Cyrus Guernsey Pringle

Cyrus Guernsey Pringle (May 6, 1838 – May 25, 1911) was an American botanist who spent a career of 35 years cataloguing the plants of North America and Mexico. He is in the top five historical botanists for quantity of new species discovered — approximately 1,200 species, 100 varieties, twenty-nine genera, and four combinations.

He was born on May 6, 1838 in East Charlotte, Vermont. His ancestry on his father's side was Scottish Presbyterian; his maternal grandfather, Asa Harris, was of Puritan stock. He studied in Hinesburg and Bakersfield, Vermont, and later at Stanbridge, Quebec, before entering the University of Vermont in the year 1859, enrolling in the classical course. However, the death of his older brother during the first semester, made it necessary for him to aid his widowed mother in the management of the farm and to give up all ideas of college.

In the early part of his life he was interested in the Quaker religious doctrine of the Friends, and it was through these meetings that he met, and later married, on February 25, 1863, Almira L. Greene of Starksboro, Vermont, a school teacher and a speaker of the Friends.

His first horticultural undertakings were on his mother's farm in 1857, when, at the age of nineteen, he budded a small seedling apple tree, with a large, striped, sweet summer apple.

In 1858 he started his first nursery, containing a small pear orchard, fruit yards, gardens of currants, cherries, grapes, peaches and potatoes. He made a plan for each orchard or garden, giving the name and location of each plant. By crossing, he obtained a new variety of potato seedling "No. 6 (1870)," which was called "Snowflake." This potato was introduced to the public in New York. Robert Fenn, an Englishman much interested in crossing American and English varieties of potatoes, recognized Pringle's ability and the two of them worked together on other projects, such as the crossing of "Snowflake" with "Rector of Woodstock" and vice versa.

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