1

American Journal of Botany 101(3): 000–000. 2014.

American Journal of Botany 101(3): 1–9, 2014 ; http://www.amjbot.org/ © 2014 Botanical Society of America

“The fi rst number of this new Journal has appeared, and needs no explanation to American botanists.” —John Merle Coulter, Botanical Gazette , 1914 , p. 439.

“Of all the great nations of the earth we have suffered least from the ravages of the war. We have felt its stimu-lus, but escaped its devastation. Hence the world is look-ing to America for leadership in many lines, and botany is one of these… German domination is for the moment, gone, but it will surely reassert itself if we are inactive. We must examine the bases on which German dominance in the fi eld of botany has rested, and supply those factors which we now lack…We must stand together as botanists all, whatever our special fi eld of endeavor may chance to be. If we do these things, and we can do them if we will,

America will assume the commanding position in world botany.” —G. R. Lyman, Science , 1919, p. 345.

In the history and sociology of science, the founding of a scientifi c journal is a signal event. Frequently accompanying the emergence of a community of practitioners, scientifi c journals customarily serve as the forum for the sharing of information, the exchange of ideas, for the building of con-sensus, as well as determining the standards and demarcat-ing the boundaries of the discipline in question ( Crane, 1972 ; Kronick, 1976 ; Shapin, 1992 ; Smocovitis, 1996 ). Unsurpris-ingly, the American Journal of Botany , was founded in the wake of the establishment of the Botanical Society of Amer-ica (BSA), a society expressly devoted to a science of what was then termed “American botany” ( Steere, 1956 ; Tippo, 1956 ). Elsewhere, I examined the founding and history of the society ( Smocovitis, 2006 ), exploring the national and institutional contexts for the increasing number of botanists and plant scientists in the United States in the late 19th cen-tury. I tracked the special challenges faced by its founders as they sought to unify a society often divided by subdisci-plinary interests, geographical region, scientifi c method ologies, and an assortment of diffi cult or intransigent personalities, and I focused on a number of debates that dominated society business over criteria of membership, disciplinary special-ization, affi liation, mission statement, timing and location of meetings, and dues, as well as the especially contentious sub-ject of the naming of the new society. In this paper, I focus specifi cally on the historical backdrop leading to the decision to found an offi cial publication venue formally associated with the new society titled, the American Journal of Botany. I ex-amine the key role played by F. C. Newcombe, the fi rst Editor-in-Chief, and I examine the establishment of the journal in the context of World War I. Founded on the eve of what became a global confl agration, the American Journal of Botany pro-vided a publication venue for a group of American botanists

1 Manuscript received 8 December 2013; revision accepted 3 February 2014. I thank Judy Jernstedt for editorial advice, members of the centennial

planning committee, and the BSA Staff including Amy McPherson, Richard Hund, Bill Dahl, Wanda Lovan, Claire Hemingway, and Beth Hazen for all their support with research on this project over the years. Archival research was facilitated by Doug Holland and Andrew Colligan at the Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden, by the archivists at the Botany Libraries at Harvard University, and by the librarians at the University of Florida, especially the Marston Science Map Library, and the Herbarium Library of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Research was supported by a University of Florida Scholar’s Award in the Humanities and by the Botanical Society of America (BSA). I also thank Emily Sessa and Brian K. McNab for help with some of the materials featured here. Portions of this history were read at the “Legacy” meeting of the BSA at St. Louis, Missouri, in 2012. I am especially grateful to Lee Kass and three anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions with the manuscript.

Note on primary sources: All the minutes of the BSA cited are in the archives of the BSA offi ce at its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.

2 E-mail: bsmocovi@ufl .edu

doi:10.3732/ajb.1300434

AJB CENTENNIAL REVIEW

THE VOICE OF AMERICAN BOTANISTS: THE FOUNDING AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY ,

“AMERICAN BOTANY,” AND THE GREAT WAR (1906–1935) 1

VASSILIKI BETTY SMOCOVITIS 2

Department of Biology and Department of History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611 USA

This paper examines the crucial early history of the American Journal of Botany from the years following the founding of the Botanical Society of America in 1906 to the termination of the agreement for publication with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1935. It examines the efforts of individuals like F. C. Newcombe, who did the most to raise support for the journal and became the fi rst Editor-in-Chief, in the context of the growing numbers of professional botanists and plant scientists who were actively engaged in research requiring appropriate publication venues and in the process of forming an independent identity as “American botanists.” It also examines the launching of the journal in the context of the Great War in Europe and the transition from German botany to American botany in the second decade of the 20th century.

