One hundred years ago on the brink of WWI, American botanists changed the course of plant science with the founding of a national publication, the American Journal of Botany. The journal not only endured through the Great War, it also continued to evolve through the wars that followed, the Great Depression, and the ever-changing arena of plant research. Today, the AJB remains at the forefront of essential botanical research as the flagship journal of the Botanical Society of America. In celebration of its centennial anniversary, science historian Betty Smocovitis takes a look back through time at the socio-politics, personalities, institutions, educational reforms, and global events that came together around the 1914 founding of the AJB.