Talk:Maynard Ward Quimby

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Maynard Ward Quimby is a biography of the pharmacognosist Maynard Ward Quimby (born 1905), written for his part in the University of Mississippi's cannabis plantings of 1968–1971 and the herbarium sheets he gathered from them. Accession pages store him as M.W. Quimby; that title redirects here, and the specimen table queries both forms.

Data verification

His career follows the American Society of Pharmacognosy's profile (read in the Wayback Machine copy of December 2024; the live page shows no text) and the university's announcements of 2013. The specimens follow the Harvard University Herbaria's Index of Botanical Specimens and Small and Cronquist (1976). Discuss conflicts and corrections here.

Discussion

Full name and dates

The middle name Ward and the birth year 1905 come from the Library of Congress name authority record no2004027137 (Quimby, Maynard W. (Maynard Ward), 1905-), established from the title page of The Lynn Index (Maynard W. Quimby, Ph.D.). No second source spelling out the middle name has been found. His birth date, birthplace, date of death and place of death are not known. The university's announcement of 12 April 2013 calls him the late Maynard W. Quimby, so he had died by then.

Term as president of the American Society of Pharmacognosy

The society's profile heads his entry President (1968-1969) and calls him its eighth president. Its page of past presidents lists him for 1967–1968, with Elmore H. Taylor for 1968–1969. The 2013 announcement says only in the 1960s. The article gives the late 1960s.

Term as president of the Society for Economic Botany

The profile gives 1972–1973. The officers page of the Society for Ethnobotany (the society's present name) lists him under 1972; the society's older website lists him under 1973. The article gives 1972–73.

Date of the 2013 dedication

The university's announcement of 12 April 2013 (reprinted by HottyToddy.com) dates the dedication of the new garden facilities to 17 April. The Daily Mississippian of 22 April 2013 says the garden would be dedicated on Wednesday. The article gives April 2013.

Sheets in the Harvard index

The Harvard University Herbaria list some 87 Cannabis sheets under M. W. Quimby, from 12 September 1968 to 4 November 1971, almost all grown on university land. Many carry only a code (AA, MM, MS-SQQ) and no seed origin, so only the sheets whose labels name an origin have accession pages. Two points in the index:

• One sheet (barcode 00933666, collector number 302) is dated 27 July 1939 and filed under Missouri, though its locality reads On University of Mississippi property. The date is out of line with every other sheet of his.
• Many sheets of the university's plantings are filed under Louisiana in the index although their locality reads University of Mississippi.

Codes and the 1972 sheets

Small and Cronquist (1976) cite the 1972 sheets of Schultes, Plowman and Lockwood by Quimby acquisition code (Af A, T A, P A and others). Quimby's own sheets of 1968–1971 use codes of a different form (MS-SPP, af-b, SL-A13). The sources read do not say how the two series relate. Small and Cronquist list the codes Cz A and Cz B under Poland.

Unconsulted works

Quimby, Doorenbos, Turner and Masoud (1973) in Economic Botany, which describes the cultivation and morphology of the Mississippi plants, and Doorenbos and others (1971) in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences are known here from their bibliographic records only; the article cites them for their subjects, not their contents. The Fetterman paper (1971) was read in its abstract. His Cornell theses (1934, 1939) and Collecting plant research materials in West Africa (1972) have not been read.

Portrait

No freely licensed portrait has been found. The society's profile carries a photograph credited to Ole Miss, with no licence stated.