{{short description|American botanist (1841–1927)}} {{redirect|Sarg.|other uses|Sarg (disambiguation){{!}}Sarg}} {{Infobox person | name = Charles Sprague Sargent | image = Picture of Charles Sprague Sargent.jpg | birth_date = April 24, 1841 | birth_place = Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|March 22, 1927|April 24, 1841}} | death_place = Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | education = Harvard College <small>(1862)</small> | relatives = {{plainlist| * Henry Winthrop Sargent (cousin) * Andrew Robeson Jr. (father-in-law) * Guy Lowell (son-in-law) }} | awards = Veitch Memorial Medal | module = {{infobox scientist|embed=yes |author_abbrev_bot = Sarg. }} {{infobox|child=yes |label1= Eponym |data1= <em>Sargentodoxa</em> }} | module2 = {{infobox officeholder | embed = yes | office = 1st Director of Arnold Arboretum | term_start = 1873 | term_end = 1927 | successor = Oakes Ames }} }} '''Charles Sprague Sargent''' (April 24, 1841{{snd}}March 22, 1927)<ref name="appletons">{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Sargent, Paul Dudley|year=1900}}</ref> was an American botanist. He was appointed in 1872 as the first director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, and held the post until his death. He published several works of botany. The species epithet “Sargentii” that belongs to a number of species demonstrates species that were either discovered, described or named after Charles Sprague Sargent, notably Malus sargentii, Prunus sargentii and Juniperus chinensis var. Sargentii, widely used in bonsai cultivation. {{botanist|Sarg.|inline=yes}}
==Early life== Sargent was the second son of Henrietta (Gray) and Ignatius Sargent, a Boston merchant and banker who grew wealthy on railroad investments. He grew up on his father's 130-acre (53-ha) estate in Brookline, Massachusetts.
He attended Harvard College, where he graduated in Biology in the class of 1862. Sargent enlisted in the Union Army later that year, saw service in Louisiana during the American Civil War, and was mustered out in 1865. He traveled in Europe and Asia for three years.
==Career== Having returned to his family's Brookline estate, "Holmlea", Sargent took over its management as a horticulturist, influenced by his cousin Henry Winthrop Sargent and H. H. Hunnewell of Wellesley. Under his direction, the family estate became a landscape without flower beds or geometric arrangements, but rather a recreation of nature with winding lanes, overhanging branches, and a profusion of trees and shrubbery.
When in 1872 Harvard University decided to establish an arboretum, Prof. Francis Parkman, at that time a professor of horticulture at Harvard's recently established Bussey Institution, probably suggested his young neighbor Sargent for the position. By the end of 1872, Sargent became the first director of the Arnold Arboretum, a post he held until his death. He was also Director of the Botanic Garden in Cambridge.<ref>{{cite book|last=Dupree|first=A. Hunter|year=1988|title=Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore, MD|isbn=978-0-801-83741-8|pages=348–349}}</ref> In 1882, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?year=1882;smode=advanced;startDoc=1|access-date=2021-05-17|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>
==Marriage and family== On November 26, 1873, Sargent married Mary Allen Robeson (1853–1919), a daughter of Andrew Robeson Jr. They had two sons and three daughters, one of whom married the architect Guy Lowell. Their son Charles S. Sargent went to New York, where he became a partner in a securities firm. thumb|220px|right|Portrait of Charles Sprague Sargent
==Later career== Even by the standards of Boston society of the early 20th century, Charles Sprague Sargent was unusual. He was colder than the surrounding, and notoriously chilly, Boston society; had nothing to do with local government; and cared little for the social ills of his era.<ref name="appletons"/> He concentrated on his arboretum, and always was at work during his waking hours. At the arboretum he worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, of the Olmsted Brothers, from master planning for the roads and plant collections, to small details such as the selection of tree plantings on Commonwealth Avenue.<ref name="appletons"/>
In this career, Sargent came of age as a dendrologist and published extensively. His influence was felt nationally on the conservation of American forests (in particular the Catskills and Adirondacks). He was a member of the National Forest Commission (1896–97) under President Grover Cleveland, advising on the creation of 21 million acres of national forest reserves. In that position, he clashed with Gifford Pinchot: Sargent advocated for preserving the forests in a state of "wilderness", while Pinchot advocated for conserving the forests in a way that included "sustainable, productive" uses, including timber "harvests."<ref>M. Nelson McGeary. Gifford Pinchot: Forester – Politician. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960. p. 39</ref> He was chairman of a commission to examine the Adirondack forests and devise measures for their preservation in 1885.<ref name="appletons"/>
