The University of North Carolina Herbarium
(NCU) has catalogued approximately 40 of James Benedict's specimens.
With only about 10% of the collection catalogued, no doubt more
specimens collected by him will be found. He usually used "J.
E. Benedict" on his labels.
Benedict collected specimens throughout
the southeastern United States. The earliest specimen that we
have found to date is Gratiola viscidula collected
in 1925 from the District of Columbia, while the latest we have
found is Lygodium palmatum collected in 1960
from Charles County, Maryland.
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Obituary, Washington Post
1970 [A more complete citation will be provided when it is found.]
Ran Seed Testing Laboratory: James E. Benedict
Jr. Dead at 84
James E. Benedict Jr., 84, who operated
a seed testing laboratory in the Washington area for 56 years,
died Wednesday after surgery at Washington Sanitarium and Hospital
in Silver Spring.
Mr. Benedict graduated from the Biltmore
Forestry School in North Carolina and, in 1913, opened his laboratory
at 945 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
The firm, which analyzed seed quality for
commercial houses, did business there for 50 years, until the
site was acquired by the federal givernment in 1963 for the new
FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] building now under construction.
Mr. Benedict then moved the laboratory
to 901 Pershing Dr., Silver Spring, where he continued to do business
as Commercial Seed Laboratories until his death.
Born in Washington, he attended Central
High School here. He taught a course in botany at George Washington
University in the 1930's and 40's and until recently conducted
an annual student nature hike through Rock Creek Park.
He was a past president of the Washington
Biologists Field Club and was a member of the Washington Botanical
Society. He had lived at 9403 Warren St., Silver Spring for more
than 50 years.
Survivors include two sons, James E. III
of Hollywood, Fla. [Florida], and Joseph B., of Greeville, Del.
[Delaware]; two sisters, Elizabeth J. Benedict and Ruth Benedict,
both of Silver Spring, and five grandchildren.
PUBLICATIONS
1. Benedict, J. E., Jr. (1924) An occurrence
of the Southern Maiden-hair in Maryland. American Fern
Journal 14(1): 21-22.
On the stone wall built around a spring on the Noyes Estate in
the new subdivision of Woodside Park, Montgomery County, Maryland,
the writer discovered in the fall of 1922 a thriving plant of
the southern Maiden-hair, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris L.
The fronds shriveled up during the winter but new ones came out
the following spring, and when they appeared to have attained
their maximum development, in July, were photographed and a few
fronds collected. Shortly thereafter the plant disappeared, having
evidently been pulled up by some chance visitor; although the
clearing of the land for building purposes would soon have obliterated
the locality in any case.
Tests of the reaction material (a mixture
of fragments of cement and decomposed moss) in which the roots
of the fern were imbedded, made by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry, showed
a specific alkalinity of 10. The spring water itself was neutral
and the alkalinity evidently came from the decomposing cement.
How the plant got there in the first place
can not be definitely determined, although there is a greenhouse
less than half a mile away and the spores may well have come from
there, on of the reaching by chance this favorable location on
the spring wall. The noteworthy fact in the case is that this
southern species was able to establish and maintain itself over
one winter at least, so far north; the spring is located approximately
ten miles north of Washington. – J. E. Benedict, Jr., Washington,
D.C.
2. Benedict, J. E., Jr. (1932) Dryopteris
floridana (Hook.) Kuntze in North Carolina. American
Fern Journal 22(2): 56.
Early in April, 1931, the writer was one of a party, composed
mostly of George Washington University botany students under the
leadership of Dr. Robert F. Griggs, which visited the Coastal
Plain section in eastern North Carolina. April 6th and 7th found
us camped on the north shore of beautiful Lake Waccamaw in Columbus
County. The lake at this point is separated only by a narrow ridge
of sand, a few yards in width, from a cypress swamp. Along the
north edge of this swamp is an area, wet and muddy but not perpetually
inundated, lying between the water and the high, cultivated ground.
Here the writer found a colony of several dozen plants of Dryopteris
floridana (Hook.) Kuntze (J. E. Benedict, Jr., no. 1247).
