Chauncey Beadle

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Beadle was known for his horticultural work with azaleas. This Flame Azalea, by Ellis Rowan, is from Southern Wildflowers and Trees by Alice Lounsberry. Beadle wrote the Introduction for that work.

Chauncey Delos Beadle (August 5, 1866, St. Catharines, Ontario – 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 (1889). In 1890 the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted hired him to oversee the nursery at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina 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 azaleas, 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.

Beadle wrote scientific papers describing new species and varieties of North American plants, for example, papers in the journal Biltmore Botanical Studies. (See, for example, this reference to the scientific description of Florida Mock-orange, Philadelphus floridus.) He wrote the Introduction for Alice Lounsberry's Southern Wildflowers and Trees.

Beadle was possibly the inspiration for the name of the character Chauncey Gardiner in the movie Being There, filmed partly at Biltmore Estate. (See discussion.)

[edit] References

• Plants and Floyd County, Georgia. Retrieved on 2005-05-02.
• Biltmore Estates (swf). Retrieved on 2006-05-02.
• Being There at the Internet Movie Database
• Biltmore Estate's Azalea Garden Remains a Living Legacy to its Creators. Blue Ridge Digest (Spring 1997). Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
• Chauncey Beadle, Landscape Architect. University of North Carolina at Asheville (2005). Retrieved on 2007-01-27.
• GeneaSearch, Men of 1914 Biographical Sketches Page 27--accessed 4 May 2006
• Alice Lounsberry (1901). Southern Wild Flowers and Trees (forward by Chauncey Beadle). New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.
• Rachel Carley (1994). A Guide to Biltmore Estate. Asheville, North Carolina: The Biltmore Company. ISBN 1-885378-00-9. 116 pages.

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