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Article: Undaunted botany: even while struggling to survive, Lewis & Clark took time to stop and name the flowers.
- Article from:
- Sierra
- Article date:
- May 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Sierra Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Popular depictions of the Lewis and Clark expedition focus on encounters with vast herds of buffalo or battles with grizzly bears. Yet the naturalist-adventurers were more often quietly preoccupied by the continent's flora, so meticulously documenting every plant new to them that 200 years later we can view the journey through a botanist's eyes.
For this we can thank polymath President Thomas Jefferson, one of the young nation's most accomplished naturalists. Of all the sciences, Jefferson favored botany, reasoning that plants provided "the principle subsistence of life to man and beast." After hiring Meriwether Lewis as his personal secretary in 1801, he began ...