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THOMAS NUTTALL, 1786 - 1859

Botany; exploration; plant collection

"Thomas Nuttall was considered one of the greatest plant explorers of North America. He compiled The North American Sylva, or a Description of the Forest Trees of the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, not described in the work of Francois Andre Michaux. He was born in Settle, Yorkshire, England in 1786. On April 12, 1810 after two years in America, he was commissioned by Dr. Benjamin Barton, Professor of Botany at the University of Pennsylvania, to collect specimens and scientific information for him. "The first lap of Nuttall's ambitious expedition was by stagecoach from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The journey by the rough and gutted track across range after range of the Appalachians took eight days." In 1818 Nuttall made another trip to Pittsburgh, and it is recorded that "on the fifteenth day of October he wended his way into Pittsburgh, which was repulsive to him by its dirty smoke and bustle although he admired its fine situation and enterprising population." He was a prolific collector and author and evoked the description, "No other explorer of the botany of North America has personally made more discoveries; no writer on American plants has described more new genera and species."

Archives of the Hunt Institute at Carnegie Mellon University

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