David Fairchild

Career

Barbour Lathrop, a wealthy world traveler, persuaded Fairchild to become a plant explorer for the US Department of Agriculture. Lathrop and another wealthy patron, Allison Armour, financed some of Fairchild's many explorations for new plants to be introduced into the U.S. Fairchild was the author of a number of popular books on his plant collecting expeditions. Of those early travels, Fairchild wrote, "I am glad that I saw a few of the quiet places of the world before the coming of automobiles...".

For many years Fairchild managed the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. One accomplishment was to help introduce flowering cherry trees from Japan to Washington. He is also credited with introducing kale, quinoa and avocados to Americans. In 1898, he established the introduction garden for tropical plants in Miami, Florida. In 1905 he married Marian Bell, the younger daughter of Alexander Graham Bell. Fairchild was a member of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society, and an officer in what is now called the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

In 1926, the Fairchilds built a home on an 8-acre (32,000 m²) parcel on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, Florida. They named it "The Kampong", after similar family compounds in Java, Indonesia, where Fairchild had spent so many happy days collecting plants. He covered this property with an extraordinary collection of rare tropical trees and plants and eventually wrote a book about the place, entitled The World Grows Round my Door. In 1984, The Kampong became part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. In 1938, he was honored by having the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables named after him. He was also the namesake of David Fairchild Elementary in South Miami.

University of Miami

Fairchild was a member of the board of regents of the University of Miami from 1929 to 1933. For three of those years he was chairman of the board. In 1933, he was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

His son, Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild, lived and worked as a research entomologist for 33 years at the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama. His daughter, Nancy Bell, married another entomologist, Marston Bates, author of many books on natural history. She herself wrote a book, East of the Andes and West of Nowhere, about living in rural Colombia during the 1940s.

Fairchild is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard, Anolis fairchildi. Several plants were named after Fairchild, including Indigofera heudelotii var. fairchildii (Baker f.) J.B.Gillett, Elaeocarpus fairchildii Merr., Actinidia × fairchildii Rehder, and Ficus fairchildii Backer.

Plant introductions

Southwestern (Pima) cotton

David Fairchild played an important role in introducing cotton to the southwestern United States. Circa 1900, the United States led the world in cotton production, with its large production of “upland” cotton in the southeastern part of the country, and its high quality sea island along the Atlantic coast. At the time, the southwestern United States did not produce commercial quantities of cotton. Egypt then led the world with a class of cotton higher quality than "upland" and more economical than "sea island". H. J. Webber and others in the United States Department of Agriculture believed Egyptian cultivars would thrive, under irrigation, in the deserts of the southwestern United States. On behalf of the USDA, David Fairchild visited Egypt in 1902 and brought back a few cultivars. A USDA team led by Thomas H. Kearney selected among these cultivars, and after a decade of refinement, released the first cultivar successful in the southwestern United States. This particularly high quality cotton eventually came to be known as Pima.