Biography

Eminent U.S. botanist who carried out much work in the Philippines before serving as the head of New York Botanical Garden and at Harvard. In his long career he became both a highly respected research taxonomist and botanical administrator. Elmer Drew Merrill was born and raised in Auburn, Maine, in which state he remained to begin studying engineering at the University of Maine, Orono. He soon switched his degree to botany, however, graduating in 1898. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant agrostologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C., where he studied grasses and was afforded the opportunity to visit the Wyoming and Idaho. Meanwhile, he began to study medicine, but was obviously not convinced to move into this field, for in 1902 he left his job and studies for a position in the Philippines, where he would serve with the Bureaux of Agriculture and Forestry for more than 20 years.

Merrill had at first refused the job offer, citing his lack of knowledge of the Philippine flora. He was highly favoured for the role, however, and when convinced that no-one had much knowledge of the Philippine flora, he was persuaded to accept the appointment. He travelled for the archipelago in February 1902, visiting Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Singapore on the way, and from his arrival in Manila in May set to work building up a reference collection and library at the Bureau of Agriculture. In the early days, he spent half his working time in the field making collections and by the time he left the Philippines, the herbarium at the Bureau numbered some 275,000 sheets, which served as the basis for a flora of the Philippines.

Merrill also visited Buitenzorg, Java, in 1902 in order to use the literature and reference collections lacking in Manila. On his return he was able to author a report on the Javanese flora. Furthermore he realised he needed to view the Filipino flora in a wider context and set out to explore and collect in China, Borneo and other nearby islands, with the help of colleagues. In 1906 he was instrumental in the establishment of the Philippine Journal of Science. After his wedding to Mary Sperry in 1907 in Manila, the couple visited China, Japan, the U.S. and Europe, where Merrill visited Kew, the British Museum and Leiden. They went on to have four children together (one of whom did not survive infancy), who remained in Washington from 1915.

By now an authority on Filipino and Southeast Asian botany, Merrill published a flora of Manila in 1912 and a Bibliography of Polynesian Botany in 1924 (updated in 1937 as the Polynesian Botanical Bibliography 1773-1935). The 1920s also saw the publication of his Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants (1922-1926), while New species of plants from Indo-China, parts I and II, appeared in 1924 and 1926. As well as his fieldwork in Southeast Asia, Merrill devoted much energy to interpreting work by Rumphius, C.S. Rafinesque and Loureiro, and was interested in the origins of tropical food and other useful plants.

In the 1910s Merrill took on the extra workload of an associate professorship at the University of the Philippines, but after 1919 returned to full time work at the Bureau of Science when he was appointed its director. The accompanying administrative duties impacted on his scientific output, most significantly by forcing him to shelve his plans for a Flora of the Philippines. He did, however, publish an Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants in four volumes between 1923 and 1926. The U.S. beckoned in 1923, when Merrill was offered the deanship of the University of California’s College of Agriculture. Having been separated from his family since 1915, he was glad to rejoin them in California, though torn by his long-standing connection to the Philippines. Alongside his position at the College of Agriculture he was made director of the California Botanical Garden in Los Angeles from 1927-1928.

Merrill left California in 1931 to take up the post of Director-in-Chief of the New York Botanical Garden, following the retirement of Nathaniel Lord Britton. He was simultaneously named Professor of Botany at Columbia University. Despite the severe economic recession at that time, Merrill’s period in office at the NYBG was successful. He instigated the alphabetically organised, integrated Kew Index and the journal Brittonia, and had the International Address Book of Botanists published. Meanwhile, he resumed his studies of Far Eastern botany.

In 1935 he was on the move once more, to his final role, at Harvard University, Massachusetts. Here he was appointed Administrator of Botanical Collections, his task being to unify the efforts and resources of Harvard’s eight separate botanical institutions. The privations of the war years, however, meant that little was achieved in terms of material co-ordination. He was also made Arnold Professor of Botany and Director of the Arnold Arboretum shortly after his arriving at Harvard, and once more concentrated his efforts on augmenting the herbarium and research on Asian plants. His encouragement of collectors to send material to Harvard brought a flood of specimens, far too many to be studied at the time. In the space of about ten years the herbarium grew by about 220,000 specimens.

The war years saw Merrill act as an advisor on tropical matters, for example preparing a manual of poisonous and food plants, Plant life of the Pacific World, for the armed forces. At the end of the conflict, disaster struck one of his earlier achievements. The Bureau of Science herbarium in Manila, which he had worked so hard to build up, was destroyed in 1946 when the Japanese Army deliberately set fire to the collections. Fortunately Merrill had had the foresight to place duplicates in herbaria in the U.S. and Europe, and from Harvard encouraged his successors in Manila to rebuild the herbarium.

In 1948, two years after retiring from his administrative post, Merrill became Arnold Professor Emeritus. Despite being in his seventies he continued with his research, though. In particular he worked on his book, The Botany of Cook’s Voyages, in which he brought together interesting information about the history of cultivated and economic plants, and also dealt critically with ‘ultra-diffusionist’ theories. The publication did not appear until 1954 due to periods of ill health, and after it was completed Merrill went into rapid decline.

During his lifetime Merrill published more than 500 scientific papers and books, many of them on the flora of Southeast Asia. Two of his greatest works were his Bibliogrpahy of Eastern Asiatic Botany (co-authored by E.H. Walker, 1938) and his Index Rafinesquianus (1949). His extensive work was recognised in 1939 with the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society, and on the occasion of his 70th birthday and retirement from his directorship at the Arnold Arboretum, Chronica Botanica featured a selection of his general writings under the heading "Merrilleana". Several honorary degrees were conferred upon him, for instance a Doctor of Science from the University of Maine in 1926 and from Harvard in 1936. The New York Botanical Garden gave him its Distinguished Service Award in 1952. Many other honours came to Merrill, who had served as president of numerous professional associations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1931) and the Botanical Society of America (1934). He was remembered as a frank individual with a great sense of determination.

Sources:
I.H. Burkill, 1951, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 168: 51-56
I.H. Burkill, 1956, Nature, 177: 687-688
R.A. Howard, 1956, "Elmer Drew Merrill", Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 37, 1956: 197-216
E. Quisumbing, 1956, Philippine Journal of Science, 85: 181-188
E.D. Merrill, 1946, "Merrilleana: a selection from the general writings of E.D. Merrill", Chronica Botanica, 10(3-4): 127-393
R.E. Schultes, 1957, "Elmer Drew Merrill: An Appreciation", Taxon, 6(4): 89-101
1972, Flora Malesiana, ser. 1, 6: (7)-(16).