Liberty Hyde Bailey (March 15, 1858 – December 25, 1954) was an American horticulturist and botanist who was cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
School period
College/University
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
220 Trowbridge Rd, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States
Liberty Bailey graduated from Michigan Agricultural College in 1882 with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Liberty Bailey held the Doctor of Science degree from the University of Puerto Rico, which he received in 1932.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Liberty Bailey received the Doctor of Laws, from the University of Wisconsin in 1907.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States
Liberty Bailey received the Doctor of Letters from the University of Vermont, 1919.
Career
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey (March 15, 1858 – December 25, 1954) was an American horticulturist and botanist who was cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey, age 12, from Museum Collections.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Professor, 1885, in Museum Collections.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Professor, 1885.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey, famously breaking ground of new Agriculture building at Cornell, pushing a plow pulled by students.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey standing next to a stack of the 200+ books he either wrote or edited over the course of his life. Picture in Museum Collections.
Gallery of Liberty Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey, American horticulturist and botanist who was cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Veitch Memorial Medal
Bailey was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1897.
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Professor, 1886. This photograph came from the class album of 1886, and it shows Liberty Hyde Bailey, Jr., B.S. Professor of Horticulture & Landscape Gardening , & Superintendent of the Horticultural Department.
Liberty Hyde Bailey (March 15, 1858 – December 25, 1954) was an American horticulturist and botanist who was cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
(The agrarian tradition runs as an undercurrent through th...)
The agrarian tradition runs as an undercurrent through the entire history of literature, carrying the age-old wisdom that the necessary access of independent farmers to their own land both requires the responsibility of good stewardship and provides the foundation for a thriving civilization. At the turn of the last century, when farming first began to face the most rapid and extensive series of changes that industrialization would bring, the most compelling and humane voice representing the agrarian tradition came from the botanist, farmer, philosopher, and public intellectual Liberty Hyde Bailey. In 1915, Bailey’s environmental manifesto, The Holy Earth, addressed the industrialization of society by utilizing the full range of human vocabulary to assert that the earth’s processes and products, because they form the governing conditions of human life, should therefore be understood not first as economic, but as divine.
(The author defines scores of common Latin stems and word-...)
The author defines scores of common Latin stems and word-endings used in botanical nomenclature and presents a few important rules of pronunciation. Most important of all, he includes a full, 20-page list of generic terms most likely to be met in horticultural literature and 42 pages of common Latin words and their English botanical applications and meanings.
Liberty Hyde Bailey: Essential Agrarian and Environmental Writings
(Carefully selected and annotated by Zachary Michael Jack,...)
Carefully selected and annotated by Zachary Michael Jack, this book offers a comprehensive introduction to Bailey's celebrated and revolutionary thinking on the urgent environmental, agrarian, educational, and ecospiritual dilemmas of his day and our own. Culled from ten of Bailey's most influential works, these lyrical selections highlight Bailey's contributions to the nature-study and the Country Life movements.
(The Principles of Agriculture is an extensively comprehen...)
The Principles of Agriculture is an extensively comprehensive handbook covering absolutely everything necessary for success in agriculture, written by one of the most knowledgeable practitioners of his time: Liberty Hyde Bailey. This text starts by outlining the intrinsic roles of science and business in agriculture, going on in a logical order to set forth the skeleton of the subject to be used by a teacher in agricultural education.
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist, and agriculturist. Bailey is credited for being a founder in 1903 and first president of the American Society of Horticultural Science (also still in existence). He was also a founder and president of the Botanical Society of America (1926), and twice President of the American Nature-Study Society (1914-1915).
Background
Liberty Hyde Bailey was born on March 15, 1858 in South Haven, Michigan, as the third son of farmers Liberty Hyde Bailey Sr. and Sarah Harrison Bailey, who came of a distinguished Virginia family. He grew up working on the farm, playing in the woods and along the creek that ran through the property, and trapping passenger pigeons with his Potawatomi neighbors. No one knew then that young “Lib,” who was mainly known in South Haven as the best apple grafter in town, would leave the farm to become a world-renowned scientist, philosopher, and visionary leader.
Education
Liberty Bailey graduated from the Michigan Agricultural College in 1882 with a Bachelor of Science degree. In 1886 he earned his Master of Science from the Michigan Agricultural College. He later received the Doctor of Laws, from the University of Wisconsin in 1907, and the Doctor of Letters from the University of Vermont, 1919. He also held the Doctor of Science degree from the University of Puerto Rico, which he received in 1932.
At nineteen, Bailey entered Michigan state (Agricultural) College, where his genius for plant study was soon recognized by William James Beal, a former student of Asa Gray and a pioneer in the laboratory method of teaching botany. Bailey also studied Darwinian evolution, and in 1880 the Botanical Gazette published his article “Michigan Lake Shore Plants,” When Bailey received the B.S. degree in 1882, he had been trained in the use of compound microscopes and had begun experiments with Rubus and other plants. A brief stint as a reporter on the Springfield, illinois, Monitor followed; but a visit to e herbarium of Michael Schuck Bebb testifies to his continued interest in plants. Late in 1882 Asa Gray of Harvard employed Bailey “at Cambridge... for a year or two” as assistant curator of the university herbarium. He was also assistant in physiological experiments and had charge of nomenclature for gardens, greenhouses, and the students’ and garden herbaria.
From 1884 through 1900 Bailey published many papers on Carex, his first being a catalog that was presented in fuller form in 1887. In 1885 Michigan State (Agricultural) College called him to serve as professor of horticulture an landscape gardening. In that same year the American Pomological Society awarded Bailey its Wilder medal for an exhibit of native nuts and fruits. No later than 1886 he began making crosses and varietal studies in Cucurbita, another group on which he became an authority. His instruction in horiticulture, in both classroom and field, embraced every facet of the subject as it was then conceived, and introduced uch innovations as classification and nomenclature of fruits and vegetables, hybridization, and cross-fertilization of plant varieties. Also in 1886 Bailey was elected president the M.S. degree from Michigan State, and, with Joseph Charles Arthur, participated in a botanical survey in Minnesota. The first three of his more than sixty books appeared during this period.
