Spencer, Michael A. (Michael Andrew)

Born in Orlando, Michael A. Spencer grew up in Winter Garden, Florida. He worked at various nurseries and with horticulturists such as Julian Nally and Racine Foster growing bromeliads. After graduation from the University of Central Florida in 1990, he was employed by Lyman B. Smith at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. This collection of materials concerning bromeliads and their collectors was amassed while engaged in his research on the topic.

Julian Nally was born in 1903 and graduated from Princeton University. In 1932 he purchased the former Nehrling property known as Palm Cottage Gardens in Gotha, Florida where he and his wife Margaret continued Nehrling's work growing bromeliads. Nally was a charter member of the Bromeliad Society, Inc. and served on the board of directors from 1951 through 1970. Julian Nally died in 1977.

Theodore Mead was born in Fishkill, N.Y. on February 23, 1852. After graduating from Cornell University in 1877 he worked there doing research in natural history, specializing in butterflies and publishing several reports on the subject in the 1870s. His interests began to shift to botany and horticulture and he moved to Eustis, Florida in 1881 where he spent five years developing an orange grove. He then purchased eighty-five acres of land in Oviedo, Florida where he hybridized orchids and amaryllis and later, caladiums. He continued to work Cornell University in studying orchids. He died on May 4, 1936.

Henry Nehrling, an ornithologist and horticulturist, was born in Herman, Wisconsin on May 9, 1953. He completed a teacher education program at the Lutheran Teacher's Seminary in Addison, Illinois and taught in Illinois, Missouri and Texas. While in Texas, he first had the opportunity of growing tropical plants and later collected plant specimens for the greenhouse at the Public Museum in Milwaukee where he was custodian. Eventually settling in Gotha, Florida where he has previously purchased land he continued his interest in growing tropical plants and caladiums, palms, bamboo, and amaryllis were all introduced to the United States by way of his Palm Cottage Gardens. A freeze in 1917 killed many of his most valuable plants so he purchased property in Naples, Florida where he could safely grow tropical species, settling there in 1922, and by 1925 he had over 3,000 species of tropical plants. Financial problems forced him to return to Gotha where he died on November 22.