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"The arrangements for our expedition go
on handsomely; I am having excellent
instruments made, and [am] myself
engaged in hard study, among other things,
descriptive botany. We must have the
geologic formation, geographical position,
and elevation above the sea for all our
plants." Frémont to
botanist John Torry Among Frémont's most
lasting and important works are
those in the field of botany, a
field large largely ignored by
his biographers. Stanley L.
Welsh Frémont had a great
interest in botany. He named
"Lake Bonpland" (today Tahoe)
after French botanist Aimé
Jaques Bonpland who had traveled
with Humboldt in Mexico and South
America. Frémont also
named the Humboldt
River--probably unaware that it
was the same river named Mary's
River by Peter Ogden, although it
had been called by many other
names. In the course of his five
explorations of the West,
Frémont collected over
1,400 botanical specimens, many
new to the taxonomy. Stanley L. Welsh, a professor
of botany at Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah has
written John Charles
Frémont Botanical
Explorer, which was published
by the Missouri Botanical Gardens
Press. Not all of the collection, however,
survived the rigors and accidents of the
travels. Note: This
image is not of the original
collected specimen, but of the
same tree. And a report of the expedition
specimens was published by
botanist John Torry as Plantae
Fremontianae; or Descriptions of
Plants Collected by Col. J. C.
Fremont, in California,
Washington, Smithsonian
Institution, 1853. The place where Preuss made this entry
in his diary is can be visited. It is just
across the South Fork of the American
River from Highway 50, just below
Riverton. The cedar is as common and as
large today among ponderosa pine, sugar
pine, silver fir, Douglas fir, and various
oaks and big leaf maple. The "live oak,"
which Preuss remarks, is Quercus
wislizenii--the interior live oak,
also called canyon live oak, and maul oak.
An evergreen, the leaves are
multi-morphic--several leaf types
appearing on the same tree. Frémont
remarked the oak also: Frémont: February
24, 1844: The full record of
this epic journey is
found in
The
Crossing
Climate, and life-zones, can
change radically within only a
few miles in the Sierra
Nevada. The expedition had left the
Markleeville (5600' el.) region
of sage and piñon,
Pinus monophylla, which
was first collected (above right)
by Frémont on this
expedition, and had entered a
region of tall timber; the "tall
cedar, Libocedrus
decurrens, was first
encountered at Grover's Hot
Springs (6000' el.). What follows illustrates the
change which occurs at the crest
of the Sierra Nevada between east
slope and west slope
forests--something not familiar
to Stanley L. Welsh, who is
located in Utah, on the opposite
side of Frémont's
identified "Great Basin." "white pine" Pinus
lambertiana, sugar
pine Pinus
monticola, western
white pine "hemlock spruce,
occasionally as large as
eight feet in diameter
four feet above the
ground; but in
ascending, it tapers
rapidly." Tsuga
mertensiana,
mountain hemlock. "white spruce" Abies
concolor, silver
fir Abies
magnifica, red fir,
silvertip "red pine (pinus
colorado of the
Mexicans)" Pinus
ponderosa,
ponderosa, yellow
pine Pinus
jeffreyi--jeffrey,
red pine from the purple
cast of the bark February 21, 1844 none Pinus
albicaulis,
Whitebark pine (ID by
Peter
Lathrop) Note: Alan H. Hartley, a
researcher for the Oxford English
Dictionary, from Duluth, Minnesota,
tells us at longcamp.com that
Frémont's Reports (The
Expeditions of John Charles
Frémont, Jackson & Spence
edition), Geographical Memoir upon
Upper California, and Memoirs of My
Life, and Torry's Plantae
Frémontianae have yielded
nearly 600 citations for possible
inclusion in the OED.
click cover
image for more
information
Frémont:
March 6, 1844:
But the party left in the
mountains with Mr. Fitzpatrick
were to be attended to; and the
next morning, supplied with fresh
horses and provisions, I hurried
off to meet them. On the second
day we met, a few miles below the
forks of the Rio de los
Americanos; and a more forlorn
and pitiable sight than they
presented cannot well be
imagined. They were all on
foot--each man, weak and
emaciated, leading a horse or
mule as weak and emaciated as
themselves. They had experienced
great difficulty in descending
the mountains, made slippery by
rains and melting snows, and many
horses fell over precipices, and
were killed; and with some were
lost the packs they carried.
