Sereno Watson

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Sereno Watson
FAAAS, NAS
Born(1826-12-01)December 1, 1826
East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, US
DiedMarch 9, 1892(1892-03-09) (aged 65)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Alma materYale University
OccupationBotanist
EmployerHarvard University
Known forGray Herbarium curator
Botanist author abbreviationS.Watson

Sereno Watson FAAAS, NAS (December 1, 1826 – March 9, 1892) was an American botanist. He served as curator of the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University and as botanist on the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel scientific expedition.

Early life and education

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Watson was born on December 1, 1826, in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut. He attended East Windsor Academy and graduated with his BA from Yale University in 1847.[1]

After graduation, he drifted through various occupations, working as a schoolteacher and studying medicine for five years. In 1852, his uncle, Julius Reed, a founder of Iowa College, got him a job as a tutor at the college. In 1854, Watson completed his medical training and joined the practice of his elder brother, Dr. Louis Watson, in Quincy, Illinois. In 1856, he went to Greensboro, Alabama, to work as secretary of Planters' Insurance Company, of which his eldest brother, Henry Watson, was president. In 1861, he went to Hartford, Connecticut, where he helped Henry Barnard edit the Journal of Education.[1]

Scientific career

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In January 1866, Watson entered the Sheffield Scientific School, where he studied chemistry and mineralogy for a year. In March 1867, he sailed for California but without any definite plans. In July, he sought out a scientific expedition led by Yale geologist Clarence King and convinced the expedition leaders to take him on. The expedition botanist, William Whitman Bailey, was ailing, so Watson assisted him to collect and preserve plants, in which he had taken an amateur interest since his Illinois days. He took over as "botanist in charge" after Bailey left the expedition in March 1868. Watson collected specimens across Nevada and Utah as far east as the Uinta Mountains.[1]

In fall 1869, Watson returned to Yale to work on the specimens he had collected. In late 1870 he joined the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. In 1871, he published Volume 5 of the publications of the US Geological Survey of the Fortieth Parallel, including a "Catalogue of the Known Plants of Nevada and Utah." The 426-page catalog identified 1,325 plant species and constituted the first descriptive list of the whole known flora of any region in western North America.[1]

In 1873, Professor Asa Gray appointed Watson as his assistant at the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. On June 29, 1874, Watson became curator of the Gray Herbarium, a position he held until his death. He specialized in systematic botany and plant taxonomy, publishing a series of articles entitled Contributions to American Botany in the pages of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1881 to 1883 he held an academic appointment as instructor in phytology and phytogeography at Harvard University.[2] He made collecting trips to Montana in 1880 and Guatemala in 1885.[1] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1874[3] and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1889.[4]

Death and legacy

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Watson died at the age of 65 on March 9, 1892, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died as a result of a recurring global influenza pandemic; the illness had damaged his heart. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery. He never married or had children.[1]

The standard author abbreviation S.Watson is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[5]

Works

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  • Botany, in Report of the geological exploration of the 40th parallel made ... by Clarence King, 1871
  • Watson, Sereno (1879). "Revision of the North American Liliaceae: Descriptions of Some New Species of North American Plants". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. XIV: 213–312. doi:10.2307/25138538. JSTOR 25138538. Retrieved January 6, 2014.
  • Watson, Sereno, ed. (1880). Botany of California, Vol. 2. Geological Survey of California. Vol. v.2. Cambridge, Mass: John Wilson and Son. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  • Publications by and about S. Watson on WorldCat

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Brewer, William H. (November 17, 1903). Biographical Memoir of Sereno Watson, 1820-1892 (PDF). National Academy of Sciences. pp. 267–290.
  2. ^ Dupree, A. Hunter (1988). Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 352, 388–393, 391–396. ISBN 978-0-801-83741-8.
  3. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  4. ^ "Sereno Watson". Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  5. ^ International Plant Names Index. S.Watson.
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