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Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf
Papers, 1867-1935
Cage 315

W. N. Suksdorf ca. 1885

The papers of Wilhelm N. Suksdorf, 1850-1932, of Bingen, Washington, were acquired by the Washington State University Herbarium in 1933 as a part of the bequest which willed Suksdorf's herbarium and library to the University. The herbarium added and interfiled various materials during the 1940s, principally from the papers of Fermen Pickett of Washington State University, Alice Eastwood of the California Academy of Sciences and Carleton Ball of the United States Department of Agriculture.

BIOGRAPHY

The long and complex, if outwardly simple, life of Wilhelm Suksdorf began in rural Germany, near Kiel, in 1850. At the age of eight he emigrated to northeastern Iowa with his family. He lived there until 1874. In 1876 he was enrolled in a science/agriculture course at the University of California. Before graduating, however, he left school to join his father and several brothers at White Salmon, Washington, where he entered into their various farming and town promotion activities.

He started making botanical observations of an informal sort in Iowa, continued in California and began serious reconnaissance and collecting of Washington plants during the summer vacation of 1875. As much of the Washington vegetation could not be identified with existing manuals, in 1878 Suksdorf began corresponding with Asa Gray at Harvard University, in an effort to have his collection identified and named. Encouraged by Gray, who named a genus of plants for him, and by a visiting expedition of botanists in 1880, Suksdorf decided to make a serious distribution of Washington plants. These he offered for sale in 1882, the first of his thirteen fascicles of Washington plants.

In 1886, Gray asked Suksdorf to join him at Harvard as an assistant, apparently intending that the position would become permanent. A combination of complex circumstances, along with various physical and mental health problems which plagued him throughout his life, led Suksdorf to abandon Harvard in 1888. After a time of inactivity, he returned to collecting Washington plants and to a regular pattern of publication of his findings. Difficulties arose, however, because of his limitations with English and a strong personal desire to write in German. Consequently, many of his articles appeared in German and Austrian journals, or in obscure American journals which would carry articles written in German. This position, along with his strong adherence to the "International Rule" school of thought, led him into many minor disputes with botanists for the rest of his life. In the 1920s, he resolved some of these difficulties by founding a personal journal, Werdenda, which gave him an outlet for his views.

Suksdorf continued to live at Bingen, Washington, a town he and his brothers founded, for the rest his life and his botanical labors accordingly tended to reflect the vegetation of adjacent Klickitat County. This area contained vegetation representative of both humid, wooded Western Washington and arid, open Eastern Washington along with a major alpine area, Mt. Adams, which Suksdorf, following Indian practice, called Mt. Paddo. Thus he was exposed to much of the state’s varied flora without traveling great distances. He did, nevertheless, collect plants in the Spokane area in parts of Oregon and Idaho near to Washington, at one location in Montana and while on a major trip to California in 1913. In the 1920s he spent two winters at Washington State University, as a special fellow of the herbarium.

Suksdorf’s outlook on botany had been colored by his early exposure to the ideas of Asa Gray and the basic ideas of the Candollean school, as well as by his own personal experiences and emotions relative to the out-of-doors and to plants. Occupationally, philosophically, scientifically and emotionally he was a "naturalist," reflecting every sense of the meaning of the term. This led him to some practices which caused many to regard him as an eccentric: his reclusiveness, his preferences for field botany over laboratory study, and his tendency to be a splitter of species. For decades he fought against those botanical ideas which came from abstract study in herbaria and libraries and insisted that plants must be seen in the field for an understanding. Although this fight with academic botanists was generally a losing battle, Suksdorf continued to hope for a return of naturalism even to the later years of his life. He expressed this idea in 1928 when he wrote, "A collector sees the plants in the field and mostly many of each kind he collects, but his notes or remarks are seldom considered of importance. That was so, at least in the past. But I knew one botanist who was different; that was Dr. Gray. To him the collector was a helper, not merely a collector." (16 June 1928, Harold St. John Papers).

Suksdorf died in a freakish and not very well understood railroad accident near his home in 1932.

Biographical sketches of Suksdorf include: George Neville Jones, "William N. Suksdorf," Washington Historical Quarterly, 24 (1933) 128-129; Alice L. Kibbe, Afield with Plant Lovers and Collectors (Carthage, Ill.: Carthage College, 1953) 353-356; Erwin F. Lange, "Pioneer Botanists of the Pacific Northwest," Oregon Historical Quarterly, 57 (1956) 113-114; Harold St. John, "Biography of Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf, 1850-1932, Pioneer Botanist of the State of Washington," Research Studies, 23 (1955) 225-282; and William A. Weber, The Botanical Collections of Wilhelm N. Suksdorf (Master’s Thesis, Washington State University, 1942), partially reprinted in Research Studies, 12 (1944) 51-122. Weber’s essay contains detailed explanations of Suksdorf’s symbols, as well as a detailed itinerary of his collecting trips.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PAPERS

The papers contain Suksdorf’s correspondence, along with many enclosures; his diaries; drafts or copies of many of his writings; his catalog of his herbarium; and many of his field notes, along with maps and explanations of place names. Most materials relate to Suksdorf’s plant collecting, subsequent classification and distribution of specimens, and his professional writing. Materials from the papers of Fermen Pickett, Alice Eastwood, and Carleton Ball are interfiled within the correspondence. Both personal and scientific correspondence is included. Approximately one-fourth of the material is in German.

