Walter Tennyson Swingle

Swingle was born in Canaan, Pennsylvania,{{cite news|title=Dr. Swingle, Botanist, Dies at 81|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22147217/walter_tennyson_swingle_18711952/|newspaper=The Miami News|date=January 20, 1952|page=59|via = Newspapers.com|access-date = July 24, 2018}} {{Open access}} and moved with his family to Kansas two years later.

He graduated from the Kansas State Agricultural College in 1890, and studied at the University of Bonn in 1895–96 and 1898. With William Ashbrook Kellerman he edited the exsiccata Kansas fungi (1889), a specimen series which is widely distributed in major herbaria.{{cite web |title=Kansas fungi: IndExs ExsiccataID=275723755 |website=IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae |publisher=Botanische Staatssammlung München |url=https://www.botanischestaatssammlung.de/DatabaseClients/IndExs/Exsiccatae_IndExs_Details.jsp?ExsiccataID=275723755 |access-date=18 September 2024}}

Swingle married Lucie Romstaedt in 1901; she died in 1910. He married Maude Kellerman, daughter of William Ashbrook Kellerman, in 1915 and they had four children. He died in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1952.{{cite web|url=http://proust.library.miami.edu/findingaids/?p=creators/creator&id=244 |title=Swingle, Walter Tennyson (1871–1952) |publisher=University of Miami |access-date=21 March 2018}}

In 1927, botanist Elmer Drew Merrill published Swinglea, which is a genus of flowering plants from the Philippines, belonging to the family Rutaceae and named in Walter Tennyson Swingle's honor.{{cite web |title=Swinglea Merr. {{!}} Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science |url=https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:35967-1 |website=Plants of the World Online |access-date=12 March 2021 |language=en}}

Swingle worked at the United States Department of Agriculture (1891), investigated subtropic fruits, established laboratories in Florida, became an agricultural explorer, and (after 1902) had charge of crop physiology and breeding investigations. He developed the tangelo citrus hybrid in 1897 in Eustis, Florida.{{cite book|last=Morton|first=Julia F.|title=Fruits of warm climates | publisher=J. F. Morton | location=Miami, FL |year=1987|pages=158–160|url=http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/tangelo.html|access-date=February 28, 2013}}

He made several visits to the Mediterranean countries of Europe, to North Africa, and to Asia Minor, from where he introduced the date palm, pistachio nut and other useful plants, as well as the fig wasp, to make possible the cultivation of Smyrna figs in California.

Swingle also traveled to Asia, bringing back 100,000 Chinese volumes on botany to the Library of Congress.{{cite news |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4670/ |title = General Gazetteer of Two Counties and Three Passes |website = World Digital Library |date = 1522–1566 |access-date = June 27, 2013 }}

Much of his research is published in the five-volume book, The Citrus Industry, of which he wrote a significant portion.

An extensive collection related to Swingle and his life, photos and works entitled the "Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection" is hosted at the University of Miami.

• {{cite book|title=The grain smuts: how they are caused and how to prevent them|series=Farmers' bulletin / United States Department of Agriculture; no. 75 |year=1898|publisher=U.S. Dept. of Agriculture |url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011391049}}
• {{cite journal|title=Diœcism of the fig in its bearing upon caprification|year=1899|bibcode=1899Sci....10..570S|last1=Swingle|first1=Walter T.|journal=Science|volume=10|issue=251|pages=570–574 |doi=10.1126/science.10.251.570|pmid=17734391 }}
• {{cite book|title=The date palm and its utilization in the southwestern states|series=United States. Dept. Of agriculture. Bureau of plant industry. Bulletin; no. 53 |year=1904|publisher=Govt. print. off. |url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006584799}}
• {{cite book|title=Citrus ichangensis, a promising, hardy, new species from southwestern China and Assam|year=1913}}
• {{cite book|title=Citropsis, a new tropical African genus allied to Citrus|year=1914}}
• {{cite book|title=Eremocitrus|year=1914}}
• {{cite book|title=Chronologic list of the dissertations of Charles Linnaeus 1743 to 1776|year=1923}}
• {{cite book|title=New citrus hybrids|year=1931}}
• {{cite book|title=Quarantine procedure to safeguard the introduction of citrus plants : a system of aseptic plant propagation}}

{{botanist|Swingle|Swingle, Walter Tennyson}}

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• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Walter Tennyson Swingle}}
• [http://proust.library.miami.edu/findingaids/?p=collections/controlcard&id=136 Walter Tennyson Swingle Collection] University of Miami Libraries Special Collections Finding Aid. The collection contain papers, articles, correspondence and other materials that provide information on his botanical and plant introduction work as well as his personal life and travels.
• [http://swingle.miami.edu Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection] The site features over 1,700 photomicrographs of plant parts from more than 250 species of plants collected from all over the world, plant structure animations, and information on Walter Tennyson Swingle.
• [http://merrick.library.miami.edu/cdm/ref/collection/wtswingle/id/127 Walter Tennyson Swingle: botanist and exponent of Chinese civilization]

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Category:People from Wayne County, Pennsylvania

Category:American botanists

Category:1871 births

Category:1952 deaths