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Fairchild, David Grandison (1869–1954) Botanist, agricultural explorer and organizer of the United States Office of Plant Introduction, and author of books on tropical horticulture. David Fairchild was born in Lansing, Michigan, where his father was a professor of literature. His grandfather, Grandison Fairchild, was one of the founders of Oberlin College. His father became president of Kansas State College of Agriculture, where David Fairchild received his B.A. in 1888. He went on to do graduate work in botany at Iowa State College of Agriculture and at Rutgers University, studying mycology and plant pathology. He joined the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Plant Pathology in 1889 in Washington, D.C.

He worked at the Geneva, New York, State Agricultural Experiment Station in the summers of 1891 and 1892 studying grape diseases and helping to develop Bordeaux mixture. He received a master’s degree from Kansas State in 1893. Fairchild became a plant explorer after meeting Barbour Lathrop in 1893 on a ship en route to Naples Zoological Station. Fairchild was the first representative of the Smithsonian Institution to be awarded the use of a research table at Naples, where he worked on a marine alga. Lathrop financed Fairchild on a botanical expedition to Java and the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens there in 1895 and 1896. Fairchild had studied tropical flora, bacteriology, and fungi for two years in Bonn, Berlin, and Breslau in preparation for this expedition.

While at Bonn, he invented Fairchild’s porcelain washing thimble, which was used for fifty years. Following his stay in Java, where his research showed that termites cultivate mushrooms, Fairchild traveled with Lathrop in 1896 and 1897. They collected live plants and seeds throughout the tropics, including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, China, Japan, Africa, and South America. Fairchild was given an interim appointment at the USDA Department of Forestry in 1897 and appointed chief of the new Section of Seed and Plant Introduction, USDA, in 1898. He introduced many plants into the United States, starting with a small garden near Miami. As special investigator (1898) and later as agricultural explorer (1903) for the USDA, he resumed his travels with Lathrop and sent out other plant explorers for the agency.

Among the new plants he introduced were avocado, broccoli, pomegranates, dates, bamboo, Japanese cherry trees, and importantly, the soybean, which he introduced from Japan in 1898. Other examples he cited include an alfalfa variety from Peru (1899), a variety of sorghum introduced from the Sudan (1901), many varieties of dates from Egypt (1901), mangoes from India (1902), and the nectarine from Pakistan (1902). Agricultural and horticultural species and varieties were not only imported but rigorously tested for performance in various parts of the United States. Fairchild later headed the Office of Cereal Investigation.

Fairchild married Marian Bell, the daughter of Alexander Graham Bell, in 1905; she traveled with and assisted him. After World War I, Miami’s Chapman Field, a desolate air-training field was transferred to the USDA. Fairchild transformed 200 acres into the United States Introduction Garden, introducing hundreds of tree species and varieties. Plant Introduction Gardens were later established under his direction in six states.