Tag: Flora of West Virginia

September 17, 1847: Lawrence Nuttall Born in Pennsylvania

Amateur botanist Lawrence Nuttall was born in Pennsylvania on September 17, 1857. In 1878, he moved to the New River Gorge town of Nuttallburg in Fayette…

Amateur botanist Lawrence Nuttall was born in Pennsylvania on September 17, 1857. In 1878, he moved to the New River Gorge town of Nuttallburg in Fayette County to join his father, pioneer coal operator John Nuttall. Within just seven years, Lawrence Nuttall had collected about 1,000 species of flowering plants, many of which were named after him, and hundreds of fungi. At least 108 of the fungi species were new to science.

In 1896, Nuttall and C. F. Millspaugh of West Virginia University jointly published Flora of West Virginia. Nuttall continued collecting plants and fungi around West Virginia and elsewhere and wrote for national publications on the topic.

In 1927, just before moving to San Diego, Nuttall donated his plant collection to the WVU Herbarium. His collection included thousands of seed plants and fern specimens but was particularly valuable for its more than 1,400 species of fungi, most of which he first identified in Fayette County.

Lawrence Nuttall died in San Diego in 1933 at age 76. In 1953, a trail in the WVU Arboretum was named in his honor.

March 21, 1886: Botanist P.D. Strausbaugh Born

Botanist P. D. Strausbaugh was born on March 21, 1886. After becoming head of West Virginia University’s department of botany in 1923, his first challenge…

Botanist P. D. Strausbaugh was born on March 21, 1886. After becoming head of West Virginia University’s department of botany in 1923, his first challenge was to reestablish the school’s herbarium, which he considered essential to the study of botany.

WVU’s plant collection had been put into storage in 1892. Strausbaugh and his colleagues spent the summer of 1924 collecting, mounting, and filing the nucleus of a new collection.

In 1926, Strausbaugh initiated a summer field course called “botanical expeditions,” which were perhaps the first of their kind. These summer-long excursions, renamed biological expeditions two years later when zoological studies were added, took students all around West Virginia on extended camping and collecting trips. Students studied plant and animal life and collected specimens for the university’s herbarium and zoological collections. Even though Strausbaugh retired from WVU in 1948, he continued his expeditions for another four years.

P. D. Strausbaugh died in 1965 at age 79. His most lasting legacy is the book Flora of West Virginia, co-authored with his former student Earl Core and published in four parts between 1952 and 1964.

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