Pp. xiv, 239, 123 black-and-white photographs. Publisher's original red cloth, lettered in silver on the spine and front cover, lg 8vo (9.5 x 7.5 inches). Describes Fairchild's plant-hunting exploits in the Philippines and the islands of the Celebes, Java, Bali, the Spice islands, the Moluccas and surrounding islands. No ownership marks.
David Grandison Fairchild was an American botanist and plant explorer.
Background
He was born in Lansing, Michigan, the son of George Thompson Fairchild, a professor of English literature at Michigan State College of Agriculture, and Charlotte Pearl Halsted Fairchild.
He was the descendant of a long line of educators; Grandison Fairchild, his grandfather, was one of the founders of Oberlin College in Ohio, where his uncle James Fairchild later became president. Henry Fairchild, another uncle, served as president of Berea College in Kentucky.
In 1879 Fairchild's father became president of Kansas State College of Agriculture, in Manhattan, Kansas.
Education
Fairchild received the B. A. from that institution in 1888, then did graduate work with his mother's brother, Byron D. Halsted, a professor of botany at Iowa State College of Agriculture, and at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
He studied mycology and plant pathology and did pioneer research in fungicides and in the development of Bordeaux mixture as a spray for grapevines.
He then returned to Kansas State College of Agriculture to complete the master's degree in 1893.
He further studied in Italy at the Naples Zoological Station, the outstanding laboratory of its kind in the world at that time, as the first representative of the Smithsonian Institution.
Career
He studied mycology and plant pathology and did pioneer research in fungicides and in the development of Bordeaux mixture as a spray for grapevines. This work brought Fairchild a job with the section of plant pathology, Department of Agriculture, in Washington, D. C.
On board ship on his way to Naples, he met Barbour Lathrop, wealthy bachelor and world traveler, who became Fairchild's frequent traveling companion and enthusiastic and devoted benefactor.
After Lathrop proposed sending Fairchild to Java, Fairchild prepared himself by studying for two years in Germany at Breslau, Berlin, and Bonn before traveling in 1895 to Java's Buitenzorg (now Boger) Botanical Gardens.
Excited by the variety and luxuriance of plants in the tropics, Fairchild began to look everywhere for the new, the rare, and the beautiful in plant life.
For eight years he toured the world with Lathrop, going to the South Sea Islands, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Japan, China, the Persian Gulf, Africa, the West Indies, and South America.
In 1898 he set up a small plant introduction garden on a six-acre plot near Miami, Florida. Fairchild believed that exotic fruits and plants could thrive in the southern Florida climate and become both economically and aesthetically valuable.
In 1906 Fairchild returned to Washington, D. C. , where he was employed in the forestry division of the Department of Agriculture, and from 1906 to 1928 he also assisted in establishing the section of foreign seed and plant introduction. In the new post of agricultural explorer Fairchild went abroad to continue his investigations. He was also director of the office of cereal investigation.
Through Lathrop and other friends in Washington, D. C. , Fairchild met many prominent personalities, including Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and his daughter, Marian.
After World War I Fairchild persuaded the secretary of war to transfer to the Department of Agriculture Chapman Field in Miami, an 800-acre rocky and salt-filled field area into which Fairchild introduced many trees and other plants, developing a 200-acre plant introduction garden.
In the early 1920's Allison V. Armour, a rich plant enthusiast, refurbished the cargo carrier Utowana into a yacht and equipped it for scientific purposes. On this vessel Fairchild undertook plant exploration in Africa, making side trips to Ceylon, Sumatra, and elsewhere, and obtaining plants and seeds for testing in the plant introduction gardens that he created in California, Georgia, Maryland, North Dakota, Florida, and the state of Washington.
In all, Fairchild introduced more than 20, 000 species of plants into the United States, including the soybean (Japan, 1898), the tung-oil tree (Hankow, China, 1904), the hairy Peruvian alfalfa (Peru, 1899), the feterita variety of sorghum (Sudan, 1901), a number of varieties of dates (Egypt, 1901, and Persian Gulf and Baghdad, 1902), the nectarine (Pakistan, 1902), Japanese bamboos (Japan, 1903), mango varieties (Bombay, India, 1902), Rhodes grass (South Africa, 1903), and many varieties of flowering cherries (Japan, 1902).
It was dedicated on March 23, 1938, on an 85-acre tract given by the plant collector Colonel Robert H. Montgomert.
This collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world and comprises an excellent botanical library, a palm products museum, and a large display of orchids. Fairchild described his gardens in The World Grows Round My Door (1947).
In addition, he wrote Yams in the West Indies (1899), Exploring for Plants (1930), The World Was My Garden (1938), and Garden Islands of the Great East (1945).
He died in Coconut Grove, Florida.
Achievements
Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200, 000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat, cotton, and rice became especially economically important.
He cultivated and introduced avocados, mangoes, and wampi to the diet of North Americans. Fairchild was best known for the Fairchild Tropical Garden, twelve miles south of Miami.
Quotations:
In Exploring for Plants he stated: "Never to have seen anything but the temperate zone is to have lived on the fringe of the world. Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer live the majority of all the plant species, the vast majority of the insects, most of the strange quadrupeds, all of the great and most of the poisonous snakes and large lizards, most of the brilliantly colored sea fishes, and the strangest and most gorgeously plumaged of the birds. "
Membership
Fairchild was a member of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society.
Fairchild was a member of the board of regents of the University of Miami from 1929 to 1933.
Connections
Through Lathrop and other friends in Washington, D. C. , Fairchild met many prominent personalities, including Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and his daughter, Marian, whom Fairchild married on April 25, 1905.
They had three children.
Throughout their life together Marian Fairchild served as her husband's assistant, and in later years she also acted as a buffer between Fairchild and his public.
Father:
George Thompson Fairchild
Mother:
Charlotte Pearl Halsted Fairchild
companion:
Barbour Lathrop
On board ship on his way to Naples, he met Barbour Lathrop, wealthy bachelor and world traveler, who became Fairchild's frequent traveling companion and enthusiastic and devoted benefactor.
