Chauncey Delos Beadle (August 5, 1866 in
St. Catharines,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
– 1950) was a Canadian-born botanist and horticulturist active in the southern United States. He was educated in horticulture at
Ontario Agricultural College
The Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) originated at the agricultural laboratories of the Toronto Normal School, and was officially founded in 1874 as an associate agricultural college of the University of Toronto. Since 1964, it has become affili ...
(1884) and
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
(1889). In 1890 the landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...
hired him to oversee the nursery at
Biltmore Estate
Biltmore Estate is a historic house museum and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House (or Biltmore Mansion), the main residence, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 a ...
in Asheville,
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
on a temporary basis. Olmsted had been impressed by Beadle's "encyclopedic" knowledge of plants. Beadle ended up working at Biltmore for more than 60 years, until his death in 1950. He is best known for his horticultural work with
azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs in the genus ''Rhododendron'', particularly the former sections ''Tsutsusi'' (evergreen) and '' Pentanthera'' (deciduous). Azaleas bloom in the spring (April and May in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, and Octob ...
s, and described several species and varieties of plants from the southern
Appalachian region. He and three friends, including his "driver and companion" Sylvester Owens, styled themselves the ''Azalea Hunters''. The group traveled over the eastern United States for a period of fifteen years, studying and collecting native plants. In 1940 Beadle donated his entire collection of 3,000 plants to Biltmore Estates.
He also designed the landscape at
Gunston Hall
Gunston Hall is an 18th-century Georgian architecture, Georgian Plantation house in the Southern United States, mansion near the Potomac River in Mason Neck, Virginia, Mason Neck, Virginia, United States.
Built between 1755 and 1759 as the m ...
,
Biltmore Forest, North Carolina and
Intheoaks at
Black Mountain, North Carolina
Black Mountain is a town in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 7,848 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for the old train stop at the Black Mountain Depot ...
.
Beadle wrote scientific papers describing new species and varieties of North American plants, for example, papers in the journal ''Biltmore Botanical Studies'' and his major work on the genus ''
Crataegus
''Crataegus'' (), commonly called hawthorn, quickthorn, thornapple, Voss, E. G. 1985. ''Michigan Flora: A guide to the identification and occurrence of the native and naturalized seed-plants of the state. Part II: Dicots (Saururaceae–Cornacea ...
'' (hawthorns) in
John Kunkel Small
John Kunkel Small (January 31, 1869 – January 20, 1938) was an American botanist.
Born on January 31, 1869, in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Kunkel studied botany at Franklin & Marshall College and Columbia University. He was the first Curator of ...
's 1903 book ''Flora of the Southeastern United States''. (See, for example, to the scientific description of Florida Mock-orange, ''Philadelphus floridus''.) Two of his important collaborators at Biltmore were
Charles Lawrence Boynton
Charles Lawrence Boynton (February 7, 1864 – September 16, 1943) was an American botanist active in the Southeastern United States, working at Biltmore Estate with Chauncey Beadle and his brother, Frank Ellis Boynton. The oak species ''Quer ...
and
Frank Ellis Boynton
Frank Ellis Boynton (July 10, 1859 – December 10, 1942) was a self-taught American botanist active in the Southeastern United States. He worked at Biltmore Estate with his brother, Charles Lawrence Boynton, and Chauncey Beadle
Chauncey Del ...
. In popular literature, Beadle wrote the Introduction for
Alice Lounsberry
Alice Lounsberry (6 November 1868 – 21 November 1949, both in New York City) was an American botanist and author active in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Some sources give her birth year as 1872.) She worke ...
's ''Southern Wildflowers and Trees''.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
Denizens of Biltmore€”has photo of Beadle, accessed 9 January 2008
* Alice Lounsberry (1901). ''Southern Wild Flowers and Trees'' (foreword by Chauncey Beadle). New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.
* Rachel Carley (1994). ''A Guide to Biltmore Estate.'' Asheville, North Carolina: The Biltmore Company. . 116 pages.
* View works b
Chauncey Beadleat
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as worldwide consortiumof natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working toge ...
.
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni
1866 births
1950 deaths
People from St. Catharines
19th-century American botanists
19th-century Canadian botanists
20th-century American botanists
20th-century Canadian botanists
{{US-botanist-stub