Key words: American Journal of Botany ; Botanical Society of America; American botany; German botany; F.C. Newcombe; The Great War.

http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/doi/10.3732/ajb.1300434The latest version is at AJB Advance Article published on February 28, 2014, as 10.3732/ajb.1300434.

Copyright 2014 by the Botanical Society of America

2 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY [Vol. 101

new vehicle for publication. More than any other individual, Newcombe did the most to garner support, mobilize resources, pursue funds, and work out the details of managing a new journal. Indeed, his name became virtually synonymous with the American Journal of Botany in the crucial fi rst decade of its existence.

F. C. NEWCOMBE (1858–1927) AND THE FOUNDING OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY

A professor of botany at the University of Michigan, Frederick Charles Newcombe ( Fig. 1 ) (1 May 1858–1 October 1927) was born in Flint, Michigan. His parents, both descendants of landowners and farmers, had immigrated to the United States from Devonshire, England in 1849. Newcombe com-pleted his early education in Flint, attending public schools

not just increasing in number, but also forming their own inde-pendent identity as American botanists . In the context of the war in Europe, which saw European counterparts, and especially German counterparts, lose preeminence, the American Journal of Botany , thus served not only as the offi cial organ of the new society; it also gave “voice” to these American botanists, keen to rival if not surpass their European, and especially their German, progenitors. But, before then, it took an enormous amount of organizational effort, coordination between different groups, the raising of necessary funds, along with securing an appropri-ate institutional base to establish the new journal.

ORIGINS OF THE COMMITTEE ON BOTANICAL PUBLICATION

With the “offi cial union” between a number of competing societies taking place in 1906, and with approximately 120 members, the Botanical Society of America turned its atten-tion to a number of pressing concerns, among which was the growing need for a publication venue. The need was acute and indeed had been part of the original motivation for many of the prime movers to create an independent society of American botanists. The numbers of botanists and plant sci-entists were increasing as a result of resources being fun-neled into government agencies, museums, botanical gardens and herbaria, as well as land-grant universities enabled with the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862. They, in turn, needed a national vehicle for publication to feature their work ( Volberg, 1983 ; Smocovitis, 2006 ). Thus, in 1907, at the meeting held in Chicago, on 31 December, the recommendation was formally made to appoint a committee as an “aid to publication.” It in-cluded D. T. MacDougal, who served as the chair, R. A. Harper, and F. C. Newcombe, some of the most preeminent botanists in the United States at the time. Its primary purpose at the outset was to interpret publication broadly. Thus, it was focused on publishing a “pocket edition” of the constitution, establishing fi nancial policies, and disseminating other resolutions (BSA Minutes, 1907). It was also authorized to hire a stenographer and typist to assist with the process of publication. It also man-aged a number of special publications that were thought to be of interest to BSA members. In 1908, for example, it oversaw the publication of special addresses on “Plant Anatomy” and “Pres-ent Problems in Ecology,” as well as a number of lectures given at the special Darwin Memorial Session in honor of the pending 1909 centenary of Darwin’s birth, and the 50th anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species . The committee also enabled the publication of special presidential addresses, many of which refl ected the vision of presidents of the society, and which offered future directions for the new society (BSA Minutes, 1908).

It was not until 1909, that this group was converted to an effective and offi cial “Committee on Botanical Publication,” whose task was to assess the need for a formal journal to be published by the society, and to determine the terms under which that publication would take place. The following year, at the annual meeting held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this com-mittee was discharged, following a call to fi le a report which it had apparently failed to do (it is not clear precisely why this happened). It was subsequently voted that “a new committee of three on Botanical Publication” be formed (BSA Minutes, 1910). That committee had at its helm F. C. Newcombe, who, over the years, was the one constant in the efforts to create a

Fig. 1. Photograph of oil portrait of F. C. Newcombe, as it appeared in the American Journal of Botany in his obituary of 1928 ( Pollock and Bartlett, 1928 ).

