Peter Jansen Wester (23 September 1877 – 1931; occasionally referred to himself as Peter Johnson Wester) was a Swedish-American agricultural botanist. Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States in 1897. Wester worked in several agricultural offices from 1897 to 1903, including leading the United States Department of Agriculture's experiment station and experimental plots for subtropical plants in Miami. He was a special agent in the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry in Miami and Washington from 1904 to 1910. He spent the remainder of his career in the Philippines, working with the Philippine Bureau of Agriculture from 1911 until his death. While there he was leader of Lanao Experimental Station and an advisor to the Minister. He made several trips to Singapore, Java, and Hawaii in order to study coffee cultivation and other crops for the purpose of introducing them to the Philippines.
Wester's field of interest were spermatophytes, particularly citruses.
Early life
Peter Jansen was born in Arbrå, Hälsingland, in 1877. His early education was undertaken at home until he graduated from Gefleborgs Lans Folkhogskola in Bollnäs in 1877. He was involved in agricultural pursuits from a young age, and helped to breed and develop a better grade of wheat which his father and neighbors were growing by the time of his departure from Sweden. At the age of 20, Peter Jansen left Sweden for America, and upon entrance to the United States added the last name of Wester to his name. He spent his early career in the U.S. as a farm worker in New England and Florida and after six years was appointed, in 1904, to special agent of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture.
Botanic research and the USDA
For the next four years, until 1908, Wester worked on field experiments in the Subtropical Garden experimental plots in Miami, Florida. At the end of his time there, he was placed in charge of the station. Then, in 1909 he was transferred to Washington in order to take charge of studying the culture of avocados and other tropical fruits. He spent a year in Washington before he returned to Florida for a year in 1910. Wester's time in the USDA was focused on studying and improving tropical agriculture for the United States – studying plants which could be profitable within the U.S. while also looking for improvements to the culture and propagation of plants already growing in the tropical regions of the country. "He assembled the first and the largest avocado collection that hitherto had been made and has probably done more than any single man to improve and popularize the methods of asexual propagation of this fruit. The large anoma and guava collections now in the hands of the Department of Agriculture in Florida were largely due to his efforts. He was one of the first horticulturalists to recognize the coming importance of the roselle for culinary purposes and aroused general interest in the plant throughout the frostless regions in the United States. Early recognizing the need of knowledge of vegetative methods of propagation of the tropical fruits as being the first steps towards their amelioration, much of his time at the Subtropical Laboratory was engaged in experimental work of this character, and many valuable results where obtained. His most recent work along this line is the successful shield-budding of the cacao, which can best be appreciated when it is known that at present practically all cacao estates are planted with seedlings. This method of propagating the cacao may be profitably utilized on a large scale to replace the variable seedling and cumbersome inarching and patch-budding methods of the West Indies plantations and thus standardize the product."