Alice Eastwood
Encyclopedia
Alice Eastwood was a Canadian American botanist. Born in Toronto, she moved to the United States at 14, and from age twenty to thirty, was a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 in Denver, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 and taught herself botany. In 1890 she assumed a post in the herbarium
Herbarium
In botany, a herbarium – sometimes known by the Anglicized term herbar – is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in...

 at the California Academy of Sciences
California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is among the largest museums of natural history in the world. The academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research, with exhibits and education becoming significant endeavors of the museum during the twentieth...

. Eastwood was given a position as joint Curator of the Academy with Katherine Brandegee in 1892. By 1894, with the retirement of Brandegee, Eastwood was procurator and Head of the Department of Botany, a position she held until she retired in 1949.

In her early botanical work, Eastwood made a number of collecting expeditions to the edge of the Big Sur
Big Sur
Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast of California where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The name "Big Sur" is derived from the original Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big...

 region, which at the end of the 19th century was a virtual frontier, since no roads penetrated the central coast beyond the Carmel
Carmel Highlands, California
Carmel Highlands is an unincorporated community in Monterey County, California, United States. It is located south of Carmel-by-the-Sea , at an elevation of 318 feet . Carmel Highlands is located between Carmel to the north, and Big Sur to the south, and is close to Point Lobos State Reserve...

 Highlands. In those excursions she discovered a number of plants theretofore unknown, including Eastwood's willow and Hickman's potentilla
Hickman's potentilla
Potentilla hickmanii is an endangered perennial herb of the rose family. This rare plant species is found in a narrowly restricted range in two locations in coastal northern California, in Monterey County, and in very small colonies in San Mateo County...

. Eastwood was credited with saving the Academy's type plant
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

 collection after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...

. Opposing curatorial conventions of her era, Eastwood segregated the type specimens from the main collection. This classification system permitted her, upon entering the burning building
Building
In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...

, to readily retrieve 1500 specimens.

After the earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...

, before the Academy had constructed a new building, Eastwood studied in Herbaria in Europe and other U.S. regions, including the Gray Herbarium, the New York Botanical Garden
New York Botanical Garden
- See also :* Education in New York City* List of botanical gardens in the United States* List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City- External links :* official website** blog*...

, the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually referred to as Kew Gardens, is 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses between Richmond and Kew in southwest London, England. "The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" and the brand name "Kew" are also used as umbrella terms for the institution that runs...

. In the 1912 with completion of the new Academy facilities at Golden Gate Park; Eastwood returned to the position of Curator of the Herbarium and reconstructed the lost part of the collection. She went on numerous collecting vacations in the Western United States, including Alaska, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

 and Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

. By keeping the first set of each collection for the Academy and exchanging the duplicates with other institutions Eastwood was able to build the collection, Abrams noted that she contributed "thousands of sheets to the Academy's herbarium, personally accounting for its growth in size and representation of western flora". By 1942 she had built the collection to about one third of a million specimens.

Eastwood is credited with publishing over 310 articles during her career. She served as editor of Zoe and as an assistant editor for Erythea before the 1906 earthquake, and founded a journal, Leaflets of Western Botany (1932–1966) with John Thomas Howell
John Thomas Howell
John Thomas Howell was an American botanist and Eriogonum expert. He was the assistant of Alice Eastwood.The genus Johanneshowellia of the Polygonaceae family is named in his honor.-References:...

. Eastwood was director of the San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 Botanical Club for several years throughout the 1890s, and has eight species named for her. A member of the California Academy of Science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

s since 1892, she was unanimously elected an Honorary Member of the Academy in 1942. Her main botanical interests were western U.S. Liliaceae
Liliaceae
The Liliaceae, or the lily family, is a family of monocotyledons in the order Liliales. Plants in this family have linear leaves, mostly with parallel veins but with several having net venation , and flower arranged in threes. Several have bulbs, while others have rhizomes...

 and the genera Lupinus, Arctostaphylos
Arctostaphylos
Arctostaphylos is a genus of plants comprised by the manzanitas and bearberries. They are shrubs or small trees.There are about 60 species of Arctostaphylos, ranging from ground-hugging arctic, coastal, and mountain species to small trees up to 6 m tall. Most are evergreen , with small oval...

and Castilleja
Castilleja
Castilleja, commonly known as Indian paintbrush or Prairie-fire, is a genus of about 200 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants native to the west of the Americas from Alaska south to the Andes, northern Asia, and one species as far west as the Kola Peninsula in Siberia...

. She died in San Francisco on October 30, 1953.

She was honoured in the binomial name of Boletus eastwoodiae, an attractive though poisonous bolete of western North America which she collected. However, this was renamed Boletus pulcherrimus
Boletus pulcherrimus
Boletus pulcherrimus, commonly known as Alice Eastwood's boletus or the red-pored bolete, is a species of mushroom in the Boletaceae family. It is a large bolete from Western North America with distinguishing features that include a finely netted surface on the upper third of the stem, a red to...

due to a misidentification of type material. It still bears the common name of Alice Eastwood's bolete.

Selected publications online



External links

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