By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on July 25, 2008
The man who is known as the Father of Texas Geology was among the first to make extensive collections of Texas flora. That was the young German geologist and naturalist Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, the subject of an earlier column in this series. His 1849 publication “Texas with Observations on its Natural History and Geology” included his descriptions of the Texas flora, and he botanized for a short time with Ferdinand Lindheimer of New Braunfels, the “Father of Texas Botany.” The botanical collection Roemer took back to Germany led to rapid publication of plant descriptions that preempted US publications being prepared on specimens collected by Lindheimer.
Another geologist-naturalist who made major contributions to early Texas botany was Samuel Botsford Buckley. He is the Buckley of Buckley’s yucca (Yucca constricta) and Texas red oak (Quercus buckleyi), two common plants in this area.
Samuel Buckley was born in 1809 in Torrey, New York. At Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he studied geology and mineralogy. After graduating, he made botanical collections in Virginia and Illinois. In 1839 he began a year’s tenure as principal of an academy in Allenton, Alabama. After that, he traveled extensively through the South, discovering several new species of plants and one new genus.
On an expedition to Florida in 1843, Buckley discovered thirteen new species of mollusks. In 1858, he determined the height of several mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. One of them is named Mount Buckley.
In 1860, when Texas had been a state for only 15 years, Buckley was hired to be an assistant to Dr. Benjamin Franklin Shumard, the first head of the Texas Geological Survey. Buckley was put in charge of the botanical department, and he also was to make geologic observations.
Governor Sam Houston had been keeping a disapproving eye on Shumard and removed him in 1860. The governor then appointed Francis Moore, geologist from Houston, as State Geologist. Buckley was made First Assistant.
Not long after Moore and Buckley set off in 1861 to document natural resources of the Llano area, Buckley was sent back to check on rumors that Shumard was campaigning to remain in his position as State Geologist. Those rumors proved true, but Buckley soon provided Sam Houston with testimony on Shumard’s negligence in office, and Shumard left the state. Curiously enough, one of the plants Buckley discovered is Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii), which he named after his first boss at the Texas Geological Survey.
During the Civil War, the Geologic Survey apparently was inactive, and the survey’s collections were riffled and put in disarray. After Buckley was appointed State Geologist by Governor Throckmorton in1866, he reorganized the collection. In 1874, Governor Coke appointed Buckley to the position of State Geologist for the second time.
That same year, Buckley authored the “First Annual Report on Geological and Agricultural Survey of Texas,” a comprehensive tome that included a considerable amount on vegetation of Texas. In this report, Buckley pleaded that a botanical and zoological department be added to the Survey, which he hoped could lead to a natural history museum for Texas.
Buckley continued various endeavors in geology and natural history until his death in Austin in 1884. Buckley accumulated a herbarium of about 6,000 species through his own collections and trades with other botanists in America and Europe. The herbarium was acquired by Ohio natural history professor Rebecca Mann Dean, who sold it to Washington University in St. Louis. Shortly thereafter, Buckley’s herbarium was combined with that of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the same place most of Lindheimer’s collections went.
Samuel B. Buckley was the first botanist to collect in Texas and then describe new species from his own collection. He published descriptions of over 100 Texas plants, many taxa of which are recognized today.
