Alice Eastwood is remembered in Canada’s scientific community as a talented botanist, writes toronto1.one. She is the author of over three hundred scientific articles. The scientist also penned three hundred and ninety-five names for specific species of various terrestrial plants.
Early Years
Our heroine was born on January 19, 1859, in the city of Toronto. Her father was an employee at the Toronto Asylum for the Insane. And when the girl turned six, her mother passed away.
Therefore, young Alice was cared for by her parents’ relatives. But they weren’t always successful at this, and one day they decided to send the girl to a Toronto convent.
In 1873, Alice began living with her father again. However, by that time, the man was living in Denver, and the girl had to move there.
The year 1879 was marked by the future scientist’s graduation from high school. After that, she began a teaching career.
“Botanical Talent”
Interestingly, our heroine was a self-taught botanist. In most cases, her knowledge was gleaned from various scientific publications on botany.
In 1891, when the curator of the botany department at the California Academy of Sciences became acquainted with Alice’s specimen collection, she hired her as an assistant at the academic herbarium.
The year 1892 was marked by a promotion for our heroine. She became another curator of the academy’s botany department.
In 1894, Alice became the head of the Department of Botany, and she remained in this position until 1949, when she retired.
Scientific Expeditions
Alice’s early botanical works were mostly written after she undertook another collecting expedition.
For example, in 1892, our heroine organized such an expedition to collect desert plants. And during one of her subsequent expeditions, Alice was fortunate enough to find many previously unknown plants. In particular, this includes Hickman’s cinquefoil.
The Rescuer
Interestingly, our heroine saved the academic collection of type plants after the great earthquake that occurred in San Francisco in 1906.
Disregarding the curatorial conventions of that era, our heroine successfully separated many type specimens from the main collection. Thanks to this classification system, Alice was able to retrieve almost fifteen hundred specimens from the damaged building. It later turned out that the records and specimens our heroine rescued were all that managed to be saved from the entire academic collection.
After the earthquake and until the academy was finally able to construct a new building, Eastwood studied herbaria in European countries.
The Return
The year 1912 marked Alice’s return to the academy, where she continued to work on restoring the lost part of the collection. Thanks to painstaking work and organizing expeditions, our heroine managed to collect approximately one-third of a million specimens by 1942. This meant that the collection was several times larger than the number of specimens destroyed in 1906.
Additional Activities
Regarding Alice’s scientific works, throughout her career, she managed to write over three hundred articles.
She also held the position of editor for the biological journal Zoe.
In 1932, she began creating the journal Leaflets of Western Botany, which was successfully published until 1966.
Interestingly, during the 1890s, Alice was at the head of the San Francisco Botanical Club. And in 1929, she actively participated in the creation of the American Fuchsia Society.
It is worth noting that our heroine’s main botanical interests primarily converged on the western lilies of the USA and the genera Lupinus, Arctostaphylos, and Castilleja. And this is clearly evident in many of her works.
Photo: wikipedia