY OF BOTANY IN THE OHIO STATE umVERSil'Y by Emanuel D. Rudolph and Ronald L. Stuckey Botanical Beginnings (187 3-189 1) From the founding of the University until 1891, an identified professor of Botany was not a part of the University. Upon his de2th in 'April of 1873, Dr. William Starling Sullivant> an internationally recognized authority on mosses and a citizen of Colurr.b us, bequeathed his microscopes, microscopic equipment, and books on microscopy to the Starl5.ng Medical College. His extensive and valuable botanical library was divided between the new agricultural college in Columbus (The 2Jhio State University) and Harvard University where- his good friend Asa Gray and books about bryology. William's brother Joseph Sullivant was trustee and secretary and a member of the executive conunittee of the university. He tbo had a keen interest in natural history and was / influential in incorporating the study of botany and zoology into the curriculum of the University. He had recommer.ded th,e. establir;hmet of n Department of Botany and Vegetable Physiology and had· several prominent botanists in mind for its professorship, however such a departra ent was not formed at that time. Before 1881, a limi ted amount of botany was taught by Norton Strange Townshend H.D., the professor-of Agriculture and Botany. The disciplines of Agriculture, Botany, Geology ar;i.d Zoology in 1875 were placed in the School of Natural History and t:he courses uere tat!ght in University Hall. ' \ ' -2- ,, In 1881 a Departnent of Botany and Horticulture was formed separate · from Agriculture, and placed in the School of Agriculture. Dr. Andrew Price Horgan, a mycologist, was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department, howev~r,his appointment was terminated after a few months. As reported in Cape's History of the Ohio State University, "At a meeting of the Board of Trustees January 5, 1881, a resolution Yas adopted establishing a department of Horticulture an<l Botany, for the present to be under the charge of an assistant professor at a salary of $1,500, and A.P. Morgan of Dayton, Ohio was elected to the. position, his services to begin at the opening of the ensuing term. (p. 474) ••• It seems that the work of Professor A. P. Morgan who had been elected to ·the chair of Horticulture had not given satisfaction. Ile had, it appears, devoted his time to teachin~ botany almost exclusivelv. He had been exnected to ~ive new impetus to work in practical horticulture and had failed to do so. Therefore, at the meeting of the Board of Trustees last above mentioned [June 21, 1881], ~rofessor w. R. Lazenby was elected :Professor of Botany and Horticulture ••• " (p. 475) In their minutes the Board said of Morgans "In the retirement of Professor A. P. Morgan, after a brief term in his professorship, the Board takes pleasure in bearing testimony cf his extensive attainments ~n Scientific Botany, t~ his unusual skill as a teacher of this subjec t and to his high character as a man." (p. 475) William Rane Lazenby brought from Cornell taught the botany courses and in 1882 became Director of the newly formed Agricult:i:cral Experiment Station. Professor Lazenby in 1881 recommended a building for the department, at a cost including equipment of $10,000, a greenhouse at a cost of $5,000; a dwelling house for the professor, and appropriations £or special articles \ , . -3- of equipment. At the November 1882 meeting of the Board of Trustees, it decided to ask the legislature for $15,000 for a Horticultural and Agricultural Hall, and $5,000 for a house for the professor of Horticulture. In .January 1883 the legislature made the appropriation. In 1883 the Botany and .Horticulture Building was completed to the west of Orton Hall on the . site of the present Faculty Club. It was a little larger than a farmhouse, constructed of brick and wood, with an attached greenhouse. In 1890 Hr. ·william C. Werner became Assistant to Professor Lazenby and superintendent of the greenhouse. During this period at least one student assistant, Mosses Craig, aided with the work. The botany program was not outstanding, in fact Mr. Werner says of this period when writing about it in 1934, "There was nothing doing. ·rt was a dead departi ent. Before the arrival of Dr. Kellerman, the botany given was of the most elementary type. After Kellerman arrived and hecame settled down, there was a general awakening in the department ••• Previous to Dr. Kellerrnan's time, ••• there were three microscopes'of the Queen Acme type with inch amd one-half inch objectives in the department but Craig told Wexner that they had never been used in class work ••• There was na>tt: a razor for making a section, not a scape!, dissecting nee:i'l.e, or forceps on the place." Professor Lazenby's interests were in practical horl:f'.culture rather