A Bibliography of Botanical Histories

As I went deeper into my research, I found it difficult to find secondary literature on the history of botany. The most recent comprehensive textbook I could find was from the 1980s. Histories of biology, which tended to focus more on zoological subjects, seemed to be much more plentiful. A result, I began keeping track of almost anything I could find. Now I see that there is a lot that has been written, though I still have not found any recent comprehensive works. Below are the results of my search, which I plan on keeping up-to-date. If you know of any books that I am leaving out, please contact me.

General Histories

British

North American

  • Rodgers, Andre Denny. American Botany, 1873-1892: Decades of Transition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.
  • Humphrey, H. B. Makers of North American Botany. New York: Ronald, 1961.
  • Ewan, Joseph Andorfer, ed. A Short History of Botany in the United States. New York: Hafner, 1969.
  • Wetmore, Ralph H. Irving Widmer Bailey. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1974.
  • Volberg, Rachel Ann. “Constraints and Commitments in the Development of American Botany, 1880-1920.” University of California, 1983.
  • Dupree, A. Hunter. Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
  • Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty. “Botany and the Evolutionary Synthesis: The Life and Work of G. Ledyard Stebbins Jr.” Cornell University, 1988.
  • Johnson, Victoria. American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic. New York: Liverwright Publishing Corporation, 2018.
  • Lannoo, MIchael J. This Land Is Your Land: The Story of Field Biology in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
  • Mauz, Kathryn. C. G. Pringle: Botanist, Traveler, and the “Flora of the Pacific Slope,” (1881–1884). New York: New York Botanical Garden Press, 2018.