Fanciful image of the death of Henry Perrine at the hands of the Seminoles
The First Plant Hunter
Collecting plants with potential economic value from around the world became a U. S. government policy in 1827. Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush, directed the American consular service to find and transmit valuable plants to the United States. Only one diplomat complied with the directive—Dr. Henry Perrine, consul at Campeche, Mexico. A botanist and physician, Perrine made a thorough inquiry into useful plants grown in Central America. He collected and shipped extensive bodies of plant material, some of which survives in the collections of the New York Botanical Garden. A trip to Cuba convinced him that there was only one place in the United States where the tropical plants of the West Indies and Mexico might grow—South Florida. Perrine: “Cape Florida resembles Matanzas and Campeche in the dryness of its winter and the uniformity of its temperature. The southern part of Florida has also perpetual trade wind—the daily sea, and nightly land breeze, and rainy summer of the islands of Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico; hence it combines all the phenomena of a tropical climate.(1834)”
While still a consul Perrine was offered a tract in Louisiana as a plant introduction zone, but refused the offer. In 1833 he forwarded a petition to Congress for a grant of land south of present day Miami. Confident that his petition would go through (it would be delayed by the outbreak of the Seminole War), he began shipping plants from Mexico to Captain John Dubose, the Lighthouse keeper at Biscayne Bay and to Charles Howe on Indian Key, so that acclimatized beds would be already established when he left Mexico for residence in Florida. The U. S. Army’s establishment of Fort Dallas in southern Florida in 1836—an outpost in the Seminole War—set into motion an effort to make Florida a laboratory of tropical cultivation. Congress granted Perrine a township worth of land south of present-day Miami in 1838 and the Territory of Florida approved the charter for the Florida Plant Company. Perrine himself moved to Indian Key with a final shipment of Sissal Hemp (Agave sisalana) from the Yucatan, intent on set up an industry and break Mexico’s monopoly on fine ship rope. He also brought yellow Mexican limes which he would plant on the keys. These naturalized and became the famous key limes .
Some of the plants the Perrine introduced to American cultivation were the jicama (sent to J. Skinner in Baltimore in 1835), the mango, the Guatemalan avocado, the banana, cinnamon, tamarind, cashew, cacao, vanilla, coffee, turmeric, the date palm, prickly pear cactus, and Tea. The mango variety he brought to Indian Key was originally called an apple mango, then was named the Perrine after him, but by the end of the 19th century became popularly called the turpentine mango because the unripe fruit had the acrid piney flavor of turnpentine, though the ripe from was luscious, albeit a touch fibrous.
Perrine was killed in the Seminole invasion of Indian Key in August of 1840. His wife Hester and children escaped through a tunnel that led beneath the wharf while the Dr. occupied the Native combatants. He was shot and incinerated—an event that received national notice.
Perhaps we should think of him every time we order a key lime pie.