Gray's Botanical Text-book

Keeping botanists well informed of the advances and ongoing research in their field was a challenging task in the 1840s. Correspondence between prominent botanists contained the most current information, yet those left out of the letter writing circle were ignorant of what was being discovered day to day. Asa Gray realized the need for a work to be published that would be within the financial grasp and scientific understanding of both the professional botanist and the inquisitive amateur. Gray wrote in a letter to William Hooker on January 15, 1841, "You will now and then see some little articles of mine in ‘Silliman's Journal’. I prepare these notices merely to awaken and deepen the interest of our scattered botanists and lovers of plants, most of whom see that journal, and few of whom have any other means of knowing what is going on in the botanical world." Hunter Dupree, biographer of Asa Gray, wrote this: "To keep his nationwide network of amateur botanists mobilized and functioning, Gray needed a stronger cement than even thousands of personal letters could provide. This he was forced to do by writing textbooks."