University of Arizona Herbarium

My interest in biology dates from my preschool years on our family farm. My mother believed early on that I would become an ornithologist, but when it came time to go to college I found myself switching from music to biology to art and finally back to biology and plants.

I began concentrating my interests in botany in the 1970s. I worked for the U.S. Forest Service when I had to and took classes whenever I was able. I took Plant Systematics from Ronald Taylor at Western Washington University in 1978. I enjoyed the class immensely. In 1978-1979 I worked in research projects at the University on Lycopodium diversity and the importance of the lichen Usnea oregana as a nitrogen fixer. Both studies took place on a recent lava flow from Mt. Baker, Washington.

In 1979, I was offered a position with the Forest Service in Springerville. The Forest Service recognized my growing knowledge of plants and assigned me tasks that involved doing vegetative surveys, writing environmental impact statements, and designing prescribed burning projects.

Two years later, I accepted a job with the research branch of the Forest Service, specifically the Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station Fire Project in Tempe, Arizona. The Project studied fire history, fire behavior, the affects of fire on wildlife and vegetation, and then made management recommendations to the National Forests. Again, I was assigned those jobs that involved vegetation surveys and plant identification, and was also given the responsibility of care and management of the Station’s herbarium.

I returned (in 1986) to Tucson to continue my education while working as a biological consultant with a Tucson firm. As part of that employment I was senior author of three reports for the U.S.National Park Service (see below). Other work I did as a consultant was surveying locations, population changes, and ecology of rare, threatened, endangered or candidate plant species for U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. During this time I began volunteering with Paul Martin’s project to update Howard Scott Gentry’s Rio Mayo Plants (Carnegie Institution No. 527, 1942). My main function in the project was then the identification of collected specimens, this, of course, involved many very enjoyable trips to the mountains and coast of western Mexico. Since little is known in the area, and we now have doubled the number of species that Gentry had listed, this is an exercise in finding one’s way around a rather large and diffuse body of botanical literature.

In January 1992 I accepted the job of Assistant Curator at the Herbarium, where I worked for Charles Mason until he retired in July 1992, and then for Lucinda McDade from August 1992 until present. I accepted this job because of my wish to stay close to botanical research and academia in general, plus to remain involved with the botanical exploratrion of northwestern Mexico. We have found, and are still finding, a number of undescribed or unidentifiable species. Many of these are set aside until more information and time can be found to deal with them, and in the words of Rupert Barneby in a recent letter to me, to “properly baptize them”. My thesis work is in Solanaceae, and presently I’m concentrating on Browallia and Streptosolen.