Sargent became professor of arboriculture at Harvard in 1879. He planned the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American Museum of Natural History of New York City in 1880.<ref name="appletons"/> In the early 1890s he supervised the planting of the extensive conifer collection at the Long Island estate of William Bayard Cutting, then called Westbrook, now the Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bayard Cutting Arboretum (RA) |url=https://www.nybg.org/library/finding_guide/archv/bayard_rab.html |access-date=2025-10-09 |website=Archives, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden}}</ref>
In 1888, he became editor and general manager of the weekly ''Garden and Forest'', "a journal of horticulture, landscape art, and forestry".<ref name="appletons"/> ''Garden and Forest'' was published in 10 volumes from 1888 to 1897 before being discontinued.<ref>{{cite journal|editor=Sargent, Charles Sprague|title=Garden and Forest, 1888–1897|location=New York|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012241645}}</ref> In 1919, the first issue of the ''Journal of the Arnold Arboretum'' was published with Sargent as the editor-in-chief.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Introduction|editor=Sargent, C. S.|journal=Journal of the Arnold Arboretum|year=1919|volume=1|issue=1|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858001330715&view=1up&seq=11}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Howard, Richard A.|title=Scientists and Scientific Contributions of the Arnold Arboretum: The First Century|journal=Arnoldia|volume=32|issue=2|year=1972|pages=52 of pp. 49–58|url=http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1972-32-2-scientists-and-scientific-contributions-of-the-arnold-arboretum-the-first-century.pdf|access-date=2020-12-28|archive-date=2021-07-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709183041/http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1972-32-2-scientists-and-scientific-contributions-of-the-arnold-arboretum-the-first-century.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>
He was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1896.
==Publications== These include: *''Catalogue of the Forest Trees of North America'' (Washington, D. C., 1880); *''Pruning Forests and Ornamental Trees'', translated from the French of A. Des Cars (Boston, 1881); *''Reports on the Forests of North America'' (Washington, 1884); *''The Woods of the United States, with an Account of their Structure, Qualities, and Uses'' (New York, 1885); and *''The Silva of North America'' (12 vols., Boston, 1882-1888).<ref name="appletons"/>
==Legacy and honors== In 1913, botanists Alfred Rehder & Ernest Henry Wilson published ''Sargentodoxa'', a genus of flowering plants from China and Indo-China, belonging to the family Lardizabalaceae and was named in Charles Sprague Sargent's honor.<ref>{{cite web |title=''Sargentodoxa'' Rehder & E.H.Wilson {{!}} Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science |url=https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:21317-1 |website=Plants of the World Online |access-date=20 May 2021 |language=en}}</ref>
After Sargent's death in 1927, at an Arbor Day memorial ceremony, Massachusetts Governor Fuller planted a white spruce on the grounds of the Massachusetts State House in his memory, and noted:
<blockquote>Professor Sargent knew more about trees than any other living person. It would be hard to find anyone who did more to protect trees from the vandalism of those who do not appreciate the contribution that they make to the beauty and wealth of our nation.<ref name="appletons"/></blockquote>
==References== === Notes === {{Reflist}}
=== Further reading === * {{cite book|last1=Barton|first1=Gregory|title=Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism|date=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, UK; New York|isbn=0-521-03889-8|pages=133–137}}
==External links== {{Commons category}} * {{Gutenberg author | id=35684| name=Charles Sprague Sargent}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Charles Sprague Sargent}} *[https://botany.org/PlantScienceBulletin/psb-1975-21-2.php Article], ''Plant Science Bulletin'', 21 February 1975
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sargent, Charles Sprague}} Category:American foresters Category:American academic journal editors Category:Dendrologists Category:1841 births Category:1927 deaths Category:Botanists active in North America Category:Veitch Memorial Medal recipients Category:Arnold Arboretum Category:Harvard University staff Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Harvard College alumni Category:Botanists with author abbreviations Category:Union army officers Category:History of forestry in the United States Category:Scientists from Brookline, Massachusetts Category:19th-century American botanists Category:20th-century American botanists Category:Military personnel from Massachusetts Category:Burials at Walnut Hills Cemetery (Brookline, Massachusetts) Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society