3March 2014] SMOCOVITIS— AJB : THE VOICE OF AMERICAN BOTANISTS

century. Located there, and keenly aware that research was playing an ever more increasing role in westward-moving centers of botanical study, whether that meant in the increas-ing numbers of herbaria, museums or botanical gardens, in government agencies and new departments or in university settings that fl ourished in the wake of the establishment of the land-grant initiative, Newcombe grew frustrated with the increasing number of smaller publication venues, often as-sociated with regional or local societies, universities, insti-tutes or centers for research. Access to these publications was becoming increasingly diffi cult for the professional re-searcher, and worse, they were contributing to a splintering effect, serving to divide botanists not only by geographic re-gion, but also by institutional site and narrower specialties. With the increasing number of publications from researchers located in the United States, the established existing foreign language journals also seemed inadequate for one reason or another. Some sort of inclusive vehicle for publication in the United States was clearly needed. Seeing the opportunity to build consensus in what appeared to be a growing but also divided fi eld, and because the need was felt that such a na-tional English-language journal was needed to both help with integration and fi ll a void in publication venues that was getting worse with time, Newcombe took a strong interest in the discussions ensuing about publications in the BSA. He was in on them from the beginning and indeed, from all indi-cations, served as a prime, if not the primary motivating force. As early as 1895, some 19 years before the appearance of the journal, he wrote to USDA plant pathologist and Michigan graduate Erwin Frink Smith:

“…that another journal might not come amiss, I would like to see pushed. In the whole English language we have no journal like the Botanische Zeitung or B. Centralblatt. The Annals is good for extensive articles but gives us no re-views. The Gazette gives us neither. Science does part of the work; but I should like to see a journal combining both extensive articles and numerous reviews. You have ob-served probably that Americans furnish one-third or more of the copy for Annals . I do not believe in multiplying un-necessarily the journals; but do we not need an American Journal of Botany? The number of real botanists is increas-ing in this country year by year. You can count twelve to twenty now in this country who will be sure to publish year after year” (as cited in Rodgers, 1952 , p. 284).

Given the prophetic nature of his vision, it is not surpris-ing that Newcombe continuously took the lead in garnering support for the journal. By all accounts, he devoted consid-erable energy to the Committee on Publications, especially after 1910, when he began an extensive letter-writing cam-paign to convince botanists of the importance of the journal, and also to help build consensus and gather relevant infor-mation. In 1910, for example, he wrote to Frederick Beddell, a physicist at Cornell University, and one of the three edi-tors at the successful Physical Review . Beddell’s lengthy re-sponse detailing the budgets, publication costs and describing the many small details that accompany journal production is preserved in what became the fi rst historical reckoning of The Physical Review ( Hartman, 1994 , pp. 73–75). By all ac-counts, Newcombe was tireless in writing to an enormous number of colleagues to raise support, to gather information, and to convince them to launch a journal associated with the BSA.

there, and from 1880 until 1887 he embarked on his fi rst career as a teacher at the Michigan School for the Deaf. During that time he met and married Susan Eastman, also of Flint. He sub-sequently enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1887, ob-tained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1890, and was quickly appointed as Instructor of Botany there. With doctoral training in botany being diffi cult to obtain in the United States at the time (such degree programs were few in number and not al-ways necessary for academic employment at the time), New-combe left for the University of Leipzig in Germany, one of the premiere centers of botanical instruction in the world. He de-voted the year 1892–1893 to studies in plant physiology under the supervision of Wilhelm Pfeffer, who had distinguished him-self in the area, and was shortly granted his doctorate. He sub-sequently returned to the University of Michigan where he began to climb the academic ladder from a position fi rst as Acting As-sistant Professor of Botany, and then becoming Assistant Profes-sor of Botany 2 years later. In 1897 he was promoted to Junior Professor and in 1904 he succeeding Volney Spalding as head of the Department of Botany. In 1905 he attained the rank of Professor of Botany and continued to teach at the University of Michigan, building a center of strength in plant physiology and moving the department forward on research as well as teaching. His emphasis on research, in addition to teaching, was novel at the time. He remained there until his retirement in 1923, where-upon he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, and died there in 1927, shortly after he had returned from a trip to Michigan. Tragi-cally, Newcombe had made that trip to bury his wife ( Hinsdale and Demmon, 1906 ; Pollock and Bartlett, 1928 ).

Though he had modest success in his own research career, publishing a number of papers especially on the topic of plant sensitivity, Newcombe’s reputation grew to rest on his formi-dable organizational as well as editorial skills. Quiet in de-meanor, and reserved as an individual, Newcombe nonetheless had prodigious energy and worked tirelessly at fostering a community spirit in a number of botanical organizations. His botanical career is liberally peppered with such activities. Beginning as a young instructor at the University of Michigan, he founded the Botanical Journal Club, a reading group that served as a forum for discussion; it was especially useful in bringing students in contact with faculty mentors and advisors. The Botanical Journal Club subsequently became a model for such journal clubs in other American colleges and universities. Newcombe’s support of science in general, and botanical sci-ence in particular in Michigan, was relentless; he strongly sup-ported the Michigan Academy of Science, becoming its secretary in 1894 and serving as its president from 1903 to 1904. In 1906, he became President of the Botanists of the Cen-tral States, and crucially, he was active in Section G (Botany) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the section that laid the groundwork for what became the BSA. He became the secretary of Section G (Botany) in 1897. Newcombe was also secretary of the section of Plant Physiology at the In-ternational Congress of Arts and Sciences that took place in St. Louis, in 1904, and fi ttingly, he became the 11th President of the reorganized Botanical Society of America in 1917, while still serving as the American Journal of Botany ’s fi rst Editor-in-Chief.

