Archives West Finding Aid

Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf (1850-1932) was a renowned botanist of the Pacific Northwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was born in Holstein, Germany, and immigrated to Iowa as a small child. A few years after moving to the Midwest, the Suksdorf family moved to Bingen, Washington. Working on the family farm as a boy, Suksdorf became interested in the plant life around him and began collecting specimens. He entered the University of California in the mid-1870s, where he communicated with and sent his specimens to Dr. Asa Gray of Harvard, considered by many to be the most important American botanist of the nineteenth century. Gray was impressed with Suksdorf's work and in 1886, invited him to the Gray Herbarium at Harvard for the next two years to be his assistant. Gray even named a plant genus after Suksdorf, Suksdorfia. Following Gray's death in 1888, Suksdorf returned to his home in Klickitat County where he continued working as a botanist until his death.

His private herbarium contained around 25,000 specimens, which were donated to Washington State University following his death. Suksdorf discovered and named many plants, and in 1892 made the first list of flowering plants and ferns of Washington. From 1896 until 1931, he continued to contribute to the discovery and classification of plants in the Northwest, publishing much of his findings. On October 3, 1932, he was killed by a train at a railway station in his hometown of Bingen.