John Torrey

John Torrey (August 15, 1796 – March 10, 1873) was an American botanist.

Torrey was born in New York. When he was 15 or 16 years of age his father received an appointment to the state prison at Greenwich Village, New York, where he was tutored by Amos Eaton, then a convict and later a pioneer of natural history studies in America. He thus learned the elements of botany, as well as something of mineralogy and chemistry. In 1815 he began the study of medicine, qualifying in 1818. In the following year he issued his Catalogue of Plants growing spontaneously within Thirty Miles of the City of New York, and in 1824 he issued the only volume of his Flora of the Northern and Middle States. In the same year he obtained the chair of chemistry and geology at West Point military academy, and three years later the professorship of chemistry and botany in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York (the medical school of Columbia University).

In 1836 he was appointed botanist to the state of New York and produced his Flora of that state in 1843; while from 1838 to 1843 he carried on the publication of the earlier portions of Flora of North America, with the assistance of his pupil, Asa Gray. From 1853 he was chief assayer to the United States assay office, but he continued to take an interest in botanical teaching until his death. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.^[1]

Torrey made over his valuable herbarium and botanical library to Columbia College in 1860, and he was the first president of the Torrey Botanical Club in 1873. His name is commemorated in the small coniferous genus Torreya, found in North America, China and Japan. T. taxifolia, a native of Florida, is known as the Florida torreya, Torrey nutmeg, or stinking-cedar; and also in the Torrey pine, Pinus torreyana from southern California. He also first described the carnivorous plant genus Darlingtonia, which he named after a friend.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Torrey, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Torrey, John. A Flora of the State of New-York, comprising full descriptions of all the indigenous and naturalized plants hitherto discovered in the State; with remarks on their economical and medicinal properties. Albany: Carroll and Cook, Printers to the Assembly, 1843. A two-volume set with color plates, digitized by the New York State Library.
• 1840 Photograph of Torrey @ Harvard University Library
• John Torrey at Find a Grave

Additional publications online

• Botanic contributions relating to the flora of western North America [by] Gray, Engelmann, Torrey [and] Frémont (1843–53)
• A compendium of the flora of the northern and middle states, containing generic and specific descriptions of all the plants, exclusive of the cryptogamia, hitherto found in the United States, north of the Potomac (1826)
• A flora of North America :containing abridged descriptions of all the known indigenous and naturalized plants growing north of Mexico, arranged according to the natural system /by John Torrey and Asa Gray (1838–1843) Two volumes.
• An introduction to the natural system of botany (1831) With John Lindley.
• On the Darlingtonia californica, a new pitcher-plant from northern California /by John Torrey (1853)
• Report on the United States and Mexican boundary survey :made under the direction of the secretary of the Interior /by William H. Emory, major First Cavalry, and United States commissioner (1857–1859) Part 1 / Part 2 Torrey et al.