David Fairchild's Expedition to Jamaica on Board Utowana1

• Published in: The journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 2017-04, Vol.144 (2), p.139-152
• Main Authors: Rose, Philip E, St. E. Campbell, Keron C, Commock, Tracy, Korber, Nancy, Mosely Latham, Janet, Swan, Marianne, Jestrow, Brett, Francisco-Ortega, Javier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1095-5674; 1940-0616
• DOI: 10.3159/TORREY-D-16-00010

David Fairchild (1869–1954) was one of the most important plant explorers and collectors from the USA. His documents, letters, and photographs are housed at the Archives and Library of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (ALFTBG). Between 1925 and 1933, Fairchild mostly performed his plant hunting activities on board the research yacht Utowana. The last of these expeditions took place in 1933, when he collected in the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, the Colombian islands of Providencia and San Andrés, and Panama. During this trip, he visited Jamaica (March 5–11), where he made 33 collections of plant material and took 45 photographs (37 of them were located at ALFTBG). In Jamaica, he was hosted by Edward John Downes (1893–1957), Frank Cundall (1858–1937), and M. S. Goodman. He mostly focused on procuring germplasm from the three historical botanic gardens of this island (Bath, Castleton, and Hope). The visit of Fairchild to Jamaica happened a few years after two of the most important botanists who worked on that island, William Harris (1860–1920) and William Fawcett (1851–1926), passed away. It appears that, during this period in Jamaica, there was a decline in botanical studies and activities, which continued until George Proctor (1920–2015) and Charles Adams (1920–2005) started working for Jamaican institutions in 1952 and 1959, respectively.