Francis Whittier Pennell (4 August 1886 – 3 February 1952) was an American botanist best known for his studies of the Scrophulariaceae. Employed by the New York Botanical Garden and then by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, he carried out botanical research in both

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

Life

Pennell was born to a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

family on their farm near

Wawa, Pennsylvania Wawa is an unincorporated community located in Delaware County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania in Greater Philadelphia, partially in Middletown Township and partially in Chester Heights Borough.Mayer, Cynthia. "Pay A Visit To Wawa, The Place. ...

. Considered delicate by his family, he was excused from farm chores, which engendered in him a lifelong fear of water and incapacity with mechanical devices. Pennell was educated at

Westtown School Westtown School is a Quaker, coeducational, college preparatory day and boarding school for students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States, 20 miles west of Philadelphia. Founded in 1799 b ...

and then at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, from which he received a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in 1911 and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1913. Encouraged by John M. Macfarlane, the head of the botany department, Pennell wrote his doctoral thesis on the Scrophulariaceae (as then circumscribed), a group on which he was to become a world authority. From 1914 to 1921, Pennell was a member of the staff at the New York Botanical Garden. In 1921, Pennell became Curator of Plants at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Undeterred by his phobias, Pennell engaged in a series of field researches on North American Scrophulariaceae, publishing an important monograph, ''The Scrophulariaceae of Eastern Temperate North America'', in 1935. Pennell died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...

while attending Quaker Meeting in

Media, Pennsylvania Media is a borough in and the county seat of Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It is located about west of Philadelphia, the sixth most populous city in the nation with 1.6 million residents as 2020. It is part of the Delaware Valley metropolita ...

in 1952. He was survived by his wife, Anne, and one son. In 1917, botanist Nieuwl. published '' Pennellia'', a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s from America and South America, belonging to the family Brassicaceae and named in honour of Pennell. Then in 1970, botanist Crosswh. published ''

Pennellianthus ''Pennellianthus'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Plantaginaceae. It only contains one known species, ''Pennellianthus frutescens'' (Lamb.) Crosswh. The genus is within the Tribe Cheloneae along with '' Penstemon ...

'', a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus of

s from Russia and Japan, belonging to the family

Plantaginaceae Plantaginaceae, the plantain family, is a large, diverse family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales that includes common flowers such as snapdragon and foxglove. It is unrelated to the banana-like fruit also called "plantain." In older cl ...

and also named in honour of Pennell.

References

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

Upenn.edu: Biographies of botanists — Francis Whittier Pennell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pennell, Francis Whittier American taxonomists 1886 births 1952 deaths Quakers from Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania alumni People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania 20th-century American botanists