Newcombe’s involvement in a number of botanical orga-nizations refl ected his energetic commitment to the fi eld, but it also grew out of his institutional base and geographic locale, namely a major public university in the American Midwest. The Midwest was a region of the country that was undergo-ing unprecedented growth and development in the late 19th

4 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY [Vol. 101

(Copy of Agreement, BSA Minutes 1913). Interestingly, the authorization and announcement of the new collaborative venture took place on 29 December 1913, at what was the fi rst meeting outside the northeastern United States, held in Atlanta, Georgia. That was signifi cant because it indicated that the society was expanding its geographic range, as befi t-ting an inclusive national organization.

Little time was wasted after the agreement was reached, and at the 1914 Philadelphia meetings of the BSA in Decem-ber, an editorial committee of the new journal was formally named. It included F. C. Newcombe, and a number of bota-nists who had been working with him to launch it: L. R. Jones, A. S. Hitchcock, and I. W. Bailey. In less than a year, an edito-rial board was appointed, with Newcombe offi cially named as Editor-in-Chief. It was tasked with the job of overseeing the publication of the fi rst volume of the journal, which had actu-ally appeared earlier that year, on 21 February 1914, because the enormous backlog had necessitated immediate publica-tion. The fi rst formal editorial board that oversaw the publica-tion of the new journal was thus comprised of C. Stuart Gager, as Business Manager of the journal and located at the host institution, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, L. R. Jones at the University of Wisconsin, R. A. Harper at Columbia University, George T. Moore at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Duncan Johnson at Johns Hopkins University, Edgar W. Olive also at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and F. C. Newcombe, at the University of Michigan, as Editor-in-Chief. It was decided that the journal would accept longer papers, but include no reviews, that each issue would be approximately 50 pages in length, and that there would be 10 issues to a volume ( Anonymous, 1914 ). The mission of the journal stressed that all branches of the botanical sciences were to be included and that all contributions from all botanists would be welcome ( Anonymous, 1914 ). The fi rst four papers refl ected a diversity of subjects, methods, areas, and organisms, as well as authors and institutions: Geo. F. Atkinson on the development of Agaricus arvensis and A. comtulus , Orland E. White on the study of fl oral abnormalities, mutation and heredity in Nicoti-ana , nuclear behavior in Caeomia nitens and Puccinia Pecki-ana [sic], and a report and analysis of axial abcission of Impatiens Sultani [sic] as the result of traumatic stimuli, by Ross Aiken Gortner and J. Arthur Harris. The diversity of top-ics and breadth was intentional and, as indicated by New-combe’s introduction had to “be as wide as the whole science, for it is to serve the interests of organizations whose members come from all quarters” ( Newcombe, 1914 , p. 2). The fi rst volume of the journal thus refl ected this commitment, with botanists and plant scientists publishing from university set-tings all across the country, as well as from herbaria, botanical gardens, and government agencies.

Before the year 1914 was over, nine more issues were pub-lished, making for a total of ten. This revealed the extent of the publication backlog that had existed and made the fi rst col-lated volume quite hefty in size. Indeed, Newcombe’s edito-rial introduction made direct reference to the length of the volume of some fi ve to six hundred pages, but also noted that it would only provide but “temporary relief for the ever-increasing congestion” ( Newcombe, 1914 , p. 2). He also added that he hoped to secure additional funding and support from the same organizations that had helped to launch a jour-nal; and saving the best to last, added that he hoped that such increased capacity for publication would “aid in offering to botanical research in America facilities proportionate to those

