Frank N. Meyer

Frank Nicholas Meyer (30 November 1875 - 2 June 1918) was a United States Department of Agriculture explorer who traveled to Asia to collect new plant species. The Meyer lemon was named in his honor. He was born Frans Nicolaas Meijer in Amsterdam in 1875. For seven years Meijer was educated at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam as an assistant of Hugo de Vries. He emigrated to the United States in 1901 and became an American citizen in November 1908 adopting the name "Frank N. Meyer". In 1901 he first went to work for Erwin F. Smith at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1902, Meyer began working at USDA's Plant Introduction Station in Santa Ana, California. Meyer was hired in 1905 by the USDA in their Office of Seed and Plant Introduction to send back to the United States economically useful plants as part of an effort, initiated in 1898, to augment United States agriculture and horticulture with plant varieties collected around the world. A particular focus of the program was to introduce drought resistant plants suitable for dry land farming, a demand driven by concentrated agricultural expansion into the Great Plains. By 1912, the program had introduced over 34,000 species. These were submitted to testing and selection at plant introduction stations, such as in Chico, California, and incorporated into then developing plant breeding programs. Through an arrangement with Charles Sprague Sargent and David Fairchild Meyer was also to send to the Arnold Arboretum trees and shrubs of ornamental value. They archived images he collected of his travels.