ARRANGEMENT OF THE PAPERS

The papers are arranged in five series; correspondence, writings, notes, diaries and oversize material. The correspondence has been arranged in chronological sequence. A sub-series contains many enclosures, bills and receipts which had been separated from the correspondence in previous handling of the papers. Other series include Suksdorf’s articles, drafts and notes, his herbarium catalog, his botanical notes, his diaries and other biographical material, and some oversize notes, maps and drawings. An index for this collection is available in Manuscripts Archives and Special Collections. Additional Botanical manuscripts in MASC may be found in the following collections:

Cage 53   Botanical Papers, 1881-1973
Cage 318 Beattie, Rolla Kent Papers, 1899-1956
Cage 316 Cusick, William Conklin Papers, 1906-1924
Cage 317 Piper, Charles Vancouver Papers, 1888-1926
Cage 319 St. John, Harold Papers, 1912-1957

SERIES

Containers

I. Correspondence 1-9

A. General correspondence
B. Supplemental correspondence, enclosures and bills

II. Articles, notes and other materials relative to writings 10
III. Notes 11-13

A. Herbarium catalog
B. Botanical notes

IV. Diaries and biographical material 14
V. Flora notes, maps and drawings o.s.

CONTAINER LIST

SERIES I. CORRESPONDENCE

General Correspondence

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
1	1	1869-1879	90
	2	1880-1881	60
	3	1882	110
	4	1883	110
	5	1884	160
2	6	1885	150
	7	1886	120
	8	1887	70
	9	1888	25
	10	1889	30
	11	1890	80
	12	1891	60
	13	1892	125
3	14	1893	125
	15	1894	150
	16	1895	130
	17	1896	100
	18	1897	110
4	19	1898	70
	20	1899	45
	21	1900	80
	22	1901	100
	23	1902	120
	24	1903	75
	25	1904	60
	26	1905	90
5	27	1906	100
	28	1907	80
	29	1908	80
	30	1909	95
	31	1910	55
	32	1911	45
	33	1912	60
	34	1913	40
	35	1914	90
	36	1915	75
6	37	1916	70
	38	1917	70
	39	1918	60
	40	1919	80
	41	1920	155
	42	1921	135
7	43	1922	100
	44	1923	125
	45	1924	170
	46	1925	110
8	47	1926	90
	48	1927	95
	49	1928	120
	50	1929	75
	51	1930-1932	100
	52	n.d.	190

Supplemental Correspondence, Enclosures, Bills and Receipts

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
8	53	Correspondence of Theodor Suksdorf and Fermen Pickett, and others, relative to the estate of Wilhelm Suksdorf and acquisition of the Suksdorf herbarium, 1928-1935	130
9	54	Copies of correspondence with Alice Eastwood, 1913-1930.	20
	55	Extracts of correspondence of the several Suksdorf brothers, relative to business arrangements, 1872-1917.	50
	56	Enclosures, advertisements, printed materials, circulars and brochures from the correspondence of Wilhelm Suksdorf, ca. 1875-ca. 1930.	250
	57-59	Bills and receipts, ca. 1875-ca. 1930	300

SERIES II. WRITINGS

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
10	60	Flora of Washington, catalogs for Fascicles 1 through 13 of plants distributions; irregular price lists, 1882-1928	30
	61	Flora Washingtonensis, Phaenogamia and Pteridophyta of Washington, ca. 1895	1
	62	Articles, notices and reprints, ca. 1895-1910	10
	63	Flora of Mt. Adams, known to the Natives as Mt. Paddo, draft copy, 1898	1
	64	Werdenda. Beitrage zur Pflanzenkunde, Band I, Nos. 1-18, 1923-1931.	15
	65-67	Werdenda, drafts, including some notes on the genus Ansinckia, ca. 1925-ca. 1931	50

SERIES III. NOTES

Herbarium Catalog

Container	Folder	Description
11	68	Washington 1-1837
	69	Washington 1838-4653
	70	Washington 4654-8437
	71	Washington 8438-11495
	72	Washington 11496-13883
	73	Oregon
	74	California
	75	Montana
	76	Idaho

Botanical Notes

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
12	77	Flora Von Washington, ca. 1887.	1 notebook
	78	Records and notes of distribution, ca. 1882-ca. 1910	2 books
	79-80	Catalogs of other collectors.	20
13	81	Collections notes, 1904-1908	19 notebooks
	82	Maps, keys to symbols, place names, Indian words and other such notes, ca. 1890-ca. 1925	50
	83-85	Determinations, ca. 1885-ca. 1920	60

SERIES IV. DIARIES AND BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
14	86	Diaries, 1867-1882	15
	87	Iowa plants and Diary, 1871-1876	1
	88	Journal of Trip to California, 1913	1
	89	Photographs, chiefly portraits	13
	90	Drawings and water colors, ca. 1860s.	2 books
	91	Notes of biographers, several short biographic sketches, ca. 1920s-ca. 1955	10

SERIES V. OVERSIZE

Container	Folder	Description	Approx. No. of Items
O.S.	92	Notes of Flora of Mt. Adams, Falcon Valley, Butterfly Lake; maps and drawings of these and other locations, ca. 1895-ca. 1920	35