NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 27 number 2 - Winter 2007
B. W. Wells: Pioneer Ecologist
By Monica McCormick, Digital Publishing Center
With a passion for nature, high standards for scientific rigor,
and a critical eye for aesthetics, North Carolina State University
Professor Bertram Whittier Wells (1884-1978) spent
his life studying, documenting, and teaching about the ecology
of North Carolina. The B. W. Wells Collection, preserved in the
NCSU Libraries’ Special
Collections Research Center, will be featured in an exhibit sponsored
by the NCSU Libraries in partnership with NC State’s
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and its Department
of Plant Biology, and the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation.
Opening in March 2007, the exhibit will inaugurate a new, museum-quality
gallery created as part of a major renovation to D. H. Hill Library.
The displays will emphasize the beauty and significance of Wells’s
photographs and highlight his accomplishments as scientist and
conservation pioneer.
Wells served as head of the botany department (now plant biology)
from 1919 to 1949 and continued teaching until 1954, leaving an
impressive and lasting legacy. Throughout his career, Wells traveled
in every part of North Carolina, camera in hand, recording his
discoveries. He defined the ecological zones of the state, describing
the plants found in each and the environmental conditions that
explained their locations. He published his findings and his photographs
in a broad range of scientific journals and popular publications.
He also created a set of glass lantern slides of landscapes and
plants--many hand-tinted--that visually documented North Carolina’s
ecology from the coast to the western mountains. These slides illustrated
his lectures to students, scientific societies, and gardening clubs
across the state, and they will be a centerpiece of the exhibit.
The exhibition will feature Wells’s work to study and preserve
the Big Savannah of Pender County. This unique grassy ecosystem--filled
with rare plants and first observed by Wells from a train window
while headed to Wilmington in 1920--became a focus of his research
and teaching, a site of field excursions with students and other
visitors throughout his career. Wells would eventually lose his
fight to save the Big Savannah when crops were planted there in
the late 1950s. However, in a remarkable turn of events, land ecologically
similar to the Big Savannah was discovered nearby in the late 1990s.
This time, preservation efforts succeeded, and the land was dedicated
as the B. W. Wells Savannah in 2002 to honor his efforts in documenting
the extraordinary value of this unique landscape. The exhibit will
display specimen photographs taken at the Savannah by Wells, along
with contemporary images of the magnificent variety of plants found
at the preserved site taken by North Carolina photographer Freda
Wilkins.
Other facets of the exhibit will explore Wells’s lasting
contributions to the university and the public. In his long career,
he expanded and improved the botany program to provide a stimulating
environment for students and faculty. The Plant Biology Herbarium
is filled with specimens he collected throughout the state. His
field trips proved popular with students and the general public,
featuring vigorous hikes and intense study. In 1932 he published The
Natural Gardens of North Carolina to “assist the amateur
plant lover in learning the common names of the herbaceous wild
flowers” while avoiding “technicalities” primarily
of interest to professional botanists. The book was reprinted in
1967 and again in 2002, indicating its abiding value.
The exhibition will contain a variety of artifacts including publications
written by Wells regarding the ecology of North Carolina, manuscript
materials documenting the tremendous impact he had at NC State,
the camera he used to capture the lantern slide images, personal
effects, and paintings Wells created in retirement. The Libraries
will produce an accompanying catalog, beautifully illustrated with
color images; essays on Wells; as well as the story of the discovery,
loss, and preservation of the Savannah landscape. A Web site and
database of digital and digitized images of the complete collection
of photographs will be maintained to provide access to scholars,
students, and others interested in North Carolina ecology.
|
