So many people contributed to the exploration of Florida but names like Juan Ponce de Leon, Pánfilo de Narváez and Hernando de Soto tend to take center stage. They searched for incredible dreams like a Fountain of Youth, riches in gold and passage to China often meeting with hostility from native peoples and fighting against the wilds of Florida.
Although they helped to blaze trails into the depths of Florida, their expeditions were not there to record the plants and wildlife with which they came into contact. That work would be done by the explorer biologists and scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries who journeyed deep into the heart of Florida and recorded their findings with journals and sketches.
These explorers often encountered difficult conditions, harsh weather and nearly impassible landscapes but still they came and they learned. Aside from the relatively well known Bartrams, here are a few of the other explorer botanists who helped the world to know the bounty of Florida. Where available I have included links to the writings of these explorers so that you can see the Florida of old through their eyes.
Mark Catesby (1682 –1749) was an English naturalist and artist who published the 1743 volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. From 1722 to 1726 he traveled the eastern coast of North America and the West Indies collecting birds and plant specimens. His book contained numerous plates of birds and flora of the area and several of those plates show us specimens of species that are now extinct, endangered or threatened including the Carolina Parakeet and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
Bernard Romans (1741- 1784) was a Dutch-born American who traveled the Floridas from 1766 to 1772 and later wrote A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida published in 1775. His chart-making and botanical collection journey included an overland walk from near Tampa Bay to St. Augustine after the sinking of his ship.
André Michaux (1746 – 1802) was a French Botanist and explorer who searched portions of the North American continent for tree species that could be used to replant the depleted forests of France. He spent five days traveling the Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral areas of Florida in search of plants. While there he drew sketches and wrote about a curious plant, the big-flower paw-paw (Asimina obovata). He wrote about the plants he observed and collected in North America in a volume entitled Flora Boreali-Americana (1803). This book was republished in English under the title Botany of the Northern Parts of British America.
François André Michaux (1770-1855) was a French Botanist and son of André Michaux who traveled North America with his father in search of new plant specimens. He published the volume Histoire des chenes de l'Amerique septentrionale in 1801 that was republished in English under the title North American Sylva. This remained the standard volume on dendrology of North America for many years.
William Baldwin (1779 -1819) collected botanical specimens through Georgia and parts of Florida controlled by the Creek Nation. These specimens were contributed to Stephen Elliott’s "Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia". His letters from the period are recorded in Notices of East Florida.
Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809 – 1899) was an American botanist who lived and explored in Georgia and in the neighboring areas of Northern Florida, later settling in Apalachicola, Florida. He published Flora of the Southern United States in 1857.
John Kunkel Small (1869-1938) was an American botanist who traveled throughout the Southeast and especially Florida in search of botanical specimens. His doctoral dissertation, Flora of the Southeastern United States long remained a definitive work on the flora of the southeast. In 1929 he published the book From Eden to Sahara--Florida's Tragedy which documented the decline of botanical resources in Florida as well as the environmental dangers of dredging and draining wetlands.
Learn more about the early history of Florida
- Footprints Across the South: Bartram's Trail Revisited by Jim Kautz
- Natural History & Early Tourism in Florida by Charlotte M. Porter
- The Two Henrys: Henry Plant and Henry Flagler and Their Railroads: Read up on Henry Flagler and Henry Plant, the railroad tycoons of Florida.
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