What a character Wislizenus must have been.

Frederich Adolphus Wislizenus (1810-1889) was a physician, botanist, explorer, and adventurer. He was a German emigrant who had studied medicine at four universities in Europe before arriving in New York in 1834. He moved to St. Louis to practice medicine a few years later. Then, in 1839, he joined a fur trading expedition westward. He crossed the Rocky Mountains and on his return he joined a band of Flathead and Nez Perce. Then he wrote a book about it the next year, A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1839.

His next adventure was joining a merchant expedition to Santa Fe and Chihuahua in 1846. On that trip he was detained for six months when war with Mexico started. He spent the time in the Sierra Madres observing, and collecting plants. His next report, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico (1848) was about that trip.

I imagine that’s when he first met the Rio Grande Cottonwood that his partner botanist George Engelmann was to name for him – populus deltoides wislizenii. I’m honored to know his tree.