The Arthur Herbarium Centennial:
100 Years of Uredinology
in Indiana
and the Great Lakes Region
John W. McCain and Joe F. Hennen
The Arthur Herbarium, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
In January, 1883, Dr. J. C. Arthur published his first manuscript on
uredinology, the study of the taxonomy and biology of the rust fungi, the
Uredinales. This we take as the starting date for the Arthur Herbarium. Because
the Arthur Herbarium (PUR), now at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, has now for 100 years been the major site in the United States, and possibly
the world, for taxonomic studies of these important plant pathogens, a review
of the history of Indiana Uredinology is in order. Parts of Dr. Arthur's story
have been published before (11, 16, 17, 19, 24, 30), so new information was sought
for this report.
The Arthur Herbarium is in its centennial year, but rust collecting in Indiana began more than 100 years ago. Jackson (23) credited the first explicit report
of a rust fungus in Indiana to Dr. John M. Coulter in 1876, who found a rust
on Lespedeza violacea (L.) Pers. (bush clover: Leguminosae), presumably near
Hanover. Because there was then no Arthur Herbarium, Coulter sent the rust
specimen to Dr. Charles H. Peck, New York State Museum at Albany, for identification. Peck indentified the fungus as Uromyces lespedezae-procumbentis (Schw.)
Curtis, then called U. lespedezae-violaceae Schw., but added,
"... inasmuch as the name is objectionable both because of its compound character and because of it implied limitation of the habitat of
the fungus, which occurs on the leaves of all of our species of Lespedeza,
it seems best to . . . change . . . the name of this fungus (14)."
Therefore, Peck simply shortened it to Uromyces lespedezae Peck, a savings of
four syllables and twelve letters —a noble, but unfortunately an illegal, change
under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
John M. Coulter is known to Indiana botanists as a professor of botany and
as the editor of the Botanical Gazette. He was also the brother of Stanley M.
Coulter, early curator of the vascular plant herbarium at Purdue University.
Perhaps it is less well known why J. M. Coulter became a botanist. Although
Coulter studied botany in college, his main interest was geology—and Latin (31).
His first scientific position was as an assistant on a U.S. Geological Survey of
Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Every evening his companions
socialized. Because of his inability to play cards, Coulter sought something else
to do and became interested in the plants of the "Far West (35)."
There is a less exact reference to a rust disease in Indiana two years prior
to Coulter's report. A rust was destroying the foliage of blackberries in Henry
and Wayne counties from 1872-1874 (22). The reporter stated, "It is evidently
a contagious trouble. I think it of cryptogamous origin." No Latin name or further description was included, but it probably was the orange rust of Rubies, caused
by Gymnoconia peckiana (Howe) Trott.
Another nebulous early report is of a specimen labeled "Aecidium dircatatum
Ind." Arthur and Bisby (9) interpreted this notation to mean that it "must have