“Plants that Remind Me of Home”: Collecting, Plant Geography, and a Forgotten Expedition in the Darwinian Revolution

Abstract

In 1859, Harvard botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888) published an essay of what he called "the abstract of Japan botany." In it, he applied Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory to explain why strong similarities could be found between the flora of Japan and that of eastern North America, which provoked his famous debate with Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) and initiated Gray's efforts to secure a place for Darwinian biology in the American sciences. Notably, although the Gray-Agassiz debate has become one of the most thoroughly studied scientific debates, historians of science remain unable to answer one critical question: How was Gray able to acquire specimens from Japan? Making use of previously unknown archival materials, this article scrutinizes the institutional, instrumental, financial, and military settings that enabled Gray's collector, Charles Wright (1811-1885), to travel to Japan, as well as examine Wright's collecting practices in Japan. I argue that it is necessary to examine Gray's diagnosis of Japan's flora and the subsequent debate about it from the viewpoint of field sciences. The field-centered approach not only unveils an array of historical significances that have been overshadowed by the analytical framework of the Darwinian revolution and the reception of Darwinism, but also places a seemingly domestic incident in a transnational context.

History of Ecological Sciences, Part 61B: Terrestrial Biogeography and Paleobiogeography, 1840s–1940s

“…Charles Wright (1811–1885) had graduated from Yale in 1835, and he decided to become a plant collector and explorer (Mearns and Mearns :496–500, Hung :86–87). He had previously collected plants for Gray, 1849–1851, in Texas.…”

“…Gray gained access to Wright's Japanese collection, which became the subject of his detailed descriptions, followed by his explanation of the similarities between parts of the floras of Japan and eastern North America based upon wide‐ranging arguments from the fossil record (Gray , Hung ). Nor was that the last time he pondered this puzzle, which his biographer considered his “greatest theoretical contribution to science” (Dupree note 5 on page 185 of Gray ).…”

Quantitative Perspectives on Fifty Years of the Journal of the History of Biology

“…For example, a special issue of JHB published in 2012 explored the relationships between place and scientific practice in North America, with regard to (for example) the geography of research stations (Vetter 2012), conservation of biological significant locales (Alagona 2012, Rumore 2012, and the geographic dimensions of scientific controversy (Bocking 2012). Other work has focused on the collection and transport of biological materials (Evenden 2004, Hung 2016, especially in relation to colonial activity (Schiebinger and Swan 2005). The core intuition of the spatial turn is that cultural contingency entails geographical contingency: science is shaped by the places in which it is practiced and received (Withers 2009), and thus our understanding of science is greatly expanded by considering a broader array of geo-social contexts.…”