(May 1884 – 19 October 1957 )
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) has only a handful of specimens collected by Dr. Alpheus W. Blizzard. All were collected in 1931 in Darlington County, South Carolina. As more of NCU’s collections are cataloged it is possible that additional specimens collected by Blizzard will be found. A search of sernecportal.org in October, 2022 revealed that the University of Minnestoa (MIN) is the only other herbarium curating specimens collected by Blizzard. MIN’s single specimen was also collected in Darlington County, SC.
According to the 1920 US Federal Census, Alpheus W. Blizzard was born in Ohio, as were both his parents. In the 1900 US Federal Census, “Apheus” Blizzard’s birth is listed as May, 1883 , but multiple other sources list his birth year as 1884. Blizzard earned his B.S. in Education at Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) in 1913.
ALPHEUS W. BLIZZARD. B. S. in Ed. Basil, Ohio. Delta Tau Delta. Athenian Literary Society; Y. M. C. A. ” Blizz ” Blizzard, a furious hurricane. Some one left the door open and in it blew. He talks enthusiastically upon one subject only, and that is Basil, Ohio. Before he came, we had the idea that New York and Cincinnati were fairly prosperous hamlets, but we are now convinced that we were wrong. The wealth of America is centered in just one spot— the skating rink at Basil. He can tell you anything about any subject from football to moving pictures, this includes math. The Athena (Yearbook Class of 1913) Volume 8: 70, The Ohio University
Blizzard earned the A.M. degree in 1916 from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Blizzard’s 1917 paper on Agarics acknowledges “Professor Geo. F. Atkinson under whose direction this study was undertaken for many helpful suggestions.”. The title of Blizzard’s Masters thesis at Cornell was “The development and morphology of some species of Gymnocarpus (Agaricaceae).”
The 1920 US Federal Census lists an Alpheus Blizzard, 35 years old, as living in Manhattan (189 Lexington Avenue) and occupation, “professor” at “N.Y. Univ.” His wife, Ethel (24 years old, English by birth, immigrated to US in 1912) is listed as “registrar,” but unfortunately her place of employment is illegible. Daughter Ethel J., born in New York, was 2 ½ years old at the time of the census.
Alpheus Blizzard earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1926, and his thesis was entitled “The nuclear phenomena and life history of Urocystis cepulae.”
Blizzard was Professor of Biology at Coker College in Hartsville, Darlington County, South Carolina from 1926 until 1934. The photo (left), courtesy of Coker College, is from the College’s 1933 yearbook.
The 1930 US Federal Census lists “Adolphine” Blizzard of Hartsville, Darlington County, South Carolina, as head of household, 45 years old, occupation “teacher,” and place of occupation “college.” Ethel L. Blizzard occupation “stenographer” and the place of occupation “[illegible] factory.” In addition to daughter, Ethel Jane Blizzard, age 10, the census lists Alpheus W., age 8. Young Alpheus joined the Navy on Pearl Harbor Day and was a career officer in the Air Force.
Williams, Clark E., ed. (1941) South Carolina Biologist Waging War on Mosquitoes in His Area. The Ohio Alumnus: Official Publication of the Ohio University Alumni Association 19(3).
Dr. Alpheus Wesley Blizzard, ’13 [Ohio State University alumnus, class 1913], acting director of the health and sanitary division of the South Carolina Public Service Authority, has been acclaimed for his work in making the area of the Santee-Cooper hydroelectric and navigation project a healthier place in which to live. He directs the extensive war now being waged by the authority on the mosquito scourge and has made an extensive study of the hydro-biology of the aquatic vegetation in the basin.
Dr. Blizzard is a native of Ohio and a direct descendant of the famous English surgeons of that name, members of the Royal Society of London.
After graduating from Ohio University he earned a master’s degree at Cornell University and a doctorate at Columbia University. Further postgraduate work was pursued at the University of Chicago and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.
Dr. Blizzard first taught at the Iowa State Agricultural College, and for ten years thereafter was professor of biology at New York University, where he was also a member of the faculty of the graduate school. During the summers he was a member of the research staff of the Cold Spring Harbor Marine Laboratories. He went to the South Carolina Public Service Authority in 1938 from Coker College, at Hartsville, S.C., where he had been professor of biology for ten years.
The South Carolinian is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a former president of the South Carolina Academy of Science, and is a member of a number of scientific bodies including the Botanical Society of America, American Public Health Association, American Society of Tropical Medicine, National Malaria Commission, Sigma Xi, and Beta Lambda Sigma. He is a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity. He contributions to scientific magazines of the nation have brought him wide recognition.
In 1919 he married Miss Ethel Lewes of London, England. The Blizzards have two children, Ethel Jane and Alpheus Wesley, Jr. (pictured with his father on page 11). The son attended The Citadel, military college of South Carolina, for three years then transferred to the University of South Carolina where he is now a member of the senior class. On December 9, the day that war was declared on Japan, he enlisted in the Navy Air Corps. The daughter is an alumna of the University of South Carolina where she is now pursuing graduate work. She, too, has just enlisted in an auxiliary unit of the air corps.
