Samuel Tracy was born in 1847 in
Hartford,
Vermont. He lived in
Illinois with his parents, and later moved to
Wisconsin. When the
Civil War broke out, he enlisted with the
Union Army, serving a hundred days with a branch of the
Wisconsin Volunteers. When he returned from his service, he started
farming. In 1868 he received a
Bachelor's degree, followed by a
Master's three years later from
Michigan State Agricultural College. Starting from 1871 to 1877 he worked in
horticulture. Later in 1877 he was taken on at the
University of Missouri as Professor of Botany. Ten years later, he became first Director of the
Mississippi Experiment Station. Tracy is well known for his work in the
taxonomy of various
grasses,
plant breeds, and for adapting numerous
forage plants to the
biomes of the
Southern United States. He is perhaps best known for his work,
Flora of Missouri, which was published in 1886. ==Selected works==