Boott, Francis, 1792-1863

Francis Boott received a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1810. After a three-year stay in England (1811-1814), Boott returned to Boston and became interested in collecting New England plants. He was part of a group that made botanical explorations of New England mountains in 1816. Boott left again for England in 1820 and took up the study of medicine, first in London and then in Edinburgh, where he received an M.D. in 1824. He practiced medicine in London for a number of years and also lectured on botany and carried out his own scientific studies. He became involved in the study of the genus Carex and published three volumes of illustrations of that genus from 1858-1862.