By Kate Samra
Nov 19 2020
In an age of growing efforts to engage the public in research and conservation, it’s important to note that ‘citizen science’ has been a vital source of data and collaboration for hundreds of years. Many botanists whose collections are represented at NYBG were not classically trained scientists, but ordinary folks with an extraordinary love for plants. One of these citizens was Charles K. Dodge of Port Huron, Michigan, who ventured into botanical collections around 1895 (Dodge, 1896).
A practicing attorney in the Detroit area, Dodge had completed only a single college botany course before he began identifying, collecting and pressing plants in his free time. He primarily collected specimens from around the “thumb” of Michigan and into Ontario, Canada, which are areas of indigenous Anishinaabe land (Hele, 2020). This hobby grew to be such a time-consuming practice that Mr. Dodge’s friends apparently took to nicknaming him ‘Posy’ Dodge (Collins, 2004).
What made Mr. Dodge a unique character and citizen scientist was his affinity for the bicycle, which he used in covering an area of nearly 1,600 square miles. If an excursion was more than 15 miles from his home in Port Huron, Dodge would take a train or boat, carrying his bike along with him. Dodge published a short article in a local bulletin titled The Bicycle and Botany, which highlights the joys that he found in collecting specimens on his bike: “The great advantage I found in the use of the bicycle in botanizing is in saving time, both in the start and on the road: while after a tramp of from three to eight or more hours in searching for plants, it is only a rest and pleasure to mount the wheel to ride home” (Dodge, 1896).
During his outings he would store plants in a vasculum, a metal cylinder with a strap, to keep them from getting crushed and drying out. In addition to collecting, pressing, and drying the plants, Dodge also took extensive notes on plant morphology such as flower color and fruit size.
Mr. Dodge amassed approximately 40,000 plant specimens over the course of about twenty years— an unbelievable achievement for just an individual on his bicycle. The majority of his personal collection currently resides at the University of Michigan Herbarium (Collins, 2004), though the New York Botanical Garden houses several hundred of these specimens.
Charles K. Dodge’s contributions to botany are impressive and have been used extensively in taxonomy, conservation, and research. Dodge authored numerous publications including Flora of St. Clair County, Michigan and the Western Part of Lambton County, Ontario (Collins, 2004). His studies of the Hawthorn genus even earned him the name of a species, Crataegus dodgei (Elisha, 1903). ‘Posy’ Dodge continued to collect and identify plants through his last year of life in 1917, at age 73.
Enjoy this selection of plants collected by 'Posy' Dodge.
