Willard Webster Eggleston (March 28, 1863 in
Pittsfield, Vermont
Pittsfield is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. The population was 504 at the 2020 census. It is site of the annual Pittsfield Snowshoe Race.
History
Granted on November 8, 1780, the town was chartered on July 29, 1781, to Sam ...
- November 25, 1935 in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
) 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 ...
, employed by the
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...
Bureau of Plant Industry.
He graduated from
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
in 1891 with a Bachelor of Science degree. In his work on the taxonomy of ''
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 ...
'', now known to be complicated by
apomixis
In botany, apomixis is asexual reproduction without fertilization. Its etymology is Greek for "away from" + "mixing". This definition notably does not mention meiosis. Thus "normal asexual reproduction" of plants, such as propagation from cuttin ...
,
polyploidy
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei ( eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contain ...
, and
hybridization
Hybridization (or hybridisation) may refer to:
*Hybridization (biology), the process of combining different varieties of organisms to create a hybrid
*Orbital hybridization, in chemistry, the mixing of atomic orbitals into new hybrid orbitals
*Nu ...
, he aimed to simplify, counteracting the proliferation of species names that other botanists had produced.
Works
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References
External links
Biographical sketch at the Gray Herbarium siteThe Papers of Willard Webster Egglestonat Dartmouth College Library
American botanists
1863 births
1935 deaths
Dartmouth College alumni
{{US-botanist-stub