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Walter Tennyson Swingle (January 8, 1871 – January 19, 1952) was an American agricultural
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 w ...
who contributed greatly to the classification and taxonomy of citrus.


Biography

Swingle was born in
Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Te ...
, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Kansas two years later. He graduated from the
Kansas State Agricultural College Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public instit ...
in 1890, and studied at the
University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...
in 1895–96 and 1898. Swingle married Lucie Romstaedt in 1901; she died in 1910. He married Maude Kellerman, daughter of William Ashbrook Kellerman, in 1915 and they had four children. He died in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1952. In 1927, botanist Elmer Drew Merrill published ''
Swinglea ''Swinglea'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Rutaceae. It only contains a single species, ''Swinglea glutinosa''. It is native to the Philippines. The genus name of ''Swinglea'' is in honour of Walter Tennyson Sw ...
'', which is a genus of flowering plants from the Philippines, belonging to the family Rutaceae and named in Walter Tennyson Swingle's honor.


Contribution to US agricultural industry

Swingle worked at the United States Department of Agriculture (1891), investigated subtropic fruits, established laboratories in Florida, became an agricultural explorer, and (after 1902) had charge of crop physiology and
breeding Breeding is sexual reproduction that produces offspring, usually animals or plants. It can only occur between a male and a female animal or plant. Breeding may refer to: * Animal husbandry, through selected specimens such as dogs, horses, and rab ...
investigations. He developed the tangelo citrus hybrid in 1897 in
Eustis, Florida Eustis is a city in Lake County, Florida, United States. The population was 23,189 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area. Eustis High School is the town's local public high sch ...
. He made several visits to the Mediterranean countries of Europe, to North Africa, and to Asia Minor, from where he introduced the date palm, pistachio nut and other useful plants, as well as the fig wasp, to make possible the cultivation of
Smyrna fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...
s in California. Swingle also traveled to Asia, bringing back 100,000 Chinese volumes on botany to the Library of Congress. Much of his research is published in the five-volume book, '' The Citrus Industry'', of which he wrote a significant portion.


Plant anatomy collection

An extensive collection related to Swingle and his life, photos and works entitled the
Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection
is hosted at the University of Miami.


Selected publications

* * * * * * * * *


References

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External links

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Walter Tennyson Swingle Collection
University of Miami Libraries Special Collections Finding Aid. The collection contain papers, articles, correspondence and other materials that provide information on his botanical and plant introduction work as well as his personal life and travels.
Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection
The site features over 1,700 photomicrographs of plant parts from more than 250 species of plants collected from all over the world, plant structure animations, and information on Walter Tennyson Swingle.
Walter Tennyson Swingle: botanist and exponent of Chinese civilization
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swingle, Walter Tennyson People from Wayne County, Pennsylvania American botanists 1871 births 1952 deaths