The New York Botanical Garden and the making of The Bahama Flora, 1920

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, The New York Botanical Garden, under the leadership of its Director-in-Chief, Nathaniel Lord Britton, launched an intensive program of exploration and publication on the plants of the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the northern Caribbean region. One major geographic focus during this period was the Bahama archipelago, resulting in the 1920 publication The Bahama Flora. Dr. Britton personally led four expeditions to the Bahamas between 1904 and 1907, but most of his effort on this project was devoted to coordinating and seeking funding for some two dozen expeditions from 1904 to 1911 undertaken by collaborators, most notably Charles Frederick Millspaugh of the Field Museum, co-author with N.L. Britton of The Bahama Flora. In total, the Flora reported 1,982 species. The present paper recounts the itineraries of the expeditions and provides examples of the principal botanical discoveries realized in the making of The Bahama Flora.