The earliest photographs in the collection were taken in 1891 in the arid desert landscapes of California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. The latest images were made in the Hawaiian Islands in 1936. Photographs in the collection were developed in a variety of sizes and formats and preserved by the Department of Botany as glass plate negatives, mounted prints, and glass lantern slides.
Students and professors scoured the United States and shot a photographic collection of forests, landscapes, and trees that is unequaled by either volume or quality. It is highlighted by the Library of Congress on the American Memory site. It is rare to see a photo of the American chestnut left to its final fate but you can find several here; or to view a turpentine tree with such majesty as the ancient longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). The whole photo collection preserves a past forest that is very different from our present forest.
Cameras accompanied Department of Botany faculty and students on field trips across the United States. These photographs provide an overview of trees across the nation. They demonstrate the character and the wide range of the American forest.
This collection consists of approximately 4,500 photographs documenting natural environments, ecologies, and plant communities in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. This group of American botanists were generally regarded as one of the most influential in the development of modern ecological studies.
They were extremely interested in trees and woody stem plants. A vast collection of tree photos give us a record of what we had growing nearly 100 years ago. The photographs were taken by Henry Chandler Cowles (1869-1939), George Damon Fuller (1869-1961), and other Chicago ecologists on field trips across the North American continent.
Historic Photos by Species
