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When Botanist Thomas Lea went looking for plants in the 1840s, he did it in Northside and Cumminsville on the Ludlow estate and others. What was most striking were the wetlands where hundreds of lady slipper orchids bloomed. It was a very different place then, just a few decades after Cincinnati was founded, says UC Biologist Eric Tepe, who is working with Conover to log plants now.
Lea identified 714 species in 1844. His work was published posthumously in 1849. Many of his plant samples are in Pittsburgh. Tepe oversees the plant specimens (herbarium) in Cincinnati.
Botanist Lucy Braun did a survey in 1934 retracing Lea s steps and found nearly 8% were extinct. By this time, Cincinnati was more developed and the bogs had disappeared. She logged more than 1,700 plant species, publishing in the journal