Blizzard’s 1931 publication, “Plant sociology and vegetational change on High Hill, Long Island, New York,” lists his affiliations as the Biological Laboratories, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island [New York, USA], and Coker College, [Hartsville, Darlington County], South Carolina [USA].
Dr. Alpheus Blizzard died of a heart attack on 19 October, 1957.
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In the January-February, 1999 issue of the Long Island Botanical Society Newsletter (Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 1-4), Ray Welch describes re-sampling Blizzard’s study site at High Hill Field in “The summit vegetation of Long Island: After A. Blizzard”:
August 3. 1881, brought Walt Whitman back to his childhood home at West Hills, Long Island and he said, in a letter to the New York Tribune, “I write this back again at West Hills on a high elevation (the highest spot on Long Island?) of Jayne’s Hill.. . . A view of thirty or forty, or even fifty or more miles, especially to the east and south and southwest; the Atlantic Ocean to the latter points in the distance — a glimpse or so of Long Island Sound to the north” (Gatewood, 1976). Silas Wood, early in the 19th century, was said to be able to see both the Atlantic and the Sound from a point in the West Hills called “Oakley’s High Hill Field.” He later paid for a survey to discover if the spot was, indeed, the Island’s highest point, and found it so, at 354.5 feet above sea level (Wood, 1865).
The official height of High Hill, several times resurveyed, and now generally called Jayne’s Hill, has risen from 354.5 feet to 428 feet. and fallen back to its currently accepted elevation of 400.9 feet. Unfortunately for fame, Todt Hill on Staten Island is a few feet higher, and so it has the distinction of being “the highest point on the Atlantic seaboard south of Maine.” Jayne’s Hill slumbers in the relative obscurity of the Number Two spot.
The summit of Long Island is preserved in West Hills County Park, its site rather overlooked and neglected. There are no signs to lead you to it, and there is only a small sign at the end of the closest road access to tell you anything about it (less than I’ve told you already). You have to want to go there. I did and so I trekked there in October and November of 1998. Run-down park buildings, shamefully left to crumble by the county, greet you as you begin your final summit assault from your parked car (less than five minutes walking, even the long way; less than 50 feet of ascent; thin air no problem). At the summit is a large boulder brought in to hold a commemorative plaque, a plaque soon vandalized and stolen and never replaced, leaving only a great blank hollow in the stone. There is a bench to sit on. I sat.
There is no view to the Sound to the north and west (trees loom close), nor can you see “fifty or more miles, especially to the east” (more trees and an immense and ugly water tower block the view). Only to the south, where a sight line is cut through the encroaching forest, is there a grand view: the Atlantic glitters on the horizon (and the Babylon Town landfill squats in the middle distance). The Jayne’s Hill of Wood and Whitman is not the hill we have today. Where have the views gone?
Wood’s and Whitman’s observations and the name “High Hill Field” tell us that up to at least 120 years ago Jayne’s Hill must have been quite grassy and open.. .there is no way to get extensive views otherwise. And this is no surprise. Long Island in the 19th century was much less wooded than now. The land was cleared for timber, for firewood, for cultivation, or for grazing, and kept that way by brush cutting and regular burning, and so Jayne’s Hill was probably a pasture after its clearing. Though the grassland is gone, we have a kind of snapshot to tell us much about its disappearance. A man with the wonderful name of Alpheus Blizzard took the “picture” in the late 1920s (Blizzard, 1931). Blizzard worked out of Cold Spring Harbor and was affiliated with Coker College in South Carolina, but I have little further information about him. He was interested in patterns of vegetational change as seen at Jayne’s Hill, and carried out plant surveys and set up quadrats to investigate the question I’ve posed: where did the views go? Unfortunately, his location maps and quadrats are not easily correlated, but I provide a modified and annotated figure from his paper, my Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows Blizzard’s general community map, where the shrub and grassland areas seem to clearly outline an old field surrounded by woodlands. This area might well represent the grassland that allowed extensive views to the east and south as well as glimpses to the north, with the west blocked (Whitman doesn’t mention views to the west). Unfortunately, even in Blizzard’s original Figure, much detail is almost too minute to decipher, but enough can be seen to tell us where the grassland went. It successed away. Where today we have woodland, in 1928 (the actual year of survey), we see a shrinking grassland being invaded by Bayberry, Wild Black Cherry, various oaks, and Red Cedar. No surprise to anyone who looks at old fields on Long Island today, and no surprise that the Jayne’s Hill grassland is gone.
