List of species described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Meriwether Lewis collected many hundreds of plants on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. All of the plants Lewis collected in the first months of the Expedition were cached near the Missouri River to be retrieved on the return journey. The cache was completely destroyed by Missouri flood waters. Other collections were lost in varying ways, and we now have only 237 plants Lewis collected, 226 of which are in the Philadelphia Herbarium.[1] Lewis hired Frederick Pursh for $70 to do the complex task of describing 124 of his collections, which Pursh did and published in 1814.

Animals

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Mammals

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Pronghorn
 
Greater sage grouse

Birds

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Amphibians

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Reptiles

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Blue catfish

Fish

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Plants

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The plants listed below were indeed collected by Lewis, but a number of them (at least those marked with *******, were previously collected and described or were not described from the Lewis collections and therefore are not considered to be the first for science. For an accurate list see [2] and [3]

 

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Search Results for lewis | American Philosophical Society".
  2. ^ "Search Results for lewis | American Philosophical Society".
  3. ^ "Biographies of naturalists botanists p. 2".

Sources

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