Albert Cameron Burrage ( 1859 - 1931 )

The Popularization or orchids in the United States came ralatively later than in Europe , though a few individuals on the Atlantic Coast were growing them by the middle 1800s. By his enthusiasm and energy , Albert C. Burrage was one of those most influential in promulgating the rise of orchid cultivation in American horticulture. Few others have done more to encourage the study and cultivation of these plants.

Albert Cameron Burrage was born in Ashburnham ,Massachusetts , on 21 November 1859 , moving to California with his parents while still a child . When he was eighteen years old , after some months of study in Europe he returned to Massachusetts ane entered Harvard college in 1879, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1883 . He next entered the Harvard Law School , graduating in 1884. Immediately there after he was admitted to the bar and began to practice law in Boston.

Considerable wealth and remarkable vigor contributed to Burrage's interests ,and horticulture was one of the foremost . As a horticulturist he was internationally known , especially for his cultivation of orchids. His exhibits were always unusually beautiful , attracting great numbers of flower and garden lovers. Specific accomplishments that won him great distinctions included an exhibit of tropical orchids in 1920, a display of orchids every month during 1921, and an exhibit of native American orchids in the spring of 1921 which was viewed by 75,000 people .

Burrage went to extraordinary pains in exhibiting orchids in naturalistic settings . For a 1924 exhibit in Boston he brought in 100 tons of rockwork which were used in the construction of a cliff forty feet high, from the top of which water spilled over at the rate of 180 gallons per minute . Also included were forty-foot coconut palms weighing five tons each, shipped from a distance of 2000 miles . For further staging of some epiphytic orchids,he Uitlized a tree weighing four tons . In 1925 he won the Lindley Medal for his educational display of native North American Cypripediums , exhibited at teh Chelsea Show at London .Native soil was shipped with the plants -a full two tons of American loam- while pine and hemlock trees were additionally included to provide a realistic setting .

By 1922 he had assembled at his home in Beverly ,Massachusetts , the greatest collection of tropical orchids the New World had yet seen , for which he was awarded America's highest horticultural award , the George R. White Medal of Honor.

In his interests as a horticulturist Burrage assembled a very large and complete library of botanical and horticultural literature .The section given to orchid publications was unusually comprehensive , for he rarely missed the opportunity of acquiring books and records of orchids and their culture . In addition to his experiments with the cultivation of orchids under electric light and various types of glass , he also invented a rotaing greenhouse that could be made to face the sun at any hour of the day .

In 1921 Burrage was elected president of the Massachsetts Horticultural Society , and in the same year he was elected to the same office in the newly organized American Orchid Society , in which capacity he served until 1929 , when he resigned because of ill health .In that year he gave the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Dollar 20,000 , the interest from which was used in making the Albert C. Burrage Gold Vase ,Awarded at the end of each year for the most outstanding exhibit at any of the society's shows held during the year. In 1930 he donated another dollar 50,000 to the society , the interest to be used for prizes and additions to the society's library.

He died on 28 June 1931 at his seaside home in Beverly . He was survived by his wife , two sons , and a daughter . At the time of his death he was a trustee of the American Orchid Society , an honorary fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society , a member of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the New York Horticultural Society ,and the Garden Club of America .

Albert Cameron Burrage was not only a horticulturist. He was always active in politics , and through his careful study of municipal affirs was recognized by his appointment by the governor in 1894 to the Boston Transit Commision ,which built the Boston subway, one of the largest , most difficult , and most successful works undertaken in an American city. In 1896 he became president of the Allied Gas Companies of Boston. He was also greatly interested in minerals , and his private collection was known as one of the finest of its kind in the world.Copper mining subsequently attracted his attention , and in 1898 he organized the Amalagamated Copper Company and , later , the Chile Copper Company . He had keen ideas on the development of new processes for the treatment of low-grade copper ores and for many years devoted his time in that effort.

His name is commemorated in the hybrid orchid genus Burrageara,established by Black& Flory in 1927.

References

American Orchid Society Bulletin . 1932 . In Memoriam .Vol. 1. no. 1.

American Orchid Societu Bulletin . 1944 .The Albert C. Burrage Gold Vase .Vol.12,no.8.

Orchid Review ,The . 1924.Mr. Albert C. Burrage .Vol. 32,no. 373.

Orchid Review ,The . 1931.Obituary : Albert C. Burrage .Vol. 39,no. 458.