Image courtesy of Harvard University
Frank N. Meyer (1875-1918) Plant Explorer
On June 18, 1918 the Washington Evening Star reported that the body of Frank N. Meyer had been found floating in the Yangtze River. He had been criss-crossing the wilds of central China since 1916 searching for the legendary wild pear forests of Jehol north of Beijing. So ended the life of the most remarkable plant explorer of the early 20th century—the man who found the Meyer Lemon, Zoysia grass, and the blight resistant chestnut. On four expeditions (1905-1908, 1909-1911, 1912-1915, 1916-1918) he traversed Korea, China, Siberia, Turkestan and the Russian Caucasus for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tasked with collecting seeds and cuttings that might prove useful in world agriculture. Packed carefully in moss and wrapped in oiled paper, crates of this material came in a steady stream into the USDA’s Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introductions. All were tagged with a geographic marker, a proposed botanical name, and Meyer’s mark. There were a small handful of USDA plant collectors in the world—Wilson Popenoe in South America, J. F. Rock in Burma and Thailand. But Meyer was the most daring, learned, and industrious . . . famous for trekking into the wildest corners of Eurasia and China, defying bandits, miserable weather, and brutal terrain.
On his first expedition he discovered in Manchuria a cold tolerant upland rice that thrived on modest rainfall, an improved species of jujube (a date that grows on bushes rather than palms trees), and a Chinese persimmon as broad-beamed as any Japanese Kaki. He also survived an attempted garroting in Siberia by plunging a cane knife into the stomach of the largest of his three attackers.
His second expedition spent a great deal of time and effort in pursuit of the Feit Ching, a honey-flavored peach reputed to grow to the size of a muskmelon said to grow in Shantung Province, China. What he brought back to the United States would not graft, but several seeds germinated at the experimental station at Fayetteville NC. Realizing that seedling trees might introduce differences into the variety, he returned on his third expedition to Shantung to collect more material for asexual propagation. On the second expedition he also secured the blood red “beef peach” of Shansi. Yet on the third expedition the prize was what Meyer believed to be the “original wild peach” encountered in a deep ravine in northern China. He also shipped dozens of varieties of bamboo, many kinds of cultivated ginger, and “marsh vegetables”—that is pond cultivated plants such as water chestnuts. Of fruits he collected apricots, plums, and cherries in profusion.
At the end of his life Dr. David Fairchild of the USDA reckoned that 2,800 plant introductions were attributable to Meyer’s labors. In addition to plant material, Meyer took photographic images of Chinese traditional farming practices and certain of his plant discoveries in situ. This photographic archive is now in possession of the Arnold Arboretum Agricultural Library, Harvard University. It is one of the most important visual sources in understanding traditional Chinese horticultural and agricultural practices.
The first 25 years of Meyer’s life were spent in Amsterdam. As a boy he worked at the Amsterdam botanical garden, became head gardener and protégé of botanist Hugo de Vries. In 1900 he left for America to seek his fortune. He was hired by the USDA in 1901, worked briefly as an economic botanist before quitting to undertaken a plant exploration expedition in Mexico and Cuba. The findings from this venture came to the notice of David Fairchild, head of the Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction office of the USDA. He hired Meyer to explore the botany and agriculture of China. The annual salary and expenses amounted to $5000. With this Meyer hired his camel drivers, interpreters (a necessity for success in travelling through foreign back countries), and purchased food and weaponry. Upon his death, Meyer willed his estate of $1000 to his USDA colleagues to hold a party. Instead they took the money to finance the minting of a medal to honor plant explorers who shared Meyer’s spirit of inquiry and intrepidity.
Sources: “Cowed Chinese Outlaws,” Duluth News-Tribune (October 11, 1908), 2:4; “Plant Explorer’s Trip,” Aberdeen Daily News (March 8, 1909), 3; “Long Search for a Chinese Peach,” Tampa Tribune (March 16, 1913), 8; Frederic J. Haskin, “Plant Exploration in China,” Richmond Times Dispatch (April 18, 1916), 6; “United States Government Explorers Search World for New Plants,” Evening Star (December 26, 1920), 5;