Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/217

   VOLUME V.]

This paper will attempt to consider those who have made the more important botanical collections and researches in "The Oregon Country," that is in that part of Northwest America which was once called the Oregon Territory. It included what is now Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming.

The first botanical collectors to visit "The Oregon Country" came with exploring expeditions. They made collections along the Coast, but were not careful in keeping record of the localities from which they obtained their specimens; MI that when the collect ions were taken to Europe, specimens from Oregon, California. South America, and various islands of the Pacific were mixed. The species names of some of our indigenous plants are all there is to remind us that these collectors ever existed.

Thaddaeus Haenke was perhaps the first botanist to visit Oregon. He collected specimens along the Western Coast of the American continent from Patagonia to Bering's Strait. He first saw the coast in 1789. He died in Bolivia in 1817. His collections are now at Madrid and at Prague.