Chauncey Delos Beadle (August 5, 1866 in

St. Catharines St. Catharines is the largest city in Canada's Niagara Region and the sixth largest urban area in the province of Ontario. As of 2016, it has an area of , 136,803 residents, and a metropolitan population of 406,074. It lies in Southern Ontario ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

– 1950) was a Canadian-born botanist and horticulturist active in the southern United States. He was educated in horticulture at Ontario Agricultural College (1884) and

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

(1889). In 1890 the landscape architect

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co-d ...

hired him to oversee the nursery at Biltmore Estate in Asheville,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia a ...

on a temporary basis. Olmsted had been impressed by Beadle's "encyclopedic" knowledge of plants. Beadle ended up working at Biltmore for more than 60 years, until his death in 1950. He is best known for his horticultural work with

azalea Azaleas are flowering shrubs in the genus ''Rhododendron'', particularly the former sections '' Tsutsusi'' (evergreen) and '' Pentanthera'' (deciduous). Azaleas bloom in the spring (April and May in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, and Oct ...

s, and described several species and varieties of plants from the southern Appalachian region. He and three friends, including his "driver and companion" Sylvester Owens, styled themselves the ''Azalea Hunters''. The group traveled over the eastern United States for a period of fifteen years, studying and collecting native plants. In 1940 Beadle donated his entire collection of 3,000 plants to Biltmore Estates. He also designed the landscape at

Gunston Hall Gunston Hall is an 18th-century Georgian mansion near the Potomac River in Mason Neck, Virginia, United States. Built between 1755 and 1759 as the main residence and headquarters of a plantation, the house was the home of the United States ...

Biltmore Forest, North Carolina Biltmore Forest is a town in Buncombe County Buncombe County is a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is classified within Western North Carolina. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census reported th ...

and

Intheoaks Intheoaks, also known as In-the-oaks, is a historic estate and a national historic district located at Black Mountain, Buncombe County, North Carolina. The district encompasses nine contributing buildings, two contributing sites, seven contribut ...

at Black Mountain, North Carolina. Beadle wrote scientific papers describing new species and varieties of North American plants, for example, papers in the journal ''Biltmore Botanical Studies'' and his major work on the genus '' Crataegus'' (hawthorns) in

John Kunkel Small John Kunkel Small (January 31, 1869 – January 20, 1938) was an American botanist. Born on January 31, 1869, in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Kunkel studied botany at Franklin & Marshall College and Columbia University. He was the first Curator ...

's 1903 book ''Flora of the Southeastern United States''. (See, for example, to the scientific description of Florida Mock-orange, ''Philadelphus floridus''.) Two of his important collaborators at Biltmore were

Charles Lawrence Boynton Charles Lawrence Boynton (February 7, 1864 – September 16, 1943) was an American botanist active in the Southeastern United States, working at Biltmore Estate with Chauncey Beadle and his brother, Frank Ellis Boynton Frank Ellis Boynton (Ju ...

and

Frank Ellis Boynton Frank Ellis Boynton (July 10, 1859 – December 10, 1942) was a self-taught American botanist active in the Southeastern United States. He worked at Biltmore Estate with his brother, Charles Lawrence Boynton, and Chauncey Beadle. Boynton's dew ...

. In popular literature, Beadle wrote the Introduction for

Alice Lounsberry Alice Lounsberry (6 November 1868 – 21 November 1949, both in New York City) was an American botanist and author active in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Some sources give her birth year as 1872.) She work ...

's ''Southern Wildflowers and Trees''.

References

External links

* * * * *
Denizens of Biltmore
��has photo of Beadle, accessed 9 January 2008 * Alice Lounsberry (1901). ''Southern Wild Flowers and Trees'' (foreword by Chauncey Beadle). New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. * Rachel Carley (1994). ''A Guide to Biltmore Estate.'' Asheville, North Carolina: The Biltmore Company. . 116 pages. * View works b
Chauncey Beadle
at

Biodiversity Heritage Library The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as worldwide consortiumof natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working toge ...

. Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni 1866 births 1950 deaths People from St. Catharines 19th-century American botanists 19th-century Canadian botanists 20th-century American botanists 20th-century Canadian botanists {{US-botanist-stub