Josiah Hoopes (November 9, 1832 – January 16, 1904) was an American botanist specializing in

arboriculture Arboriculture () is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their environmen ...

. He founded one of the largest commercial plant nurseries in the United States in his hometown of West Chester,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

Life and career

Hoopes was born to parents Pierce and Sarah A. Hoopes in West Chester in 1832. He attended

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

high schools. In 1853, he founded Cherry Hill Nurseries (later Hoopes Brothers & Thomas) in West Chester, which expanded to one thousand acres by 1913 and became one of the largest commercial plant nurseries in the United States. Hoopes supplied fruit trees to all the country's national cemeteries and sold overseas in Europe and Australia. The business formally dissolved in July 1948. Hoopes was lifelong friends with botanists David Townsend and

William Darlington William Darlington (April 28, 1782 – April 23, 1863) was an American physician, botanist, and politician who served as a Democratic-Republican Party, Democratic-Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 2nd cong ...

. He wrote for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''The Horticulturist'', ''

Botanical Gazette The ''International Journal of Plant Sciences'' covers botanical research including genetics and genomics, developmental and cell biology, biochemistry and physiology, morphology and structure, systematics, plant-microbe interactions, paleobotany, ...

'' and other horticultural periodicals and served as founder and president of the Horticultural Association of Pennsylvania for seven years. His ''Book of Evergreens'' (1868) was an authoritative treatise on

conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...

s. Hoopes was a fifth-generation

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 ...

. He collected taxidermy birds, nearly eight thousand of which were acquired by the

Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading natura ...

, and served as a trustee of West Chester State Normal School for fifteen years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoopes, Josiah 1832 births 1904 deaths People from West Chester, Pennsylvania 19th-century American botanists Nurserymen Arborists