Walter Tennyson Swingle (January 8, 1871 – January 19, 1952) was an American agricultural

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

who contributed greatly to the classification and taxonomy of citrus. Limequat

Biography

Swingle was born in

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, and moved with his family to

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

two years later. He graduated from the Kansas State Agricultural College in 1890, and studied at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

in 1895–96 and 1898. With William Ashbrook Kellerman he edited the

exsiccata Exsiccata (Latin, ''gen.'' -ae, ''plur.'' -ae) is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae are numbered collections of dried herbarium Biological specimen, spe ...

''Kansas fungi'' (1889), a specimen series which is widely distributed in major

herbaria A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

. Swingle married Lucie Romstaedt in 1901; she died in 1910. He married Maude Kellerman, daughter of William Ashbrook Kellerman, in 1915 and they had four children. He died in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1952. In 1927, botanist

Elmer Drew Merrill Elmer Drew Merrill (October 15, 1876 – February 25, 1956) was an American botanist and taxonomist. He spent more than twenty years in the Philippines where he became a recognized authority on the flora of the Asia-Pacific region. Through ...

published ''

Swinglea ''Swinglea'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Rutaceae. It only contains a single species, ''Swinglea glutinosa''. It is native to the Philippines. The genus name of ''Swinglea'' is in honour of Walter Tennyson Sw ...

'', which is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s from the Philippines, belonging to the family

Rutaceae The Rutaceae () is a family (biology), family, commonly known as the rueRUTACEAE
in Bo ...

and named in Walter Tennyson Swingle's honor.

Contribution to US agricultural industry

Swingle worked at the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

(1891), investigated subtropic fruits, established laboratories in Florida, became an agricultural explorer, and (after 1902) had charge of crop physiology and

breeding Breeding is sexual reproduction that produces offspring, usually animals or plants. It can only occur between a male and a female animal or plant. Breeding may refer to: * Animal husbandry, through selected specimens such as dogs, horses, and rab ...

investigations. He developed the

tangelo The tangelo ( , ; ''C. reticulata × C. maxima'' or ''× C. paradisi''), ''Citrus × tangelo'', is a citrus fruit hybrid of a ''Citrus reticulata'' variety, such as mandarin orange or tangerine, and a ''Citrus maxima'' variety, such as a pome ...

citrus hybrid in 1897 in

Eustis, Florida Eustis is a city in Lake County, Florida, United States. It lies about 35 miles northwest of Orlando, Florida and is part of the Greater Orlando, Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population in the city ...

. He made several visits to the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

countries of Europe, to North Africa, and to Asia Minor, from where he introduced the

date palm ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as the date palm, is a flowering-plant species in the palm family Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet #Fruits, fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across North Africa, northern A ...

, pistachio nut and other useful plants, as well as the

fig wasp Fig wasps are wasps of the superfamily Chalcidoidea which spend their larval stage inside fig syconia. Some are pollinators but others simply feed off the plant. The non-pollinators belong to several groups within the superfamily Chalcidoidea, ...

, to make possible the cultivation of

Smyrna fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of tree or shrub in the flowering plant family Moraceae, native to the Mediterranean region, together with western and southern Asia. It has been cultivated since ancient times and is ...

s in California. Swingle also traveled to Asia, bringing back 100,000 Chinese volumes on botany to the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

. Much of his research is published in the five-volume book, '' The Citrus Industry'', of which he wrote a significant portion.

Plant anatomy collection

An extensive collection related to Swingle and his life, photos and works entitled the "Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection" is hosted at the University of Miami.

Selected publications

* * * * * * * * *

References

External links

*
Walter Tennyson Swingle Collection
University of Miami Libraries Special Collections Finding Aid. The collection contain papers, articles, correspondence and other materials that provide information on his botanical and plant introduction work as well as his personal life and travels.
Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection
The site features over 1,700 photomicrographs of plant parts from more than 250 species of plants collected from all over the world, plant structure animations, and information on Walter Tennyson Swingle.
Walter Tennyson Swingle: botanist and exponent of Chinese civilization
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swingle, Walter Tennyson People from Wayne County, Pennsylvania American botanists 1871 births 1952 deaths United States Department of Agriculture people American explorers