Background
Clements was born on September 16, 1874, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Ephraim George Clements and Mary Angeline Scoggin.
1400 R St, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
Clements was educated at the University of Nebraska, where he studied under the influential American botanist Charles E. Bessey. Clements received an undergraduate degree in 1894, a master’s degree in botany in 1896, and a Ph.D. in botany in 1898.
1400 R St, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
Clements was educated at the University of Nebraska, where he studied under the influential American botanist Charles E. Bessey. Clements received an undergraduate degree in 1894, a master’s degree in botany in 1896, and a Ph.D. in botany in 1898.
(This book has been written in the hope of making the stud...)
This book has been written in the hope of making the study of flowering plants both simple and attractive to beginners of all ages. Technical terms are avoided where possible. Descriptions include the family tree, the work of flowers, the evolution and relationship of flowers, and the flower chart for identification.
https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Families-Ancestors-Frederic-Clements/dp/B001SWE2DK/?tag=2022091-20
1928
(Vegetation, methods of studying vegetation, plant success...)
Vegetation, methods of studying vegetation, plant succession, units of vegetation, initial causes of succession, competition and invasion, migration, soil air, soil temperature, water content, light, and countless other subjects and details within subjects.
https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Ecology-Frederic-Clements-Weaver/dp/0070687501/?tag=2022091-20
1929
Botanist ecologist scientist taxonomist
Clements was born on September 16, 1874, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Ephraim George Clements and Mary Angeline Scoggin.
Clements was educated at the University of Nebraska, where he studied under the influential American botanist Charles E. Bessey. Clements received an undergraduate degree in 1894, a master’s degree in botany in 1896, and a Ph.D. in botany in 1898.
At nineteen Clements published his first paper, which described new species of fungi. The following year he received his B.S. degree at the University of Nebraska and was appointed an assistant in botany. He participated in the phytogeographic survey of Nebraska, the findings of which were published in 1898 in collaboration with Roscoe Pound.
Clements quickly rose in the academic ranks - instructor in 1897 and adjunct professor in 1899 following the award of his Ph.D. in 1898 - to become professor of plant physiology in 1906. Edith Gertrude Schwartz, who took a Ph.D. in botany at Nebraska as Clements’ student, wrote in 1961 that they had dreamed of an “alpine laboratory” in the summer of 1899 on their honeymoon visit to Colorado. The purchase of the cabin site in Engelmann Canyon on Pikes Peak, made with income from the sale to museums of Colorado exsiccatae collected during the following three summers, led to the establishment of the laboratory there.
In 1907 Clements became head of the botany department at the University of Minnesota, remaining there ten years. He left the university to become a full-time research associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, spending winters at experimental gardens in Tucson, Arizona, and then Santa Barbara, California, and summers at Alpine Laboratory, where he directed a staff of nine permanent and seasonal (usually student) assistants. Scientists came to observe what he liked to distinguish as “dynamic ecology.” The Clementses spent the summer of 1911 in Europe examining Gaston Bonnier’s transplant program and the alpine flora. In 1913 they played a prominent part in the International Phytogeographic Excursion.
Clements’ Plant Succession (1916) is generally considered by ecologists to be his greatest work. It was based on his Development and Structure of Vegetation (1904), Shantz (1945) considered Clements botanically to be “essentially a philosopher” and his “analysis and synthesis” to be his greatest contribution. Clements’ Genera of Fungi (1909, rev. with C. L. Shear in 1931) was a landmark in mycology. Popular identification manuals on Rocky Mountain and Sierra wild flowers, illustrated with original paintings by his wife, were first published in the National Geographic Magazine and were reprinted by demand. These works disseminated Bessey’s phylogenetic views.
Clements is best known for his theory of community development or plant succession. He claimed that a plant community underwent a predictable series of developmental stages that was comparable to the development of an organism. The final stage or climax community was determined by the climatic conditions of a geographic area. For Clements, the plant community was, in fact, a “complex organism” with a physiology that could be studied with the same precision as an organism in the laboratory. These organismal ideas were both influential and controversial during Clements’s lifetime. They focused considerable attention on plant succession as a major research area for American ecologists during the early decades of the twentieth century, when the discipline was becoming established. Although widely rejected by later ecologists, Clements’s organicism and physiological perspective persisted in attenuated form even after World War II.
(Vegetation, methods of studying vegetation, plant success...)
1929(This book has been written in the hope of making the stud...)
1928From his earliest fieldwork Clements espoused a conservative, inclusive interpretation of plant species and sought to demonstrate experimentally that some species might be transformed under the impact of environment. Using grasses and native caespitose perennials, he divided and transplanted them to contrasting habitats at different elevations, from the plains at 5,500 feet to the summit of Pikes Peak, 14,110 feet. He insisted that he had “converted” alpine timothy into a lowland timothy. His neo-Lamarckian views, minimizing the role of chromosomes, challenged cytogeneticists; and his findings, not substantiated today in the way he promulgated, stimulated the “new systematics.”
It was characteristic of Clements to outfit himself as nattily for the field as for addressing a banquet of the Soil Conservation Service. He spoke precisely, affecting classic Latin pronunciation for plant genera. Although he relished debate, he was reasonable in argument. He was kind and considerate; esteem came more easily to him than comradeship. Success through the years gave him a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Above all there persisted his sharp intellect and capacity for unremitting work.
Clements married Edith Schwartz on May 30, 1899, in Lincoln.