By 1911, there appeared little doubt that the need for the journal was growing and that its founding would help provide a needed national vehicle for publication. The backlog of publi-cations was getting worse, and the number of appropriate ven-ues, mostly in Europe, was insuffi cient to accommodate them ( Tippo, 1956 ; Rodgers, 1952 ). In one estimate in 1905, more than a quarter of a million contributions were being generated in some eight or nine languages; by 1914, this number was es-timated at some 300 000 despite the fact contributions were dropping off in England and Europe because of the war ( Gager, 1918 ). Nonetheless, momentum was slowed, and deliberately so, in 1911, after Newcombe’s Committee on Publications rec-ommended that “action be delayed until a large enough and stable source of funds” for its publication was secured (BSA Minutes, 1911). Efforts were energized in 1912, however, after the BSA formally appointed a special fi ve-member committee charged with “full power to forward and establish, with the ap-proval of Council, a journal to be the offi cial organ of the Botanical Society of America” (BSA Minutes, 1912). Remark-ably, the society authorized $500 (a handsome sum at the time) to be applied to the establishment of the journal, drawn in large measure from the BSA’s healthy endowment, which had been established by the fi rst set of charter members. To no one’s surprise, F. C. Newcombe was appointed Chair of the committee.

Having already done much of the homework in the way of assembling an infrastructure and garnering fi nancial support by 1912, Newcombe and his committee worked vigorously at securing an agreement to fi nance and manage the venture, which proved to be the chief obstacle to launching the jour-nal ( Gager, 1935 ). Indeed, fi nances had been the fundamen-tal obstacle to establishing society-based journals as a whole in the late 19th century; as a result, most were actually owned privately ( Appel, 1988 ). What was clearly needed for the new journal was therefore a stable fi nancial backer and an appropriate institutional base for managing it. In 1913 the committee was successful in reaching a formal agreement with the Trustees of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which went into effect January 1914. The BSA and the Trustees agreed to cooperate in the publishing and in the sharing of the expenses for the new journal, which the committee de-cided would be called the American Journal of Botany (Copy of Agreement, BSA Minutes, 1913). The suggestion for the name had come from C. Stuart Gager, at the Brooklyn Bo-tanic Garden, who became the fi rst Business Manager of the journal. Gager also prepared the fi rst “dummy” that estab-lished the physical characteristics of the journal ( Gager, 1935 ). By the terms of the agreement, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden assumed fi nancial responsibility, for the fi rst 3 years, which was not to exceed some $1000 per year for defi cits. In turn, the society made an initial contribution of $300 (a downgrade from the original amount offered) and the total interest earned on its invested funds. The Trustees of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had the power to name the Busi-ness Manager and one editorial board member, while the So-ciety named the Editor-in-Chief and four members of the board ( Anonymous, 1914 ). The agreement also provided for exchanges, formal agreements drawn with other societies and journals, to share publications on a larger scale. The sub-scription price was set at $4.00 for nonmembers and $3.00 for members. The agreement taking effect in 1914 specifi ed that the back numbers and volumes remained the property of the BSA, but were to be housed, originally, at the Garden

5March 2014] SMOCOVITIS— AJB : THE VOICE OF AMERICAN BOTANISTS

novel staining and sectioning techniques, and by the mid-late 19th century had moved the science of botany from the mu-seum or herbarium and the fi eld to the more modern setting of the research laboratory ( Morton, 1981 ; Overfi eld, 1993 ). The “New Botany,” which gave name to this modernized version of botanical science, was rigorous, experimental, and very much refl ected the German philosophy of research, namely innovation, with preferred methodologies involving laboratory instruments like the microscope and the microtome ( Over-fi eld, 1993 ).

In instruction too, Germany had led the way, with a large number of American botanists having received their ad-vanced botanical educations there, beginning in the 19th century. Newcombe himself, for example, had been educated in Germany, as had his Michigan colleague, Volney Spald-ing. Data collected from Stephen S. Visher’s compendium of American scientists, titled Scientists Starred (1947), demon-strated clearly how much the early history of American bot-any was dependent on the German educational system to train its outstanding botanists ( Fig. 2 ). Between 1903 and 1920, for example, 15 of the doctorates in botany deemed outstanding (in other words, “starred” by their peers) had been trained in Germany, giving German education high standing overall. The number of German-educated Ph.D.s was second only to those from the cluster of botanical in-stitutions associated with Harvard, which had built on the legacy of Asa Gray, and the University of Chicago, which ranked highly because of the influence, and graduate train-ing skills of John Merle Coulter ( Rodgers, 1944 ; for a more fi ne-grained analysis of some of Visher’s data see Greulach [1956 ] and for an interpretation of Greulach’s work, see Lyon [1957] ).

