PBIO 250 Lecture Notes
James L. Reveal
Norton-Brown Herbarium, University of Maryland
Arthur John Cronquist was a giant of a person, large in size, massive in voice, and overwhelming in personality. That he was equally large or massive or overwhelming as a taxonomist rarely escaped anyone who came into his presence. And there was that curious intellect that was reflected in the man's genius. He died working, on a manuscript for Intermountain Flora, in the herbarium at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His death, on 22 Mar 1992, marked the end of a period in systematic botany when a handful of men and women dominated much of the intellectual thought, not only in taxonomy but in much of botany.
Few will come along in the future who will so dominate a field as Arthur did.
Arthur was born on 19 Mar 1919 in San Jose, California, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. By the time he started high school, his mother had moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where, upon graduation, the already tall young man began college at Idaho State. He took his first class in taxonomy from Dr. Ray Davis who was forever proud of his student. He worked for the Forest Service and sold specimens of his Idaho collections to support himself. He transferred to Utah State (then Utah Agricultural College) and graduated with a B.S. in 1938. He remained at Logan and completed his M.S. degree in 1940 under the guidance of Dr. Bassett Maguire, doing a study on Aster.
For his doctoral work, the "big blonde Swede" - as some called him - went to the University of Minnesota, doing a revision of the North American species of Erigeron. Maguire proposed E. cronquistii in 1944, with Cronquist proposing E. maguirei in 1947. During the Second World War, Arthur, who was exempt because of an injury to an elbow, worked on Simaroubaceae for Merick Pharmaceutical Company in an effort to discover alternative for quinine, and for the Chicle Company to find a substitute for chewing gum. After the War, Cronquist went to Brussels to continue his work on Simaroubaceae and the flora of Africa as part of an effort to improve conditions in scientific institutions in Europe.
Art was an assistant professor at both the University of Georgia and at Washington State University. When the Pullman campus was forced to reduce its faculty for financial reasons, Cronquist was let go and he moved to New York, accepting a permanent position at the New York Botanical Garden in The Bronx. He first went to NYBG in 1943 as an assistant curator, but the position was temporary and lasted only a year. When he started again at New York his future revolved around three areas of study: Floristics, revisions of composites and angiosperm classification.
He and Arthur Holmgren, at Utah State University, initiated a study of the Intermountain West in 1959, with Cronquist concentrating on the multi-volumed, illustrated flora of the Pacific Northwest with C. Leo Hitchcock and Marion Ownbey. He worked on the latter flora into the early 1970s when his focus moved southward. As senior author of the Intermountain Flora he championed the effort to summarized the plants of that regions in a second illustrated, several-volumed flora. At the same time, we worked on revisions of Henry Gleason's and his own Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and adjacent Canada, a second edition appearing in 1991.
Although Arthur often remarked that "floristics is not monographic" his detailed review of the genera he treated were often as thorough as any monograph. With access to the large collection and library at the New York Botanical Garden, and his willingness to study herbarium material and types throughout much of the United States and Europe, plus his ever ongoing field trips into the West, allowed him to solve problems long ignored by others. Of particular interest to him was the family Asteraceae. His field trips to Mexico, in particular, were rewarding with numerous new plants including the genus Cronquistia. Years later, the related genus Revealia was proposed so that today the two genera are side-by-side in any treatment of the tribe Eupatorieae.
As an educator, Cronquist wrote one of the finest botany text books of the 1960s. Introductory Botany and Basic Botany were widely used and translated into several languages. He taught numerous students, and several today teach at universities throughout the nation.
By the late 1960s, Cronquist moved into the category of senior statesman for botany. He lectured widely, was actively sought as a consult, wrote numerous articles on evolution, phylogeny and botany in general. He played major roles in the leading of national and international organizations, serving as president of several including the American Society for Plant Taxonomy.
My own experience with Arthur Cronquist was typical of many college students. He showed up to lecture in Art Holmgren's taxonomy class in the spring of 1961, asking that famous question we all remember "CAN YOU HEAR ME?" - The dead could have heard him! I had found a curious specimen of Ranunculus which I could not identify and took the specimen to Holmgren for help. The two Arts worked over my collection and final declared the plant to be a species previously known from the Rocky Mountains even though I found it in Logan Canyon. For some reason, Cronquist took it upon himself, a few weeks later, to convert me from forestry to botany and basically talked, and talked, and finally talked me into changing.
He was right, it was a good change.
Over the years, Cronq. (pronounced "Cronk") pushed and pulled, talked and urged me along a number of different paths. He reviewed my papers, saving me from making some grand blunders, and introduced me into a number of different aspects of systematics. He was a good teacher and a grand friend.
Arthur's interest in flowering plant classification first made its appearance in a paper he published in 1957 while working in Belgium. In 1965 he traveled to (then) Leningrad to talk to Armen Takhtajan, and the two began a long and productive relationship. While both men published independently, and basically disagreed on many things, the two were in concert on many aspects of angiosperm phylogeny. Both published several version with Cronquist opting for fewer modifications. His book, The Evolution and Classification of Flowering Plants published in 1968 set the stage for his future efforts, culminating in An integrated system of classification of flowering plants in 1981. It would be this later work that would set the stage for a massive renewal of interest in angiosperm phylogeny for here was a thorough work that could be tested using modern systematic means.
My own role in all this started in 1982 when I attempted to make some summary comparisons of the systems of classification proposed by Cronquist and Takhtajan, and by a second twosome, Rolf Dahlgren and Robert Thorne. To a minor degree I urged all to account for all family names, and urged each to look at certain problem groups. Cronquist was unwilling basically to change his system (he made only minor changes in 1988 in a second edition of his book on Evolution and Classification) whereas the others often made frequent changes to reflect new knowledge. A few weeks before his death, Arthur told me that by having a stable system it could be widely adopted in published floras and herbaria. He was correct, and his system has been widely adopted throughout the world.
Still, science is ever changing, and today, Cronquist's system requires major modifications to reflect current knowledge. Still, without what he did in the 1960s and 1970s, we would not be in the position we are with regards our current understanding of angiosperm phylogeny.
Previous page