Background
Howell was born in Cooper County, Missouri on October 8, 1842. His father was a doctor who had taught him some Latin and science, but he mostly educated himself while farming along the Clackamas River after leaving Sauvie Island.
Howell was born in Cooper County, Missouri on October 8, 1842. His father was a doctor who had taught him some Latin and science, but he mostly educated himself while farming along the Clackamas River after leaving Sauvie Island.
Howell is considered one of the top three self-taught botanists of his era for the Pacific Northwest. The other two being Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf and William Conklin Cusick. An aquatic plant sent to Harvard botanist Asa Gray in 1878 was named Howellia aquatilis by him in the brothers" honor.
In 1877, Howell started an herbarium, in which he cataloged 2,152 species.
Today his collections are in many American and European herbariums. Howell published his first catalog of regional plants in 1881.
He compiled and published A Flora of Northwest America: Containing brief descriptions of all the known indigenous and naturalized plants growing without cultivation north of California, west of Utah, and south of British Columbia between 1897 and 1903. Lacking funds, he borrowed type and hand-set the book a few pages at a time, taking them to Portland to be printed.
lieutenant was the most comprehensive list of Oregon and Washington plants published up to that time.
Over 30 species of plants are named howellii. Howell donated his collection of approximately 10,000 plant specimens to the University of Oregon. He spent the 1903-1904 academic year cataloging the collection for the university.
Thomas J. Howell is one of the 158 names of people who are notable in the early history of Oregon painted in the friezes of the House and Senate chambers of the Oregon State Capitol.
Howell"s name is in the House side. His family"s home, the Bybee–Howell House, is on the National Register of Historic Places.