Dallas History Items:
Julien Reverchon and Doodia media

Doodia media,a fern native to Australia, New Zealand, and Polynesia.
Collected by Julien Reverchon.

Julien Reverchon, 1837 - 1905, was born in Diemoz France, where he began his life-long work of specimen collection. He arrived with his father in Texas in 1856, intending to settle at La Reunion. Upon arrival, they discovered that the colony had failed, so they bought a farm nearby. Reverchon married in 1864 and had two sons.

Reverchon was a noted botanist. He had collected over 2000 species of plants by the time he and his father came to America, and he continued to collect when he settled in Texas. In September 1879, Reverchon found the plant from which Asa Gray named the genus Riverchonia. He also contributed specimens to the United States Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian Institution. The last ten years of his life weree spent as a professor of Botany at the Baylor University College of Medicine and Phamacy in Dallas.

At the time of his death in 1905, Reverchon's collection of more than 2,600 species and more than 20,000 specimens of Texas plants was acquired by the Missouri Botannical Garden at St. Louis. A few of his specimens are also in the Dallas Historical Society collection. The city of Dallas named Reverchon Park in his honor. Located near the intersection of I-35E and the Dallas North Tollway, the park is two blocks South of Oak Lawn Avenue and bounded by Maple Avenue and Harry Hines Boulevard.

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