In 1888 Bailey was summoned to Cornell University to occupy its chair of practical and experimental horticulture, the first such chair in an experimental horticulture, the first such chair in an American University. He held it with distinction as horticulturist, botanist, rural sociologist, nature-study proponent, editor, poet, philosopher, and world traveler until 1903, when he became the second director of the College of Agriculture, In May 1904 he was made first dean of the New York State College of Agriculture and director of its experiment station.
He retired from that position in 1913, at which time he was appointed dean and professor emeritus. After his retirement Dr. Bailey devoted his time to research, collecting over a quarter of a million plants, and to writing and editing more than 100 books. He edited The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture (1907 - 1909), The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1914 - 1917), Hortus (1930), Hortus Second (1941), and other important works, and wrote Plant-Breeding (1897), Manual of Gardening (1910), and Manual of Cultivated Plants (1924). In 1935 Dr. Bailey presented to Cornell University his entire botanical collection and professional library, including the land and buildings in which they were housed. These were named the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium, and Dr. Bailey remained as director until 1952. In 1948 the National Garden Institute announced an annual award of a medal in honor of Dr. Bailey to be presented to the winner of a horticultural competition. At the age of 91 Dr. Bailey undertook a palm-collecting expedition in the Caribbean area.
Liberty Hyde Bailey died on December 25, 1954 in Ithaca at the age of 96, and is still remembered as one of the most influential figures in horticulture to this day.
Bailey and his followers held a quasi-religious faith in education by enlightened experts, which meant suppression of inherited ways and substitution by progressive ways. It was accompanied by a corresponding hostility to traditional religion.
Views
Central to Bailey`s life philosophy was the importance of the family and farm life which formed a “natural cooperative unit where everybody had real duties and responsibilities.” He believed that the importance of education could not be underestimated in freeing farmers from “old restraints.” His concerns for the environment are contained in the following quotation: "If the earth is holy, then the things that grow out of the earth are also holy. They do not belong to man to do with them as he will. Dominion does not carry personal ownership. There are many generations of folk yet to come after us, who will have equal right with us to the products of the globe. It would seem that a divine obligation rests on every soul. Are we to make righteous use of the vast accumulation of knowledge of the planet? If so, we must have a new formulation. The partition of the earth among the millions who live on it is necessarily a question of morals; and a society that is founded on an unmoral partition and use cannot itself be righteous and whole."
Quotations:
"Nature cannot be antagonistic to man, seeing that man is a product of nature."
"I like the man who has an incomplete course…. If the man has acquired a power for work, a capacity for initiative and investigation, an enthusiasm for the daily life his incompleteness is his strength. How much there is before him! How eager his eyes! How enthusiastic his temper! He is a man with a point of view, not a man with mere facts. This man will see first big and significant things; he will grasp relationships; he will correlate; later he will consider the details."
"Is there any progress in horticulture? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. We cannot live in the past, good as it is; we must draw our inspiration from the future."
"We must tell it to the world that the higher education is necessary to the best agriculture. We must tell our friends of our enthusiasm for the generous life of the country. We must say that we believe in our ability to make good use of every lesson which the University has given us. We must say to every man that our first love is steadfast, our hopes are high, and our enthusiasm is great. Our hearts are so full that we must celebrate."
"Humble is the grass in the field, yet it has noble relations. All the bread grains are grass—wheat and rye, barley, sorghum, and rice; maize, the great staple of America; millet, oats, and sugar cane. Other things have their season but the grass is of all seasons … the common background on which the affairs of nature and man are conditioned and displayed."
"Fact is not to be worshiped. The life which is devoid of imagination is dead; it is tied to the earth. There need be no divorce of fact and fancy; they are only the poles of experience. What is called the scientific method is only imagination set within bounds…. Facts are bridged by imagination. They are tied together by the thread of speculation. The very essence of science is to reason from the known to the unknown."
Membership
Bailey was a member of the American Society of Horticultural Science, of the Botanical Society of America (1926), and of the American Nature-Study Society from 1914, of the American Pomological Society (1917), of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1926), of the American Country Life Association (19312), and of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (1939).
He was also a member of, among many organizations, the National academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American academy of Arts and Sciences, and the academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Personality
Bailey wrote scores of books, including not only scientific works and efforts to explain botany to laypeople, but also a collection of poetry, and he coined the word "cultivar".
During his life he traveled more than 250,000 miles visiting Europe (1888-9, 1909, 1919), New Zealand (1914), South America (1914-1917), China, Japan, Korea (1917-1919), Trinidad and Venezuela (1920-21), Barbados (1922), Jamaica and the Panama Canal Zone (1931), Mexico (1934), Haiti and Santo Domingo (1937), Guadaloupe and Martinique (1938), Oaxaca, Mexico (1940), the Caribbean and South America (1946-47). In 1948 he missed his 90th birthday party because he was collecting plants in the West Indies.
Interests
photography, poetry, travelling
Philosophers & Thinkers
Charles Darwin, Asa Gray, Lucy Millington
Connections
In 1883 Bailey married Annette Smith, the daughter of a Michigan cattle breeder, whom he met at the Michigan Agricultural College. They had two daughters, Sara May, born in 1887, and Ethel Zoe, born in 1889. Ethel Zoe accompanied her father on many collecting trips. His wife died in 1938. His daughter Sara and son-in-law died leaving two children who were then raised by their aunt Ethel Zoe.