enjoyed in Europe.” Relations with European botanists were of course growing increasingly diffi cult, and though not al-ways explicitly revealed, motivations on the part of some American botanists began to refl ect national politics, indicat-ing growing unease with the situation in Europe. This was not just because of concerns with the threats to a number of jour-nals and information services located there, but also with Ger-man botanists, some of whom were increasingly perceived as hierarchical and overbearing in their attitudes ( Smocovitis, 2006 ). That the journal was founded in the year that saw the outbreak of the Great War in Europe was not entirely coinci-dental; indeed, the tension between American botanists, newly emerging as a force of their own, with the older, more estab-lished German botanists was escalating. The increasingly chilly relations between the two nations, gave the new Ameri-can publication an even more prominent role in becoming the “voice” of American botanists. Indeed, it was one of the fi rst such publication venues from within the life sciences to be founded in formal association with a scientifi c society and was not therefore private in ownership; it was also one of the fi rst to declare its independence from not only Germany, but also the European community ( Appel, 1988 ; Steere, 1976 ).

AMERICAN VS. GERMAN BOTANY AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)

There is little doubt, of course, that Germany had led the way in botanical research from the mid 19th century until the Great War. German botanists excelled at experimental sciences, em-ployed a staggering number of new instruments, developed

Fig. 2. The number of “starred” doctorates obtained in botany before and after World War I, comparing American institutions to all institutions in Ger-many. “Starred” doctorates are “American men of science” who were deemed outstanding and “starred” by their peers. Reproduced from p. 27, fi g. 24, from Visher (1947) ; data are from p. 282, tables 5–9. Institutions in America featured from left to right and their abbreviations followed by all German institutions: University of California (Ca), University of Chicago (Chi.), Columbia University (Col.), Cornell University (Cor.) Harvard University (Har.), Johns Hopkins (Hop.), University of Michigan (Mi.), University of Minnesota (Min.), University of Missouri (Mo.), University of Nebraska (Nb.), University of Pennsylvania (Pa.), Washington University, St. Louis (St. L.), University of Wisconsin (Wis.), Yale University (Yal.), all German institutions (Ger.).

6 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY [Vol. 101

pages of Science on 23 August 1918, Neil E. Stevens , a plant pathologist at the Bureau of Plant Industry in the United States, explicitly stated as much with respect to the founding of an American publication venue for botanical abstracts, which had for so long been under the control of German coun-terparts. He wrote:

“Germany held moreover an almost complete monopoly of the publication of abstracts of botanical papers. Bota-nists had come to take it as a matter of course that botani-cal abstracts would appear in German publications, and two at least of these abstract journals had attained world-wide circulation and prestige. These abstract journals are, of course, no longer available in America, if indeed they are being published. It is natural that in this particular fi eld, now left vacant, American botanists should begin to extend their activities and it is gratifying to note that, at their last annual meeting (January 1918), the members of the various American botanical societies inaugurated the publication of such a journal under the editorship which guarantees its success” ( Stevens, 1918 , p. 177).

The Great War thus proved to work to the benefi t of Ameri-can botanists. Not only had their German counterparts been diminished as a result of the war in Europe, the war also fu-eled botanical research in the United States ( Stevens, 1918 ; Davis, 1918 ; Gager, 1918 ; Lyman 1919 ; Livingston, 1919 ). A number of botanists and their institutions contributed actively to the war effort through novel research and in teaching, in-cluding new courses of instruction, but also through launching a number of new publication initiatives. As a fi eld, American botany—and its practitioners—had thus emerged from the war strengthened, both in terms of numbers of botanists, but also in terms of diversity of areas and topics. With a journal now established, that was associated offi cially with the BSA, it ensured that the voice of American botany would continue to be heard, not just in the United States, but globally. With the end of the war, the United States became increasingly domi-nant politically and scientifi cally. This continued through the second and third decades of the 20th century, and indeed for the remainder of the 20th century.

CLOSING THOUGHTS: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY AFTER 1935

F. C. Newcombe was not just instrumental in laying the groundwork for the American Journal of Botany. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal during the most crucial early stage of the journal’s long history. So much of the jour-nal’s existence, indeed identity, was vested in Newcombe that at the time of his death, the entire volume of the journal for the year 1928 was dedicated to his memory. The volume also fea-tured a prominent obituary and a striking photograph of an oil portrait of him ( Fig. 1 ). Newcombe was replaced by a number of equally energetic editors in the years after 1918 ( Table 1 ), each of whom left some mark, not just on the contents of the journal but also on its physical appearance and design.

