THE MISSOURI AND THE NEW
YORK BOTANICAL GARDENS
THE Missouri Botanical Garden has
recently celebrated the twenty-fifth
anniversary of its foundation and the
New York Botanical Garden its twentieth
anniversary. Within these short
periods these gardens have taken rank
among the leading scientific institutions
of the world. Botanical gardens
were among the first institutions to be
established for scientific research; indeed
Parkinson, the "botanist royal''
of England, on the title page of his
book of 1629, which we here reproduce,
depicts the Garden of Eden as
the first botanical garden and one which
apparently engaged in scientific
expeditions, for it includes plants which
must have been collected in America.
However this may be, publicly supported
gardens for the cultivation of
plants of economic and esthetic value
existed in Egypt, Assyria, China and
Mexico and beginning in the medieval
period had a large development in
Europe there being at the beginning
of the seventeenth century botanical
gardens devoted to research in Bologna,
Montpellier, Leyden, Paris, Upsala
and elsewhere. An interesting survey
of the history of botanical gardens
is given in a paper by Dr. A
W. Hill assistant director of the Kew
Gardens, prepared for the celebration
of the Missouri Garden, from which
we have taken the illustration from
Parkinson and the pictures of Padua
and Kew.
The papers presented at the celebration
have been published in a handsome
volume. It includes addresses by
a number of distinguished botanists,
though owing to the war several of the
foreign botanists were unable to be
present. Dr George T. Moore, director
of the garden, made in his address
of welcome a brief statement in regard
to its origin in the private garden and
by the later endowment of Mr. Henry
Shaw. Mr. Shaw came to this country
from England in 1818, and with a small
stock of hardware began business in
one room which also served as bedroom
and kitchen. Within twenty years
he had acquired a fortune and retired
from active business to devote the
remaining forty-nine years of his life
to travel and to the management of a
garden surrounding his country-home
on the outskirts of St. Louis. In 1859
he erected a small museum and library,
and in 1866 Mr. James Gurney was
brought to this country as head gardener.
Mr. Shaw died in 1889, leaving
his estate largely for the establishment
of the Missouri Botanical Garden,
but providing also for the Henry
Shaw School of Botany of Washington
University and a park for the city.
With this liberal endowment constantly
increasing as the real estate becomes
more productive, Dr. William Trelease,
the first director, and Dr. George T.
Moore, the present director, have conducted
an institution not only of value
to the city of St. Louis but largely
contributing to the advance of botanical
science.
The New York Botanical Garden,
largely through the efforts of Dr. N. L.
Britton, the present director was
authorized by the New York legislature
in 1891. The act of incorporation provided
that when the corporation created
should have secured by subscription a
sum not less than $250,000 the city
was authorized to set aside for the
garden as much as 250 acres from one
of the public parks and to expend one
half million dollars for the construction
and equipment of the necessary
buildings. The conditions were met in
1895, and the institution has since
grown in its land, and its buildings, in
its collections and in its herbaria, so
that, in association with the department
of botany of Columbia University,
it now rivals in its material equipment
and in the research work accomplished
any botanical institution in the
world.
