DR. WALTER VAN FLEET
In the death of Dr. Walter Van Fleet on January 26, 1922, the United States has lost one of the greatest plant breeders in its history, and garden rose growers an ardent advocate and sincere friend. Since a lad he had been interested in these lines of work and the products of his unremitting and painstaking energy, combined with unlimited patience, are known by garden lovers all over the country, as well as in Europe.
Rosarians naturally know him best by his roses, of which there were many, among them that splendid variety that bears his name, as well as such others as Silver Moon, American Pillar, and Alida Lovett. Many more are still in the trial grounds of the United States Department of Agriculture at Bell Station, one of which, christened Miss Mary Wallace, will be available in two or three years.
The ideal rose for which he was striving, in all his later work at least, was a garden rose with foliage that would compare in healthfulness and disease resistance with the best of the rose species, that would be hardy under ordinary garden culture, and that would be a continuous bloomer. His experience taught him what would be likely to give the desired results, but often he could not come directly to the ends sought. For example, when he wanted to combine the characters of some newly found species with the Hybrid Tea roses, he would often find the two could not be crossed directly with one another. He would then seek some other rose that would combine with the new species, without changing the characteristics which he wished to preserve, after which he would grow the resulting hybrids and cross them with the hybrid tea. Sometimes he would need to make another cross before he could get the seedlings for which he was striving. When it is realized that each cross of this kind would take from three to five years before he could take the next step an idea is gained of the patience required. Sometimes the results of these crosses would be infertile, producing neither perfect pistil nor viable pollen, as in the case of a handsome scarlet rugosa growing in the National Rose Test Garden which he was unable to use for further breeding on this account.
His great love of his work is shown in his having given up a successful medical practice in 1891 to devote all his time to plant breeding. He did this, even though he had taken a post graduate course in medicine at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1886-7, after having graduated at the Hahneman Medical College in the same city in 1880. His first work after this change was primarily with the gladiolus on a farm between Alexandria and Mount Vernon, Va. The soil was not adapted to his purpose so he abandoned it and went from there about 1892 to the Conard and Jones Company of West Grove, Pa., then to Little Silver, N. J., and in 1897 to the Ruskin Colony in western Tennessee as the colony physician.
In 1899 he became associated with the Rural New Yorker and lived at Little Silver, N. J., where he continued his breeding work on his own place. As associate editor for the following ten years and as writer of the column of "Ruralisms" in this paper he has left much valuable information on plant life and plant growing. From 1902 to 1910 he was also Vice-President of the Rural Publishing Company. While at Little Silver he was breeding fruits, roses, chesnuts, lilies, freesias, azaleas, and other ornamentals.
In 1909 he went to the Plant Introduction Gardens of the United States Department of Agriculture, at Chico, Cal. As the climate did not agree with his wife, he remained at Chico but a year and moved to Washington, D. C., where his official work was with drug plants and chestnuts, but his own time was largely devoted to breeding work with a wide range of other plants, a continuation of much of the work he had been doing at Little Silver. The move to Chico, Cal., resulted in a great loss to his breeding work. Some of his material was left at Little Silver, much of it died in the uncongenial climate at Chico, and other promising plants were lost in the long shipment across the continent, both going and coming.
In 1916 he was transferred to the office of Horticultural and Pomological Investigations where he was permitted to devote himself to plant breeding along such lines as looked promising to him, while at the same time he continued his work with chestnuts and chinquapins and a few drug plants.
Dr. Van Fleet was born at Piermont, N. Y., June 18, 1857. His early years were spent on a farm but later he lived at Williamsport, Pa. In early life he made a study of birds, his first book being "Bird Portraits," published in 1888, apparently being a reprint of magazine articles, one of which dates back to 1876. He was also a successful taxidermist, having studied under Maynard, and trained several of the leading taxidermists of his generation, including Charles H. Eldon of Williamsport, Pa. At nineteen he spent a year in Brazil, first connected with a party constructing a railroad around some of the rapids of the upper Amazon, and later in connection with the Thomas scientific expedition collecting birds and plants.
August 7, 1883, he married Sarah C. Heilman of Watsontown, Pa., who was associated with him in his medical practice and in his breeding work, and has been a sympathetic and helpful companion, and who survives him.