In 1936 the productive collaboration with the Brooklyn Bo-tanic Garden came to an end. By that time the circulation had quadrupled from fewer than 400 at the outset to over 1673. Extensive worldwide advertising had increased circulation of the journal to nonmembers by nearly 800% ( Gager, 1935 ). The budget, which started at $1775 in 1914, had grown to

In keeping with German preeminence in matters of re-search and instruction, publication venues and diverse peri-odicals were mostly in German, a fact botanists like Newcombe had long noted. Indeed, the international community of bota-nists largely published in German-language periodicals with German becoming an important language of scientifi c cur-rency. Cut off from some of these vehicles for publication beginning in 1914, some of which in Germany had ceased publishing during the war, or were overly expensive as a re-sult of the shortage in paper and printing materials, botanists in the United States turned to other publication venues or information services ( Steere, 1976 ). They were also growing uncomfortable, and at times were even disturbed by what they viewed as imperious or “domineering” tendencies in some of their German counterparts. This made the new American Journal of Botany even more important as a publi-cation vehicle, especially since it was their own (correspon-dence between W. G. Farlow and William Trelease between 1917 and 1918, Farlow Library Archives, Harvard Univer-sity). Thus, the combination of the war, which nearly led to the ruination of much of German botanical science, and the growing strength of American botany, both at home, and abroad, as American infl uence expanded, necessitated the publication of more English-language journals as well as other information services; and ultimately, it drew even more attention to the American Journal of Botany , fueling its suc-cess. By the end of the second decade of the 20th century, American botany was beginning to rival that in Germany, and indeed that of other European institutions in botanical research and graduate education. As shown in Fig. 2 , the pro-portion of botany doctorates conferred in the United States relative to German Ph.D.s, (those deemed outstanding and “starred”) after the war had actually reversed. It also had its own publication venue, which would accommodate to the publications needs of the many new researchers.

However we wish to understand the consequences of the war in Europe, one major outcome was that the German domi-nance of botanical science eroded and that it coincided with an interval of time that saw American scientifi c research and botanical education and advanced training fl ourish and come into its own. To some like USDA plant pathologist G. R. Lyman, the war thus gave Americans the opportunity for leadership in world botany ( Lyman, 1919 ), while to others like Hopkins botanist Burton Edward Livingston, the fi rst editor of the new Botanical Abstracts, it meant American botanists felt a greater sense of responsibility to shoulder the burdens long held by Europeans ( Livingston, 1919 ). To still others, like C. Stuart Gager at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Business Manager of the American Journal of Botany , the war provided moral lessons for future botanists. Refl ecting on the future of botany after the war, he paraphrased a quotation circulated widely about German scientists that “ [In] no nation have the scien-tifi c men dived deeper in the sea of knowledge, nor staid [sic] down longer, nor come up muddier. By all means let us dive deep, and explore widely; but for the sake of ourselves, as well as of our science, let us see to it that our advanced and graduate courses do not produce men who come up muddy” ( Gager, 1918 , p. 115), while still others ruminated on the di-rect effect of the war on areas like plant pathology and plant physiology, which had directly benefi tted from the war effort, undergoing unprecedented growth, and necessitating the cre-ation of even more journals and information services of bo-tanical science ( Stevens, 1918 ; Lyman, 1919 ). Writing in the

7March 2014] SMOCOVITIS— AJB : THE VOICE OF AMERICAN BOTANISTS

Absolute rejection of a paper had to be approved by at least one member of the Board in addition to the Editor-in-Chief (BSA Minutes, 1936).

Since the break with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1935, a number of other changes were introduced to the journal in terms of physical size, production layout, the introduction of advertisements, job or conference announcements, as well as of course, content ( Pellack, 2004 ). The most striking of these changes included the increasing use of costly visual illustra-tions, diagrams, and photographs, which became more sophis-ticated and refi ned with time. Beginning in 1950, for example, color images were included but were rare because of the high costs, and in 1966, the fi rst color micrograph was featured, showing a stunning series of images of a shoot apical meristem of a seedling of Pinus lambertiana ( Fosket and Miksche, 1966 ; Fig. 3 ). With photographic reproduction becoming more and more inexpensive, such images came to dominate the pages of the journal, and then the covers themselves (fi rst published on gray paper, and then changed to green, yellow, and orange pa-per stock ), began to showcase beautiful photographic images starting in 1992. These images represented the latest research, contributed to the aesthetic appeal of the journal, and gave it a distinctive fl air.

