Carlotta Case Hall

January 19, 1880 
Today is the birthday of the American suffragist, fern collector, botanist, professor, and author Carlotta Case Hall.

Carlotta studied botany at the University of California, Berkeley, which is how she met her husband, the botanist and professor Harvey Monroe Hall. Later, Carlotta herself became an assistant professor of botany at Berkeley.

Carlotta had a passion for collecting ferns, and she wrote about them as well.
Today, Carlotta is remembered in the handy little illustrated guidebook on Yosemite that she co-wrote with her husband, Harvey. The pocket-sized botanical guide featuring over 900 species of plants was called A Yosemite Flora: A Descriptive Account of the Ferns and Flowering Plants, Including the Trees, of the Yosemite National Park, With Simple Keys for Their Identification; Designed to be Useful Throughout the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

A 1912 Book Review said this:

“For the lover of the great outdoors who combines with his love of wandering a fondness for botanical research, this little book will prove a heydey companion.  The book is bound in flexible sheep and is just the right size for pocket use.”

Today, a beautiful light green California fern, the tufted lace fern or Carlotta Hall's lace fern (Aspidotis carlotta-halliae), is named in Carlotta's honor.