Walter Tennyson Swingle

Walter Tennyson Swingle ( born January 8, 1871 in Canaan Township (Pennsylvania ); † January 19, 1952 in Washington, DC) was an American botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Swingle ".

Life and work

Swingle was born as the first child of John Fletcher Swingle (1848-1935) and Mary Astley Swingle in Canaan Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania in 1871. 1873 the family moved to Manhattan ( Kansas ), where they operate a farm nearby. First Swingle was taught at home instead of going to school. By means of a copy of the work A Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States by Asa Gray, he taught himself Plant Names.

1885 Swingle began studying at the Kansas State Agricultural College in Topeka, Kansas. At the age of 16, he wrote in 1887 already a treatise on rust fungi on crop plants. From 1888 to April 1891 Swingle was " appointed assistant botanist " at the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1890 he received the degree of Bachelor of Science from Kansas State College of Agriculture at Manhattan. In April 1891 he had already published 21 joint work with Professor William A. Kellerman and 6 their own work.

Swingle moved end of April 1891 to Washington, DC, to work at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA ) in the new department Vegetable Pathology, which was led by Beverly T. Galloway. He was originally hired to work on a fungal pathogen of citrus fruits; quickly, however, his interest shifted to the citrus plants (Citrus ) itself His research he practiced primarily here in Florida from. He explored genetics and Hybridization of citrus; he produced the hybrids ' Minneola ', the Tangelo varieties ' Sampson ' (1897 ), ' Thornton ' (1899 ) and ' Orlando ' (1911 ), as well as three Limequat varieties (1909 ); on the development of other citrus fruits such as Murcott orange and kumquat varieties he was also involved.

From 1895 to 1896 he studied with Eduard Strasburger at the University of Bonn. In a further stay in Europe in 1898, he studied again at Strasburger; this time he attended the University of Leipzig; During this stay, he met his future wife, Lucie A. Romstaedt know.

In 1896, Swingle Master of Science degree from Kansas State Agricultural College. In 1899, he conducted research on figs in Naples and published research about the culture of figs and dates. 1900 brought Swingle from a trip to Algeria 405 plant specimens of cultivars ' Deglet Noor ' and ' Rhars ' of date palms with. These were planted in Tempe ( Arizona), but decreased later. Swingle successfully led fig wasps of the genus Blastophaga from Algeria as Bestäuberinsekt for the fig orchards in California. In 1907, he helped build the United States Date Garden in Indio, California.

1922 Swingle received the Ph.D. from the Kansas State Agricultural College.

About his interest in citrus plants he also came to to deal intensively with the Chinese botany. He procured more than 100,000 Chinese books for the Library of Congress and put a personal library on Chinese agriculture. His materials are now housed in the Walter Tennyson Swingle Collection at the University of Miami.

In January 1941, Swingle retired. He was advisor to the University of Miami for botany tropical plants and director of its Swingle Plant Research Laboratory. After Swingle the middle of 1951 fell ill, he died on January 19, 1952 at home in Washington, DC.

In 1901 he married Lucy A. Romstaedt, who died in 1910. In 1915 he married Maude Kellerman, the daughter of the co-author of some of his works William A. Kellerman. From this marriage four children were born. His half-brother Charles Fletcher Swingle (1899-1978) was also a botanist.

The plant genus Swinglea Merr. from the rue family ( Rutaceae ) has been named after him.

Works

Here is a selection of his works:

• Some Peronosporaceae in the Herbarium of the Division of Vegetable Pathology. In: Journal of Mycology. 7, No. 2, 1892, pp. 109-130.
• The Grain Smuts: How They Are Caused and how to preventDefault them. In: USDA Farmers Bulletin. 75, Washington, 1898 ( 20 pages, 8 illustrations ).
• A new genus, Fortunella, Comprising four species of Kumquat Oranges. In: Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 5, 1915.
• Textbook of systematic botany. 1928.
• Noteworthy Chinese works on wild and cultivated food plants. Report of the Librarian of Congress for the year 1935. Washington, DC 1935, pp. 193-206.
• The botany of citrus and its wild relatives of the orange subfamily. In: HJ Webber, LD Batchelor (eds.): The Citrus Industry i History, Botany, and Breeding. Univ of California Press, Berkeley, 1943, pp. 129-474.