Autobiographical notes
For
John F. Gyer
I have long been curious about plants and how they grow. My curioisity
began when I tried gardening behind my parent's grocery store in Penn
Yan, NY in the 1940's. It became more intense after the store burned
in 1947 and we moved into the farm just South of town. I became aware
of some of the formalities of botany when in the coal bin of the 4H
Club meeting house, I discovered color plates that were torn from
the 1918 New York State publication - "The Wildflowers of New
York". They were promptly retrieved and reassembled at home.
At the University of Rochester, where I studied Chemical Engineering,
I audited Dr. Coleman's botany course.
After graduation I joined Mobil Research Co. and became active in
the many horticultural and natural history organizations in the Delaware
Valley. It was through them that I met my wife, Janet. Together we
wrote numerous articles for the Green Scene, the magazine of the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society, The Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society
(now the North American Rock Garden Society), the Alpine Garden Society
in Britain, Bartonia (Philadelphia Botanical Club Journal), Appalachia
(Appalachian Mountain Club magazine), the Primrose Society, Plants
and Gardens (The Brooklyn Botanical Garden quarterly). We established
a mail order business selling the Dr. Martin Pole Lima Bean seeds
that we grew on our farm, Fern Hill. And, because Janet thought I
would soon be too old to do the beans, we began to learn to grow trilliums
from seed.
After I recovered from Janet's death in 2003, I have begun to rebuild
the bean seed business and devote more time to work with trillium.
Some of the results of that work are reported here, on Harold's web
page.
John Gyer, February 2, 2006
