United States botanist. William Trelease was born in 1857 in Mount Vernon, New York. His first interest in science was in the field of bacteriology; his doctoral thesis at Harvard University was on Zoogloeae and Related Forms and his early publications were on bacteria, parasitic fungi, and plant diseases. Appointed an instructor at the University of Wisconsin in 1881, he helped develop courses in horticulture, forestry, bacteriology, economic entomology, and systematic botany. Promoted to a professorship, he was made head of the botany department in 1883. Two years later he accepted an appointment as Englemann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, drawn there by the advantages for research and teaching it afforded. Another attraction was Shaw's Garden, a 75-acre botanical garden established by Henry Shaw, a wealthy St Louis merchant, on his estate.
After Shaw died in 1889, Trelease was appointed under Shaw's will director of the Garden, since renamed the Missouri Botanical Garden. When Trelease took over, the Garden's greenhouses and other facilities were in poor shape, but during his 23 years of stewardship he assembled an extensive plant collection, herbarium, and botanical library, paving the way for the Garden's present international reputation. Resigning in 1912, he traveled through Europe researching herbaria and libraries, returning the following year to head the Department of Botany at the University of Illinois until his retirement as Professor Emeritus at age 70. During his career he made botanical explorations throughout North America and Mexico, in the Azores, Madeira, Tenerife, Spain, New Zealand and the West Indies, wrote more that 300 scientific papers, described and named some 2,500 species and varieties of plants, and was a member of the Botanical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and other societies. His name is commemorated in the fungus genera Treleasia and Treleasiella, and the 12,503-foot peak in Colorado, Mount Trelease. He died on New Year's Day 1945 at age 88.
Sources:
L.O. Kunkel, 1961, "William Trelease, 1857-1945, a Biographical Memoir", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 1961: 305-316.