than in botany and he did outstanding work in that field. The Kellerman Period (1891-1908) A department of Botany and Forestry was formed fiom a split from Horticulture in 1891. Professor Lazenby became the h ofessor pf Horticulture \ ' . -4- and Dr •. William Ashbrook Kellerman, brought from Kansas Agricultural College where he had made a reputation as a mycologist, became the Professor of Botany :,,' and Forestry. Three years later, the courses in for~stry were transferred to _the Department of Horticulture which became the Department of Horticulture and. Forestry. Kellerman was the head and only faculty member of the first independent Department of Botany at The Ohio State University. He had Mr. Werner and Mr. Craig to assist him in laboratories and class work. Mr. Werner writes, "In the fall of 1891, after Dr. Kellerman had arrived Craig had. a regular class of agricultural and science students who wished to know something about the autumn flowering plants, ••• This was about the first regular class in advanced botany in the university ••• the laboratory work was ·now developed by Herner who had the three ol.d microscopes cogether toli t n a ftrw odt1Saud e J oOl: ' 0\·:r:d . from the Zoology Department. The next year Prof.[essor] Kellerman procured several Zeiss instruments and a number of 1/4 in.[ch] obj~ctives, but not enough to go around. Kellerman had to fight for small appropriations, because those in authority could not see where such funds as· he asked for could be required in a Botany Department. T~ey based their judgmen t on what had been allotted to the department in former years." Dr. Kellerman was an enthusiastic botanist who inspired students • . David Fairchild the famous plant collector wrote about his introduction to botany at the University of Kansas (1941). "Under the enthusiastic guidance of Professor Kellerman, I became immersed in the problem of tumbleweeds. The barbed-wire fences--rather a new invention in those days-- were piled high in the autumn with a great variety of dried weeds which ' -5- scatter.ed their seeds as the cont inual winds rolled them across the prairies. Doctor Kellerman's assistants were incredibly busy. We collected every leaf-spot and parasitic fungus which we could find, and a world . formerly filled with innocuous green leaves suddenly became a place full of dangerous spots and discolored surfaces." In 1891-92 the Department offered ten courses to a total of 190 students. In the early years of Kellerman's professorship, many activities began 'which were of importance to the university _program and to botany in genera~. The Biological Club and The Ohio Academy of Science: In 1891 the Biological Club of The Ohio State University and the Agricultural Experiment Station for professors, instructors, and students of the several departmentsof Natural History of the University held its first meetings. Active discussions of current biological research were held with presentations by faculty and students. Its most notable achieve- ment was initiating activity that led to the foundin~ of The Ohio Academy of Science .incorporated in 1892 with Kellerman as OM of six incorporators. He had been on several cormnittees involved with the planning for the Academy. Kellerman also played an active role in the initiation of a journal, The Ohio Naturalist, the first volume which appeared in 1900-1901. It was published for several year.s by the Biological Club, later jointly by the Academy and the University. J.ohn H. Schaf fnel!: , whom Kellerman had brought into the Botany Department as an assistant, s erved as the journal's first editor for most of the years until 1917, even after it became The Oh io Journal of Science in 1915. \ ' -6- Beginning of the . Herbarium (Before 1908): / A small collection of dried plants forming an herbarium belonged to the department resulting from the contributions of professors .Townshend and Lazenby, and assistants Werner and Craig. Shortly after his appoint- ment, Dr. Kellerman consolidated and began to eniarge this collection. The herbarium, then as it does now, benefited the department and the university as a resource for teaching, research, and public service. Dr. Kellerman served as curator until his death in 1908. In 1893 Dr. Kellerman separated the herbarium into two parts: (1) The Ohio Collection (or State Herbatium) and (2) the General Herbarium· (composed of plants from outside the state). The State Herbarium was organized to show the distribution and the morphological variations of all the plants from all parts of the state. By the fall of 1896, the State Herbarium contained about six thousand specimens. According to the first published report cf the State Herbarium in 1900, the collection contained over ten thousand sheets of phanerogams (flowering plants) and ~ascular cryptogams (ferns).