John Torrey - Publications

Publications

Torrey's earliest publications in the American Journal of Science are on mineralogy. In 1820, he undertook the examination of the plants that had been collected around the headwaters of the Mississippi by David B. Douglass. During the same year, he received the collections made by Edwin James while with the expedition that was sent out to the Rocky Mountains under Major Stephen H. Long. His report was the earliest treatise of its kind in the United States that was arranged on the natural system. Torrey, in the mean time, had planned A Flora of the Northern and Middle United States, or a Systematic Arrangement and Description of all the Plants heretofore discovered in the United States North of Virginia, and in 1824 began its publication in parts, but it was soon suspended owing to the general adoption of the natural system of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in place of that of Carl Linnaeus. In 1836, on the organization of the geological survey of New York, he was appointed botanist, and required to prepare a flora of the state. His report, consisting of two quarto volumes, was issued in 1843, and was for a long time the most comprehensive for any state in the United States. In 1838, he began with Asa Gray The Flora of North America, which was issued in numbers irregularly until 1843, when they had completed the Compositae, but new botanical material accumulated at such a rapid rate that it was deemed best to discontinue it.

Subsequently Torrey published reports on the plants that were collected by John C. Frémont in the expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1845), those gathered by Major William H. Emory on his reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to San Diego, California (1848), the specimens secured by Captain Howard Stansbury on his expedition to the Great Salt Lake of Utah (1852), the plants collected by John C. Frémont in California (1853), those brought back from the Red River of Louisiana by Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1853), and the botany of Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves's expedition to the Zuni and Colorado Rivers (1854), also memoirs on the botany of the various expeditions for the purpose of determining the most practicable route for a Pacific Railroad (1855-1860).

He reported on the Botany of the Mexican Boundary Survey (1859), that of the expedition upon the Colorado River under Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives (1861), and, in association with Asa Gray, the botanical collections of the Wilkes exploring expedition. The last was in his hands at the time of his death, its publication having been delayed by the Civil War.

His bibliography is extensive, including contributions on botanical subjects to scientific periodicals and to the transactions of the societies of which he was a member.