By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on August 15, 2008
Ten or 12 years ago when I was becoming more aware of native plants, I heard that our Hill Country “cedar” is “ash juniper.” I already knew it is really a juniper, not cedar, but I wondered why the “ash”?
It is not ash-gray and it looks nothing like an ash tree. Of course, I soon learned it is spelled “Ashe,” after William W. Ashe.
Something similar happened when I first heard about “lacy oak.” The leaves didn’t seem lace-like to me.
Yes, now I know it is “Lacey” for Howard George Lacey, who discovered the oak on his ranch near Kerrville.
OK, I quickly learned that a lot of native plants are named for people, but I was fooled again when I first heard about the grasses called “muley.” I’d heard of muley cattle such as polled Herefords, but not hornless grass.
Needless to say, as soon as I looked up Lindheimer’s muhly I could see it is in a genus named after G. H. Е. Muhlenberg.
Gotthilf Hunrich Ernst Muhlenberg lived from 1753 to 1815. He was born into a prominent Pennsylvania family, and his father and brothers were influential patriots during the Revolutionary War.
Like his father, G. H. E. Muhlenberg became a Lutheran minister. Because of his family’s involvement in the Revolution, Muhlenberg was on the British hit list.
While he was hiding out away from Philadelphia during the Revolution, Muhlenberg became interested in botany. He made extensive plant collections in and around Lancaster County, Penn., and subsequently exchanged letters and specimens with eminent botanists of America and Europe.
During his study of grasses and sedges, he discovered a bog turtle he named Testudo muhlenbergii. Today, that turtle (Clemmys muhlenbergii) is ranked as federally endangered and has been the center of major efforts for land conservation in the Northeast.
Through his extensive collections, Muhlenberg made major contributions to botany. He is responsible for two genera and at least 143 species of vascular plants.
Howard G. Lacey (1856-1929) was a well-educated English aristocrat who immigrated to the United States when he was 26. He settled in Kerr County, where he ranched for nearly 40 years.
In addition to goat ranching, he became interested in natural sciences. Unencumbered by wife and children, he spent a great deal of time studying the natural history of Central Texas.
Lacey became a respected authority on the flora and fauna of the Texas Hill Country. He worked closely with the Smithsonian Institution. British Museum of Natural History, Audubon Society, National Geographic Society and the American Ornithological Union. Many plants have been named in his honor. For example, among our local flora are several species of muhly grass (Muhlenbergia) and Chinquapin oak (Quercus muhlenbergii).
When ill health took Lacey back to England in 1919, he donated his collection of Hill Country plants and animals to the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
In addition to the Lacey oak (Quercus layceyi), three species of small mammals also are named for Lacey.
William Willard Ashe was born in North Carolina in 1872. As children, Willard and his brother explored and collected specimens in the woods and fields around the family’s antebellum estate.
His collections reportedly required a two-story building by the time Ashe entered the University of North Carolina at 15. In graduate school at Cornell, Ashe specialized in botany and geology, earning a master of science degree by age 20.
After graduation, Ashe was a forester for the North Carolina Geological Survey and also did work for the US Geological Survey and the US Bureau of Forestry. In 1905 he was employed by the US Forest Service and became an early advocate of creating national forests east of the Mississippi.
Ashe served as Secretary of the National Forest Reservation Commission and worked to coordinate forest-land acquisition.
In his personal research, Ashe concentrated on woody plants, and he published over 510 plant names. One species of hawthorn and a species of oak he named margaretta after his wife Margaret.
There are not so many names of women in the scientific names of native plants. Well, that sounds like a topic for a future column.
