Forest Buffen Harkness Brown (1873–1954) was an American

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

known for his work on pteridophytes and

spermatophytes A spermatophyte (; ), also known as phanerogam (taxon Phanerogamae) or phaenogam (taxon Phaenogamae), is any plant that produces seeds, hence the alternative name seed plant. Spermatophytes are a subset of the embryophytes or land plants. They inc ...

Life and research

Brown studied forestry, systematic botany, and ecology at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1902, receiving his master's degree in 1903. Early in his career, Brown studied plant distribution on the flood plain of the

Huron River The Huron River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed November 7, 2011 river in southeastern Michigan, rising out of the Huron Swamp in Springfield Township in north ...

Ypsilanti, Michigan Ypsilanti (), commonly shortened to Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 20,648. The city is bounded to the north by Superior Township and on the west, south, and ...

. He worked for the

United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

before joining

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

as professor of botany. Brown pursued further research on Hawaiian trees at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

for two years and received his Ph.D. in 1918. He married biologist Elizabeth Dorothy Wuist on August 20 of the same year, and the two of them performed two years of field work on the

Bernice P. Bishop Museum The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, designated the Hawaii State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. Founded in 1889, it is the larg ...

Bayard Dominick Expedition to the

Marquesas Islands The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in th ...

(1921–1922), along with ethnologist Edward S. Handy and archeologist Ralph Lauton. Brown and his wife also visited the Tuamotu archipelago and New Zealand where they collected 9000 dried plant and 120 wood samples. Herbert E. Gregory, Yale geologist and director of the Bishop Museum at the time described Brown in 1922: "Forest B. H. Brown, Botanist, returned to Honolulu on December 16, 1922, after a period of two years spent in the Marquesas and neighboring parts of the Pacific as a member of the Bayard Dominick Expedition. His work has resulted in filling a conspicuous gap in the knowledge of Pacific flora and should lead to the preparation of a standard treatise based on his collections, which comprise 9000 sheets of material and 395 photographs. During the year a paper by Mr. Brown on "The secondary xylem of Hawaiian trees" (Occasional Papers. Vol. VIII, No. 6) was issued by the Museum." In 1920, Brown was a research fellow at Yale when he became a staff botanist for the Bishop Museum in

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

. His wife joined him at the Bishop Museum as a research associate in cryptogamic botany.

Organizations

*Michigan Academy of Science

Collections

Ypsilanti Historical Society The Ypsilanti Historical Society, founded in 1961, operates the Ypsilanti Historical Museum and Rudisill-Fletcher-White Archives in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The museum and archives are located at 220 N Huron St. in an Italianate mansion built in 1860 ...

, YHS Letter Collection. Letters and drawings (1889–1918).

Publications

* * *Brown, Flora of Southeastern Polynesia. Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu 1931-35. (3 volumes)

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Forest B. H. 1873 births 1954 deaths American botanists People from Ypsilanti, Michigan University of Michigan alumni Yale University alumni