In accord with its international status, furthermore, authors in the American Journal of Botany have long refl ected a global community of botanists and plant scientists, and not just the United States, Canada, and Mexico. AJB content still presents a broad diversity of methods, approaches, and subdisciplines of botanical science, so that it continues to fi ll a much needed uni-fying “niche” in the scientifi c literature of the plant sciences. Surveying the scientifi c literature available for reference in li-braries in 2004, librarian Lorraine J. Pellack noted, “AJB is cur-rently available on the shelves of most college and university libraries in the U.S., as well as in many faculty offi ces, and in research libraries affi liated with botanical gardens” ( Pellack, 2004 ). In existence now for 100 years, American Journal of Botany remains an important vehicle for publication for bo-tanical science and continues to fulfi ll its original vision that it “be as wide as the whole science,” and that it “serve the inter-ests of organizations whose members come from all quarters” ( Newcombe, 1914 , p. 2 ).

$19 073.51 at the end of the fi scal year in 1930. By the end of 1935, however, membership had dropped to 1561, and the budget had diminished to $10 810.44. The effects of the Great Depression were obviously felt at the journal, as had been the case at the BSA ( Smocovitis, 2006 ). Subscription costs in-creased appreciably to nonmembers during World War I due to increasing labor costs and materials, but members only saw modest increases in price during this interval of time. Between its founding and the 1930 report, the number of individuals who could publish in the journal by virtue of being members had risen from 291 to 1054, and as noted by the report of the Business Manager, “papers for publication began to accumu-late faster than they could be published” ( Gager, 1935 , p. 3). By 1935, the Journal offi ce was run by fi ve people in addition to the Business Manager: a secretary (to the Business Manager), a stenographer, a stock room clerk, an accountant, and a business offi ce clerk. In addition to cash contributions totaling $5284 dol-lars, the management of the journal had also secured “grants-in-aid” from the National Academy of Sciences, totaling some $3500. By the end of the partnership with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, sound business investments included bonds and proper-ties. The BSA held $39 202 in total assets and possessed appre-ciable funds that secured the future of the journal.

Most importantly, a process of peer-referee “as a hopeful means of preventing publication of inferior papers and of im-proving the quality of others” (BSA Minutes, 1935) had been put in place between 1933 and 1934 during the editorship of Columbia University Professor, Sam F. Trelease. In keeping with the increasing specialization and the introduction of for-mal sections in the BSA to represent the various specialties, it was also decided to have a representative of each section on the Editorial Board of the journal, as well as representatives of affi liated societies. These included the American Phytopatho-logical Society, the Ecological Society of America, the Ameri-can Society of Plant Physiologists, the Genetics Society of America, and the Mycological Society of America. Referees, whose opinions served only as an advisory role, were selected by an editorial board member closest to the area, with the fi nal responsibility resting with the Editorial Board. The same edi-torial board held the responsibility of choosing its Editor-in-Chief, either from the Editorial Board or from its membership.

TABLE 1. List of Editors-in-Chief for the American Journal of Botany , their institutions, journal volumes, and term in offi ce.

EIC order Name Institution Volumes Date

1 Newcombe, F. C. University of Michigan 1–4 1914–19172 Allen, C. E. University of Wisconsin 5–13 1918–19263 Sinnott, Edmund W. Columbia University 14–19 1927–19324 Trelease, Sam F. Columbia University 20–26 1933–19395 Cleland, Ralph E. Indiana University 27–33 1940–19466 Meyer, Bernard S. Ohio State University 34–38 1947–19517 Tippo, Oswald University of Illinois 39–40 1952–19538 Steere, William C. Stanford University/National Science Foundation 40–44 1953–19589 Fuller, Harry J. University of Illinois 44–45 1957–1958 a 10 Bold, Harold C. University of Texas, Austin 45–51 1958–196411 Heimsch, Charles Miami University 52–56 1965–196912 Boke, Norman H. University of Oklahoma 57–61 1970–197413 Gifford, Ernest M. University of California, Davis 62–66 1975–197914 Norstog, Knut Fairchild Botanical Garden 67–71 1980–198415 Delevoryas, T. University of Texas, Austin 72–76 1985–198916 Lersten, Nels R. Iowa State University 77–81 1990–199417 Niklas, Karl J. Cornell University 82–91 1995–200418 Jernstedt, Judy University of California, Davis 92–present 2005–present

a Resigned in 1958 because of ill health.

8 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY [Vol. 101

Fig. 3. First color micrograph published in the American Journal of Botany . Shoot apical meristem of seedling of Pinus lambertiana ( Fosket and Miksche, 1966 ).

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