2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Neils Hansen was a man of the north. While other plant explorers ventured to tropical islands and rainforests in search of potentially economical plants, Hansen ventured to the high latitudes of Europe and Asia to find hardy species that would perform well in the cold, dry, windy northern tier of states. Hansen was born in Denmark in 1866 and immigrated to New York at the age of seven. In 1883 he enrolled in Iowa Agriculture College in Ames. After graduation he worked at a grape nursery where his interest in fruit took hold. He later returned to Iowa for his M.S. where he worked for Dr. J. L. Budd, an expert on Russian plants and fruit crops. In 1890 he and Budd wrote and published a "Handbook of Fruit Culture and Tree Planting for the Northwestern States.” Upon graduation in 1895, Hansen was appointed chair of the new horticulture department at South Dakota State University and, later, appointed head of the experiment station. This position afforded him the opportunity to travel eight times to northern Europe and Asia in search of hardy plants. James Wilson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, asked Hansen if he would accept an offer to go on a federally-funded 10-month plant collection expedition to northern Asia during the winter of 1895. He accepted and, “outfitted with a dagger on his right side, a revolver in his belt, field glasses, and magnifying lenses,” collected five car loads of seeds and buds. Wilson said, “I have 12,000 men under me, but none who knows how to work like Hansen.” He was the originator of many new fruit cultivars, among them hybrid plums, apricots, and red-fleshed apples, and also alfalfa and grasses. At one point his collection of fruit seedlings (250,000) was among the largest in the world, second only to the collection of Luther Burbank. He released 113 varieties of apples and crabapples; 72 varieties of plums, cherries and sand cherries; and 35 varieties of grapes. Few have ever heard of Professor Hansen, but he did more than perhaps any other man to transform the Great Plains from a desert to the bread basket of America.