Sereno Watson

Sereno Watson (December 1, 1826 – March 9, 1892) was an American botanist. He served as curator of the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University and as botanist on the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel scientific expedition.

Early life and education Watson was born on December 1, 1826, in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, the ninth of thirteen children of Henry and Julia (Reed) Watson, both of English descent. He grew up on the family's farm. Throughout his life, he was marked for his reticent and retiring disposition. Watson attended East Windsor Academy and graduated with his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1847. A capable though not brilliant student, he received honors in Latin composition and Latin translations while at Yale. He graduated in the same class as noted botanists John Donnell Smith and Henry Griswold Jessup.

Scientific career In January 1866, Watson entered the Sheffield Scientific School, where he studied chemistry and mineralogy for a year. In March 1867, he sailed for California but without any definite plans. In July, he sought out a scientific expedition led by Yale geologist Clarence King and convinced the expedition leaders to take him on. The expedition botanist, William Whitman Bailey, was ailing, so Watson assisted him to collect and preserve plants, in which he had taken an amateur interest since his Illinois days. He took over as "botanist in charge" after Bailey left the expedition in March 1868. Watson collected specimens across Nevada and Utah as far east as the Uinta Mountains. He made several collecting trips, including to Montana in 1880 and Guatemala in 1885. a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1889, and a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London in 1890.

Watson specialized in systematic botany and plant taxonomy, publishing a series of eighteen papers entitled Contributions to American Botany in the pages of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He published several scientific monographs, including Botany of California (1880), and more than 100 articles and reviews in scientific journals such as the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, The American Naturalist, American Journal of Science and Arts, Science, and Botanical Gazette.

Death and legacy Watson died at the age of 65 on March 9, 1892, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died as a result of a recurring global influenza pandemic; the illness had damaged his heart. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery. He never married or had children.

Select works Botany, in Report of the geological exploration of the 40th parallel made ... by Clarence King, 1871