In addition to being the first record of this fern in the state
of North Carolina it is a northward extension of its range of
approximately 120 miles, the former most northerly station being
in the vicinity of Charleston, S. C. The Waccamaw plants are noteworthy
also in being of unusually large size, one fruiting frond in the
collection of the writer being 118 centimeters long. Specimens
have been deposited in the U.S. National Herbarium in Washington
and in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
– J. E. Benedict, Jr., Washington, D.C.
3. Benedict, J.E., Jr. (1947) A new form
of Asplenium platyneuron. American Fern
Journal 37(1): 11-12.
Last October I spent a week-end in St. Mary’s County, Maryland,
along the lower Potomac River. While walking along a woodland
road I noticed a fringe of Ebony Spleenwort growing on the low
bank at the edge of the road. Among the plants was a fern that
I took at first glance to be another species. A closer inspection,
however, showed it to be an unusually luxuriant plant of Ebony
Spleenwort, with fronds more dissected than is characteristic
of any of the named form or varieties.
The plant was growing in the Gum-Pine association
common to this section, in which the dominant species are Sweet
Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) and Loblolly Pine
(Pinus taeda). Associated plants were Ilex
opaca, Myrica cerifera, and Quercus rubra (Spanish
Oak), with an undergrowth of Vaccinium, Gaylussacia,
and other plants. The soil, locally called “white oak soil”
because of its extreme hardness, is known as Leonardtown loam,
a form in which clay predominates.
Asplenium platyneuron
f. dissectum Benedict, f. nov.
A f. typica pinnis usque ad 4 cm. longis, subpinnatis,
segmentis 7-11-jugis, anguste oblongo-spathulatis, sub-pinnatifidis,
ala costali perangusta vel subnulla recedit.
Type in the U.S. National Herbarium, No. 1,896,275, collected
in woods along “Back Road” at Lanedon (Valley Lee
P.O.), St. Mary’s County, Maryland, October 21, 1945, by
J. E. Benedict (No. 5230).
This form is nearest to f. Hortonae
(Davenp.) L. B. Smith, of which an isotype is in the National
Herbarium, but in that form the pinnae are only pinnatifid (the
costal wing being relatively broad) and the segments are subentire.
In f. dissectum the plants are almost bipinnate-pinnatifid, the
primary pinnae being pinnatisect nearly or quite to the costa
and the ultimate segments deeply pinnatifid.
[Volume 37, Plate 1 on page 12 is a photograph of the plant.]
4. Benedict, J. E., Jr. (1950) A new form
of Lorinseria. American Fern Journal 40(2): 174-175.
Although the fronds of Lorinseria areolata and Onoclea
sensibilis are similar in general aspect, they can usually
be told apart at a distance by the undulate to deeply lobed margins
of the primary lobes of the Onoclea. Not so, however,
in a large colony found by the writer while on a visit to his
on in Hampton, Virginia, last May. The fronds in this colony had
the lobing of Onoclea, but showed by their alternate
pinnae, finely serrate margins and chain-like venation along the
principal veins that they were really Lorinseria. The
aspect and character noted are brought out in the accompanying
figure, kindly drawn by Mr. Joseph A. Devlin. No fertile fronds
were seen. The following formal name was suggested by Dr. E. T.
Wherry.
Lorinseria areolata
(L.) Presl forma onocleoides J. E, Benedict, f. nov.
A f. typica pinnis profunde pinnatifidis, lobis obtusis,
usque ad 8 mm. longis et 6 mm. latis differt.
Differs from the typical form in having the pinnae all deeply
lobed, the lobes obtuse, up to 8 mm. long and 6 mm. broad.
Type in the U.S. National Herbarium, no. 1918314, collected one
mile due west of the village of Aberdeen Gardens, Elizabeth City
County, Virginia, in a loblolly-pine (Pinus taeda) woods,
May 30, 1949, by J. E. Benedict, Jr. (no. 5540). The station is
4 miles due north of Newport News, which, however, is in another
county.
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Special thanks to Dr. Tom Wieboldt, Curator of VPI, for the gift
to NCU in 2002 of several ferns collected in North Carolina by
J. E. Benedict. Dr. Wieboldt was also kind to provide a photocopy
of the Washington Post obituary of J. E. Benedict.
