Who Was Charles C. Deam?
Between 1896 and 1952 Deam collected and cataloged tens of thousands of plant specimens from every county and every township in Indiana.
"Deam's choice of focusing on Indiana was a good one. For one thing, the state has a very long North-South dimension, and that meant that you cover a number of very different ecological regions of the Midwest," explains Paul Rothrock, Associate Curator Emeritus at the Indiana University Herbarium.
"Obviously, his choice was largely because that's where he lived, but it was still a very good one."
Cataloging the Native Plant Species of Indiana
Today, the bulk of Deam’s collection is housed at the Indiana University Herbarium in Bloomington. And it’s still being put to good use, explains Rothrock.
"What is an herbarium? It is a plant library. We can study the specimens in great detail. You'd be amazed at the amount of information that is preserved within that flattened, dried specimen.'
"Indiana University Herbarium has about 160,000 specimens. At least 50,000 of those are Charles Deam specimens. And then, Stella Deam, [Deam's] wife contributed another several thousand. So they're obviously together, you know, represent almost a third of our collection even today."
Before he was a legendary scientist, Deam was a successful druggist from the small northeastern town of Bluffton.
In an effort to ease work stress, he started taking daily walks with his wife, Stella. However, Deam, a noted workaholic, couldn’t be entirely idle.
And so, he began collecting plants as they strolled. It ignited a deep and enduring passion says Rothrock.
"Once he got started on something, he went the whole way. Later in life his motto was, "Botany is my game, and I play it hard." So, he wasn't going to do anything halfway. Type A personality, to the hilt."
The First Indiana State Forester
Deam was largely a self-taught scientist. But his efforts were far from amateur, Rothrock notes as he holds a Deam-collected tree specimen.
"Deam is very complete in including not only the twig with mature buds, leaves, showing both upper and lower surface and also, though, the nuts of the plant, because those can be very critical for identification or for adequate study of the structure of this particular plant. Once you've got a specimen preserved and mounted in this fashion they can last for hundreds of years."
Like a rugged weed, Deam’s reputation as an ecological expert took hold.In 1909 he was named the first Indiana State Forester. His chief task was to rehabilitate Indiana’s forest lands, ravaged from decades of over-aggressive farming.
The steady paycheck and necessary statewide travel supercharged Deam's botanical exploits. Soon, he was collecting thousands of plant specimens in a single year, from all corners of Indiana. And this at a time when intrastate travel was patchwork at best.
"Initially, he had to travel by train and interurban railroad or horse or on your own two feet. But in 1915, he was able to finally get a Model-T Ford and rigged it up to be his weed wagon," says Rothrock, "I've been sometimes amazed at how many places he would be within just a single week."
Deam’s massive collection of specimens formed the scientific bedrock for several influential botanical books. Most prominent, says Rothrock, was 'Flora of Indiana.'
"He was aware that we didn't even know what plants existed in the state. But he also was interested in their distribution in the state, trying to understand what was the habitat that they required. Where were they to be found in the state? And, of course, what were the rare species in the state? So he's documented for us the Indiana that was in order for us to appreciate it and hopefully do a better job of conserving and protecting it going forward."
Preserving Indiana Natural History for Future Generations
In that spirit of appreciation, in 2014 Indiana University embarked on a five-year effort to digitize the entirety of the Herbarium’s specimens. Today, the fruit of Deam’s labor is available online to anyone at the press of a button.
"How would Deam feel about this new digital world?" wonders Rothrock, "I think he would be quite excited about it. But with the caveat that he would still want people to experience nature firsthand. He became very appreciative of that. So, he'd be, I think, thrilled by the digital world, but not if that's the only way you experienced it."