Archives West Finding Aid

Charles Vancouver Piper was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and raised in Seattle Washington. He attended the Territorial University of Washington until 1892. He achieved prominence as a botanist, on staff at the Washington Agricultural College and School of Science (later WSU), and as a researcher with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Piper is credited with discovering Sudan grass, an African plant that was introduced to North America as a forage plant. He was greatly involved in the re-discovery of Meriwether Lewis' lost herbarium and encouraged the publications of journals of earlier plant explorers of the Northwest, such as Archibald Menzies and David Douglas.