Talk:Timothy Charles Plowman

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Page scope

Timothy Charles Plowman is a biography of the ethnobotanist Timothy Charles Plowman (1944–1989), written for his cannabis specimens and his part in the 1974 paper on cannabis taxonomy. Accession pages store him as T.C. Plowman, alone or beside R.E. Schultes and T.E. Lockwood; that title redirects here, and the specimen table queries both forms.

Data verification

Dates, upbringing, education and Field Museum posts follow Wade Davis's memoriam in the Journal of Ethnobiology (1989), read in full; his Economic Botany obituary (1989) is cited for the dates in its title only. Where the Field Museum Library's description of his field books gives other career dates, the article states both. Other career details follow Plowman's own field notebooks, the Library of Congress name authority record and the Field Museum's own pages; the Brunfelsia and eponym statements follow Filipowicz, Nee and Renner (2012). The cannabis sections follow the specimen records (Naturalis, Smithsonian, Harvard, GBIF), the 1974 paper and its 1975 reprint, Small and Cronquist (1976), Anderson (1980) and the published court opinions. Discuss conflicts and corrections here.

Discussion

Unconsulted biographies

Two obituaries by Wade Davis were not read: Economic Botany 43(3): 416–418 (1989), cited here only for the dates in its title, and Journal of Ethnobiology 9(1): 119–126 (1989). The biography on JSTOR Global Plants (person bm000006585) was not read either. They are the likeliest sources for his birthplace, education, Harvard posts and Field Museum ranks, none of which the article states. Wikidata gives Harrisburg as his birthplace and Cornell and Harvard as his universities, without references.

Start at the Field Museum

The Field Museum Library dates his years as a curator of botany there to 1976–1987. Other web biographies give 1978 for his appointment, with tenure in 1983 and the rank of curator in 1988. The article follows the Library. The 1981 title page cited by the Library of Congress calls him assistant curator of vascular plants.

Cause of death and age

A review of One River in Times Higher Education (13 June 1997) says he died of AIDS at 45. Born on 17 November 1944 and dying on 7 January 1989, he was 44. The Library of Congress record cites the book's prologue for his death "at age of 45". The article leaves out the cause until a primary biography is read.

Role in the 1974 paper

The paper does not say which author did what. It names Plowman as a research fellow in economic botany at the Botanical Museum. The Mississippi vouchers name him as a collector, and Anderson (1980) credits the 1972 sampling to "Dr. R. E. Schultes and his colleagues".

Court opinions

Plowman is named in Honneus (1974), Van Alstyne (1975) and Vail (1979) only as a co-author of the 1974 paper. Searches of CourtListener and the Caselaw Access Project (11 October 2026) found no testimony by him. Honneus cites the paper as beginning on page 325 of volume 23; it begins on page 337.

Mississippi sheets elsewhere

Harvard's Economic Botany Herbarium holds 96 sheets with the collector string R. E. Schultes, T. C. Plowman, & T. E. Lockwood in barcodes 00449592–00449757 (counted 11 October 2026). Harvard's pages put the garden in Lafayette County, Louisiana; the label text says University, Lafayette Co., Mississippi. Duplicates are also at the Smithsonian, Paris (P06884281) and Utrecht (U.1198655), as published through GBIF. Two GBIF records give a country that is probably the seed's origin or a data error (US 2773550 Ghana; P06884281 Nepal).

Other cannabis sheets

The Roxbury (1973) and Mason County (1974) gatherings have no accession pages. GBIF publishes no habitat or label notes for them, so whether the plants were wild, feral or cultivated is not known.

Davis's memoriam in the Journal of Ethnobiology

Wade Davis, "Timothy Charles Plowman 17 November 1944 - 7 January 1989", Journal of Ethnobiology 9(1): 119–126 (1989), was read in full on 12 October 2026 from the scan on the Internet Archive (biostor-175258). The Economic Botany obituary is still unread. The memoriam's text and its list of 77 publications give the following.

Field Museum dates

Field Museum Library: "through his years as a curator of botany at the Field Museum from 1976-1987".

Davis (p. 119): "Tim left Harvard for the Field Museum of Natural History in 1978 where he became tenured in 1983, and was appointed curator in 1988."

Davis (p. 121) also has him chair the Botany Department "(1986-1988)". The article gives both sets of dates.

Start of the field books

Field Museum Library: his field books span "his career from 1969, when he worked for the botanical museum at Harvard".

The Library's own catalogue entry for the first notebook (BOT_Plowman001) is titled "1-1868, 1965-1978". The notebook's cover reads "1966-1969 #1-1868 USA Colombia Peru", and its first page reads "Plant Collections from Sandoval Co., New Mexico. June 24, 1966 to Aug 1, 1966. Anasazi Origins Project."

Davis (p. 119): "In the fall of 1966 Tim returned from Brazil". The article follows the notebook's own pages for the date of the first numbered collection.

William M. Klein

Davis's list of publications (no. 6) gives the second author of the 1974 paper as "W.E. Klein". The paper's own byline names William M. Klein; the article follows the paper.

Cause of death

The memoriam speaks of "the tragic passing of Timothy Plowman" and "his untimely death" and gives no cause. The article still leaves the cause out.

Plowman 2664 in the field notebook

Notebook BOT_Plowman003 (numbers 2287–2699, 1969), image n140, enters the gathering under the heading "9 April 1969. Santiago." as "2664. Cannabis sativa", with "Herb 2.5-3 m tall growing as a weed in garden." The entry does not name the Plaza de Armas; that comes from the printed label. Its line of herbarium codes reads "A-SP, K, US, S, F, P, L."