Franklin Sumner Earle records

Franklin Sumner Earle (1856-1929) was a mycologist and specialist in diseases and cultivation of sugar cane. He was born in Dwight, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois, studying under Thomas J. Burrill but received no degree. He served as superintendent of the Mississippi Agriculture Experiment Station (1892-95), assistant pathologist in charge of the mycological herbarium of the USDA (1895-96), and biologist and horticulturist of the Alabama Agriculture Experiment Station (1895-1900). In 1902 he held an appointment as Professor of Botany at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute where he was awarded an honorary masters degree.

In 1901 Earle joined the New York Botanical Garden where he worked for three years as Assistant Curator in charge of the mycological collections. During his career as the first full-time NYBG mycologist he published “The Genera of the North American Gill Fungi” an important taxonomic work that followed the American Code of Nomenclature. In 1904 he became the director of the Estacion Agronomica at Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba. Soon afterwards, he began fruit cultivation at Herradura, Cuba on a farm that he maintained until the end of his life. His work in Cuba, as a business consultant, president of the Cuba Fruit Exchange, and later USDA investigator, focused on the sugar cane industry. He developed a variety of sugar cane resistant to a mosaic disease and made many contributions to the development of its cultivation. Among his many publications a major work was Sugar Cane and its Culture (1928).