Forrest Shreve: Master of the North American Deserts

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Shreve’s Desert Laboratory Today is the birthday of the American botanist Forrest Shreve. We owe such a debt of gratitude to Shreve. Shreve was THE preeminent botanist of North American deserts during the first half of the twentieth century. Shreve worked out of a laboratory in Tucson, Arizona and the lab was perfectly situated for…

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Sara Plummer Lemmon: The Botanist Who Gave California Its State Flower

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The Golden Poppy Today is the anniversary of the death of Sara Plummer Lemmon. Lemmon is remembered for her successful 1903 piece of legislation that nominated the golden poppy (Eschscholzia californica) as the state flower of California. Asa Gray named the genus Plummera in honor of Sara Plummer Lemmon. Plummera is yellow wildflowers in the…

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John Gill Lemmon: Civil War Veteran and Prominent Western Botanist

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Lemmon and Wife Today is the birthday of the botanist John Gill (“J.G.”) Lemmon. Lemmon and his wife, Sara Plummer Lemmon, were both botanists. Although Sara partnered equally with her husband on their botanical work, their papers were always published with the credentials “J.G. Lemmon & Wife.” The Lemmons had found each other late in…

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From Dust to Discovery: The Birth of Desert Botanist Forrest Shreve

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This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. July 8, 1878 On this day, dear readers, the American botanist Forrest Shreve was born, a man whose passion for the arid and seemingly inhospitable would forever change how we understand our desert…

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