Chauncey Delos Beadle was a Canadian-born botanist and horticulturist active in the southern United States. He was educated in horticulture at Ontario Agricultural College

Ontario Agricultural College

The Ontario Agricultural College originated at the agricultural laboratories of the Toronto Normal School, and was officially founded in 1874 as an associate agricultural college of the University of Toronto...

 (1884) and Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 (1889). In 1890 the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...

 hired him to oversee the nursery at Biltmore Estate

Biltmore Estate

Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at and featuring 250 rooms...

 in Asheville, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 on a temporary basis. Olmsted had been impressed by Beadle's "encyclopedic" knowledge of plants. Beadle ended up working at Biltmore for more than 60 years, until his death in 1950. He is best known for his horticultural work with azalea

Azalea

Azaleas are flowering shrubs comprising two of the eight subgenera of the genus Rhododendron, Pentanthera and Tsutsuji . Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks...

s, and described several species and varieties of plants from the southern Appalachian

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

 region. He and three friends, including his "driver and companion" Sylvester Owens, styled themselves the Azalea Hunters. The group traveled over the eastern United States for a period of fifteen years, studying and collecting native plants. In 1940 Beadle donated his entire collection of 3,000 plants to Biltmore Estates.

Beadle wrote scientific papers describing new species and varieties of North American plants, for example, papers in the journal Biltmore Botanical Studies. (See, for example, this reference to the scientific description of Florida Mock-orange, Philadelphus floridus.) Two of his important collaborators at Biltmore were Charles Lawrence Boynton

Charles Lawrence Boynton

Charles Lawrence Boynton was an American botanist active in the Southeastern United States, working at Biltmore Estate with Chauncey Beadle and his brother, Frank Ellis Boynton.- References :...

 and Frank Ellis Boynton

Frank Ellis Boynton

Frank Ellis Boynton was a self-taught American botanist active in the Southeastern United States. He worked at Biltmore Estate with his brother, Charles Lawrence Boynton, and Chauncey Beadle. The oak species Quercus boyntonii was named in honor of Frank Ellis Boynton.- Sources :...

. In popular literature, Beadle wrote the Introduction for Alice Lounsberry

Alice Lounsberry

Alice Lounsberry was an American botanist and author active in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

's Southern Wildflowers and Trees.

External links

• Denizens of Biltmore--has photo of Beadle, accessed 9 January 2008
• Alice Lounsberry (1901). Southern Wild Flowers and Trees (forward by Chauncey Beadle). New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.
• Rachel Carley (1994). A Guide to Biltmore Estate. Asheville, North Carolina: The Biltmore Company. ISBN 1-885378-00-9. 116 pages.