Floyd Alonzo McClure (1897–1970) — A Tribute

Abstract

The many friends of Floyd Alonzo McClure were saddened by his death on April 15, 1970, short a few months of his seventy-third birthday. Those who knew him personally lost a true friend, and the world lost a teacher and pre-eminent authority on bamboos, the tree grasses. A former Chinese student likened McClure's life to the villager who, after gazing for years at the Great Stone Face on the mountain, became himself the person with wisdom, strength, honesty, and solidarity like that of the mountain, the person the whole village had been searching for. Bamboo was Floyd McClure's Great Stone Face and teacher of truth in the green plant world. My friendship and admiration for Mickey, as his friends knew him, came naturally from the first time we met some years ago at the Smithsonian Institution. He was the sort of man who became a friend for life. He was at once a kind, understanding and sincere personality, compassionate, a scholar, and a bit of a poet. He was emotionally inspiring and had the ability of bringing out the best in others. I remember him most of all for his simple modesty, his generosity, his intelligence, cheerful spirit, and his inquiring mind. He loved his plants. At his home in Bethesda, Maryland, he maintainied an extensive study collection, but he was always very generous in giving away plants to friends and thus interested many people, including the writer, in bamboos. In fact, he died in his garden digging a bamboo plant for a young friend. Floyd A. McClure was born on August 14, 1897, near Sidney in Shelby County, Ohio, the son of John T. McClure, farmer and school teacher. He would have described himself as an Ohio farmboy, first and last. Nothing evoked more nostalgia in him than the sight of cornfields under a blazing sun or a bouquet of field grasses and flowers. His rugged rural youth was a warm memory throughout his life. From The Ohio State University he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 19 18 and the degree of Bachelor of Science in 19 19. Then fresh out of college, he accepted a teaching appointment in horticulture at Canton Christian College (later Lingnan University) in 1919, at Canton, China. This initiated a long residence in the Far East, broken by occasional furloughs in the United States, once to marry and to establish relations with the United States Department of Agriculture, and on two later trips to complete his academic training. The ancient traditions and closeness to the soil of the Chinese people fascinated McClure. He was at home in China and settled down in earnest to learn the language and customs of the people. Because of his linguistic aptitude, he soon became proficient in the spoken Cantonese dialect. Thus