I. A. L.

From the 1873 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society Report

The advantages to be gained by a botanical report with a proper record of the same, to be made or kept either by accurate drawings of plants, or preserved by drying and pressing or otherwise, specimens of every known species that can be found, is well expressed by Dr. I. A. Lapham, who writes your secretary that already “many of the plants in my (Lapham) collection are now scarcely to be found in the state, having been driven out by the progress of improvement by which May-weed [probably exotic chamomile], Mullen, thistles, etc., take the place of the native plants. The time is now at hand when my collection will afford the only evidence of the former existence of many plants in certain counties of the state.”

(1873 excerpt uncovered by Dan Collins recently; above left, the first published Flora of Milwaukee, 1836 I. A. L.; middle and right, Rob Nurre re-enacts the man and the survey for Aztalan’s Increase Lapham Day recently)

May 31, 2011