Among these, was a mule with the
plants which we had collected
since leaving Fort Hall, along a
line of 2000 miles travel. Out of
67 horses and mules with which we
commenced crossing the Sierra,
only 33 reached the valley of the
Sacramento, and they were only in
a condition to be led
along.
A
few of the specimens collected on
this leg of the journey did
survive. Libocedrus
decurrens (incense cedar) is
tagged (by Frémont) "no.
33. February 25, 1844" in the
collection of the Missouri
Botanical Gardens.
Why did this one survive?
It survived because it was
collected two days after
Frémont had separated from
the main party in an effort to
travel ahead rapidly and seek
supplies from Sutte
r.
The pack mules were then behind,
under charge of Tom Fitzpatrick,
and it was one of these mules and
its pack that was lost.
See here an actual specimen sheet
from Frémont's expedition
to California. Scutellaria
antirrhinoides var.
californica, Gray (scullcap) in
the collection of the National
Museum of Natural History,
Washington, D.C.After the passing the crest
of the Sierra Nevada in the epic 1844
mid-winter crossing, Frémont's
cartographer, the German-born Karl
Ludwig "Charles" Preuss, commented on
the trees.
Preuss:
February 25th:
Magnificent trees grow here. We
have measured the circumference of cedars
at twenty-eight and one-half feet, four
feet from the ground. In my own botany I
call this tree "pencil tree" because
almost all pencils are
encased with this timber. The
live oak occurs here frequently, not a
beautiful, but a very useful tree for
lumber, especially for boatmaking. The
leaves are entirely different, not at all
like other oaks.
The opposite mountain
side was very steep and
continuous--un-broken by ravines,
and covered with pines and snow;
while on the side we were
traveling, innumerable rivulets
poured down from the ridge.
Continuing on, we halted a moment
at one of these rivulets, to
admire some beautiful evergreen
trees, resembling live oak, which
shaded the little stream. They
were forty to fifty feet high,
and two in diameter, with a
uniform tufted top; and the
summer green of their beautiful
foliage , with the singing birds,
and sweet summer wind which was
whirling about the dry oak
leaves, nearly intoxicated us
with delight; and we hurried on,
filled with excitement, to escape
entirely from the horrid region
of inhospitable snow, to the
perpetual spring of the
Sacramento.
an
email from a Forest
Service nature
guide.
For
those reading the above John
Charles Frémont Botanical
Explorer, the following
corrections should be noted for
the area of the Long Camp. The
collected specimens of the trees
mentioned were lost when a pack
mule fell into the canyon of the
South Fork of the American river.
The author, Stanley L, Welsh,
made his identifications
[page 71] from trees
mentioned by Frémont in
the narrative of the report.
Not being personally familiar
with the area (6000-8600 feet on
the eastern slope of the
Sierra Nevada), Dr. Welsh's
identifications are those of
trees that Frémont would
first encounter some days later
on the descent of the west slope
at an elevation below 6000'.
Frémont's contributions to
meteorology.
February 10,
1844,
8000' el.
Present, but scarce, and
only to to 30" diameter
at base.
Juniperus
occidentalis,
western juniper.
VERY notable here.
"resembling white
pine"
Frémont's
expeditions made him a world
celebrity, but also gained him
international recognition by
scientists. The Prussian Orden
Pour le Mérite für
Wissenschaften und
Künste was personally
presented to Frémont by
Baron Alexander von
Humboldt in 1850, and also
the Gold Medal of the Royal
Geographical Society--still
today the most prestigious award
in the field--and the Gold Medal
of the Société de
Géographia, Paris."The important
services rendered to science
by that distinguished
traveller, Colonel
Frémont, are known to
all who have read the reports
of his hazardous journeys. He
has not only made valuable
additions to the geographical
knowledge of our remote
possessions, but has greatly
increased our acquaintance
with the geology and natural
history of the regions which
he explored." John Torry,
Plantae Fremontianae
Frémont's methods of
determining coordinates.
Frémont's contributions to
Geology.
LAKE TAHOE DISCOVERED! Two
accounts: Frémont's
narrative of February 14, 1844,
and a recent climb (February 16,
2004) of Red Lake Peak by Peter
Lathrop of Carson City, NV.
The mountain barometer.
Find out how correcting errors in
the published coordinates in
Frémont's 1845 Report led
to the discovery of his
"Long Camp" site.
©1999, 2007
Bob
Graham
