The changing face of California botany

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Abstract:

Botany in California has already gone through several faces, and is changing still. The first face was the folk knowledge held by the original inhabitants, largely obliterated during subsequent periods. The first century of European exploration resulted in specimens being deposited in European herbaria, clearinghouses for Linnaeus and subsequent experts. This shifted in the mid-nineteenth century, when the United States annexed the western half of the continent. Specimens collected as part of army-assisted territorial and state surveys now flowed to Torrey and Gray in the eastern United States. By the tum of the century, however, resident botanists in California began to resist Eastern hegemony and to establish their own networks of collaborators. The continued inclusion of numerous amateurs in these networks helped to counter the growing tide of professionalization that was otherwise changing the Face of Academic Botany. Instead, "professional" and "academic" are no longer synonymous, such that there are now more botanists employed by government agencies than by academic institutions in California, primarily because of the increased interest in endangered species. The latest face of California Botany is therefore that of a developing partnership between academic botanists, non-academic professionals, and native plant enthusiasts.

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Location: ELECTRONIC FILE - BOTANY: OTHER