Home » Scientific Research » Herbarium Collections » Type Collection
Asa Gray's North American Graminae and Cyperaceae
Asa Gray began his botanical career in the 1830s as a young medical doctor, working in upstate New York. He would later become one of the greatest American botanists, a friend of Darwin, and the author of Gray's Manual of Botany, a standard work in the field.
Gray became interested in natural history as a teenager when he began collecting plants, fossils, and geological specimens. He became a medical doctor but continued to collect whenever his growing medical practice would allow. His interests led him to correspond with some of the leading naturalists of the day, especially John Torrey, then a professor at Columbia University. Though Torrey was 15 years older than Gray, the two soon became friends and companions in scientific pursuits. Torrey encouraged Gray to specialize in the taxonomically difficult grasses and sedges and forwarded specimens to him for study.
In 1834, Gray distributed his first major botanical work, volume one of the North American Graminae and Cyperaceae. The work consisted of 100 specimens of grasses and sedges, mostly collected by Gray in New York. These were glued to sheets of paper with identification labels and notes. The book was issued to subscribers, but the demand far exceeded the supply, and Gray had to make additional field collections to satisfy all subscribers. The specimen sheets were distributed unbound. The labels were printed in two columns on separate sheets with lines to indicate where they should be cut.
After the success of the first volume, Gray issued a second volume in 1835. Most of the specimens in this volume were collected by Gray and Torrey on field trips to the pine barrens and coastal plain of New Jersey in 1833. For the first time, Gray described new species of grasses and sedges, some with Torrey, some independently.
Publication of volume two was also a success, and the set introduced Asa Gray to the scientific community of Europe and North America. Gray would go on to be appointed to the faculty at the University of Michigan and, eventually, Harvard University. At Harvard he established a vigorous research program and developed the herbarium that would eventally bear his name.
Today, only a few bound volumes still exist; most specimens are filed loose in herbaria. In addition to the bound Brooklyn set, there is a bound copy at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and the bound type set in the New York Botanical Garden Library.
References
The best biography of Gray is Hunter Dupree's Asa Gray. American Botanist, Friend to Darwin.
Some of Gray's correspondence with Torrey and others were published by his son, J.L. Gray, in Letters of Asa Gray.
H.W. Rickett and C.L. Gilly published the useful Asa Gray's Earliest Botanical Publications (1833-1836) in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 96(6): 461-470.