But what was the extinct grassland like when it topped the hill? Some of Blizzard’s quadrats let us know. He found that the grassland was about 50% Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and my inspection of some photographs in the original paper confirms this. In the spaces between the grass tussocks was little, except fruticose lichens (Cladina and Cladonia spp.) and Haircap Moss (Polytrichum sp.). There was little else in any amount, save occasional Hypericum gentianoides. All of these, of course, indicate dry, open, unfertile habitat with abundant sunlight. Today? Gone, all gone. The woods won, as they will almost anywhere on Long Island. The major part of Blizzard’s grassland is now fenced in and holds a water tower and associated structures as well as roughly maintained lawn, brush, and some trees that might represent some of those that were invading the field in 1928. A portion of the old grassland, however, lies to the north of the fenced area and is more “natural.” Here you can see Black Oak, White Oak, Black Birch, Red Maple, Wild Black Cherry, some Pignut Hickory, a few Gray Birches, and a lone Pitch Pine. There is a light undergrowth of Poison Ivy and a tangle of Smilax. The ground is covered thickly with leaf litter and there is not a fruticose lichen to be found.
The woods around the old field contain some additional species in addition to many of the above ones. There are Chestnut Oak, Blackjack Oak, Black Locust, American Dogwood, American Beech, American Chestnut sprouts (not many), and a few White Pines. Shrubs include various Vaccinium species and Black Huckleberry, as well as Mapleleaf Viburnum and Mountain Laurel.
The abundant, successional Bayberry of Blizzard is reduced to a few unthrifty clumps along the edges of the trails near the summit. There is a scattering of mature, unhappy Red Cedars that are struggling for light against overtopping oaks here and there in the old grassland, inside and outside the fenced area, and there are some big Wild Black Cherries. So, although the grassland is gone, some of the pioneers persist to remind us of the successional processes, perhaps now approaching a final state. Yet, surprisingly, Jayne’s Hill still supports a grassland. This grassland is a few square meters just beyond the west edge of Figure 1, beyond where the trail turns northwest. Here, among young Black Birches and some small oaks (the larger oaks that were once there are dead and bleached–probably Gypsy-mothed in the 1970s), are a few scattered clumps of Little Bluestem among much more thriving Pennsylvania Sedge. This paltry grassland renaissance is probably the relatively recent result of the loss of the oak canopy, and it is already waning as trees return. These few clumps of Little Bluestem are the last echo of the community that once covered the hill and let Whitman see from the Sound to the Atlantic.
A comparison of the plants on Blizzard’s partial list (137 species) of woody and non-woody species seen at Jayne’s Hill with those observed today shows few surprises. Overall, the species (at least the woody ones) of then are species there today. What are noticeably different are additions to the flora. Among species seen today, but not listed in 193 1, are Pokeweed, Garlic Mustard. Mugwort, Japanese Knotweed, Wineberry, Multiflora Rose, Red Mulberry, Oriental Bittersweet (a lot!), and, around the summit bench, lawn weeds like Dandelion, Speedwell. Dock, Sorrel, and Hawkweed. Japanese Honeysuckle was there in 1931, but few other aliens. Today’s increased weediness is a clear sign of the world’s increasingly homogenized and corrupted floras.
As I sat on the bench behind the summit boulder, I looked around and asked myself a last question, “What’s the highest plant on Long Island?” Well that depends on what’s meant by “highest.” The tree rooted on the highest spot? That’s a tossup between a Wild Black Cherry and a Scarlet Oak, with some White Oak sprouts vying for status. The highest shrub’? A Mountain Laurel. The highest forb? Well, as far as a native plant, perhaps Solidago rugosa. Or, on the other hand, what tree is it that rises highest from the ground? That appears to be a White Oak, one of those indicated in Figure 2 as “possibly still extant.” Then does a sturdy White Oak take the prize for being the Island’s most lofty plant? No, alas. Clambering up the oak and flaunting a few leaves even higher than the topmost twig of the tree is—can we hear it for the winner? Oriental Bittersweet!
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PUBLICATIONS:
Blizzard, A.W. (1916) The development and morphology of some species of Gymnocarpus (Agaricaceae). Thesis, A.M. degree, Botany Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Blizzard, A.W. (1917) The development of some species of Agarics. American Journal of Botany 4(4): 221-240.
Blizzard, A.W. (1926) The nuclear phenomena and life history of Urocystis cepulae. Thesis, Ph.D. degree, Columbia University, NY.
Blizzard, Alpheus W. (1926) The nuclear phenomena and life history of Urocystis Cepulae. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53(2): 77-117.
Blizzard, Alpheus W. (1931) Plant sociology and vegetational change on High Hill, Long Island, New York. Ecology 12(1): 208-231.
SOURCES:
Blizzard, Alpheus W 1931. Plant sociology and vegetational change on High Hd. Long Island. New York.” Ecology 12: 208-231.
Gatewood. Dallas. 1976. A view from Jayne’s Hill. Newsday. December 27. p. 4A
Wood. Silas. 1865. A Sketch of the First Settlement of Several Towns on Long Island. With a Biographical Memoir and Additions by Alden J. Spooner. p. xvii. Brooklyn: Printed for the Furman Club.
Special thanks to Todd Rix, M.L.I.S, Assistant Director of the Library, Coker College and to Eisha Prather, Special Collections Asst., Div. of Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University for providing information for this post.