__NOTOC__ Alice Eastwood (January 19, 1859 – October 30, 1953) was a Canadian American botanist. She is credited with building the botanical collection at the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

, in San Francisco. She published over 310 scientific articles and authored 395 land plant species names, the fourth-highest number of such names authored by any female scientist. There are seventeen currently recognized species named for her, as well as the genera '' Eastwoodia'' and '' Aliciella''.

Biography

Alice Eastwood was born on January 19, 1859, in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, Canada, to Colin Skinner Eastwood and Eliza Jane Gowdey Eastwood. When she was six her mother died. The children were cared for by various relatives, and for a time, Alice and her sister were placed at the Oshawa Convent in Toronto. The family reunited with their father and moved to

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, Colorado, in 1873. In 1879, she graduated as valedictorian from East Denver High School. For the next ten years, Eastwood would teach at her ''alma mater'', forgoing a college education. She was a self-taught botanist, and relied on knowledge from published botany manuals including Grey's Manual and the Flora of Colorado. Her botanical knowledge led her to being asked to guide Alfred Russel Wallace up the summit of

Grays Peak Grays Peak is the tenth-highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America and the U.S. state of Colorado. The prominent fourteener is the highest summit of the Front Range and the highest point on the Continental Divide and the Conti ...

in Denver. Eastwood was also a member of

Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (1866–1948) was an American zoologist, born at Norwood, England, and brother of Sydney Cockerell. He was educated at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and then studied botany in the field in Colorado in 188 ...

's Colorado Biological Association. In 1891, after reviewing Eastwood's specimen collection in Denver,

Mary Katharine Brandegee Mary Katharine "Kate" Brandegee (October 28, 1844 – April 3, 1920) was an American botanist known for her comprehensive studies of flora in California. Life Brandegee was born Mary Katharine Layne on October 28, 1844. She was the second child ...

, Curator of the Botany Department at the

, hired Eastwood to assist in the Academy's Herbarium. There Eastwood oversaw tremendous growth of the Herbarium. In 1892, Eastwood was promoted to a position as joint curator of the Academy with Brandegee. By 1894, with the retirement of Brandegee, Eastwood was procurator and Head of the Department of Botany, a position she held until her 1949 retirement. She died in San Francisco on October 30, 1953. The Academy retains a collection of her papers and works.

Work

In her early botanical work, Eastwood made collecting expeditions in Colorado and the Four Corners region. She became close with the Wetherill Family, and visited Alamo Ranch in

Mesa Verde Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Established ...

often, beginning in July 1889. Long before that, she was considered a part of the family, and so did not sign the guest register on later trips. Each time Eastwood visited, she was particularly welcomed by Al Wetherill, who shared a sincere interest in her work. In 1892, he served as her guide on a 10-day trip to southeastern Utah to collect desert plants. Eastwood also made collecting expeditions to the edge of the Big Sur region, which at the end of the 19th century was a virtual frontier, since no roads penetrated the central coast beyond the Carmel Highlands. In those excursions she discovered several plants theretofore unknown, including

Hickman's potentilla ''Potentilla hickmanii'' (called Hickman's potentilla or Hickman's cinquefoil) 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, ...

. Eastwood was credited with saving the Academy's type plant collection after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Departing from the curatorial conventions of her era, Eastwood segregated the type specimens from the main collection. This classification system permitted her, upon entering the burning building, readily to retrieve nearly 1500 specimens. After the earthquake, 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 The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

, the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

of Paris, the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. In 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 Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

(1914),

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

and

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...

. Starting in 1928, Eastwood accompanied fellow botanist Susan Delano McKelvey on several collecting expeditions in the Southwest and they built a lasting collaboration, frequently corresponding and exchanging specimens. 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 noting 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, nearly three times the number of specimens destroyed in the 1906 fire. Eastwood is credited with publishing over 310 articles during her career. She served as editor of the biological journal ''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. Eastwood was director of the San Francisco Botanical Club for several years throughout the 1890s. In 1929, she helped to form the American Fuchsia Society. Her main botanical interests were western U.S.

Liliaceae The lily family, Liliaceae, consists of about 15 genera and 610 species of flowering plants within the order Liliales. They are monocotyledonous, perennial, herbaceous, often bulbous geophytes. Plants in this family have evolved with a fair a ...

and the genera ''

Lupinus ''Lupinus'', commonly known as lupin, lupine, or regionally bluebonnet etc., is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae. The genus includes over 199 species, with centers of diversity in North and South America. Smaller centers occur ...

'', ''

Arctostaphylos ''Arctostaphylos'' (; from "bear" and "bunch of grapes") is a genus of plants comprising the manzanitas () and bearberries. They are shrubs or small trees. There are about 60 species, of ''Arctostaphylos'', ranging from ground-hugging arc ...

'' and ''

Castilleja ''Castilleja'', commonly known as paintbrush, 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 on ...

''.

Gallery

File:Bergen's botany - key and flora - Pacific coast ed (Page 19) BHL18868236.jpg File:Bergen's botany (Page 22) BHL13296275.jpg File:Bergen's botany - key and flora - Pacific coast ed (Page 21) BHL18868238.jpg File:Bergen's botany - key and flora - Pacific coast ed (Page 163) BHL18868399.jpg File:Bergen's botany - key and flora - Pacific coast ed (Page 22) BHL18868239.jpg File:A flora of the South Fork of Kings River (Page 6) BHL7377732.jpg File:A flora of the South Fork of Kings River (Page 7) BHL7377733.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 24) BHL23642288.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 351) BHL23642197.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 54) BHL23642318.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 371) BHL23642219.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 187) BHL23642027.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 137) BHL23641969.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 75) BHL23641903.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 79) BHL23641909.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 365) BHL23642213.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 81) BHL23641911.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 321) BHL23642163.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 138) BHL23641970.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 341) BHL23642187.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 343) BHL23642189.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 182) BHL23642446.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 22) BHL23642286.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 140) BHL23641972.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 70) BHL23641898.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 209) BHL23642049.jpg File:Foundations of botany (Page 37) BHL23641865.jpg

Recognition

* There are currently seventeen recognized species named for Eastwood, as well as the genera '' Eastwoodia'' and '' Aliciella''. *A member of the California Academy of Sciences since 1892, she was unanimously elected an honorary member of the Academy in 1942. *In 1959, the CAS opened the Eastwood Hall of Botany *In 1903 she was one of only two of the few women listed in American Men of Science to be denoted, by a star, as being considered to be among the top 25% of professionals in their discipline. *In 1949, in recognition of her achievements, the American Fuchsia Society awarded her with its Medal of Achievement. * She was honored in the binomial name of ''Boletus eastwoodiae'', an attractive though poisonous

bolete {{refimprove, date=July 2020 A bolete is a type of mushroom, or fungal fruiting body. It can be identified thanks to a unique mushroom cap. The cap is clearly different from the stem. On the underside of the cap there is usually a spongy surf ...

of western North America which she collected. However, this was renamed ''

Boletus pulcherrimus ''Rubroboletus pulcherrimus''—known as ''Boletus pulcherrimus'' until 2015—is a species of mushroom in the family Boletaceae. It is a large bolete from Western North America with distinguishing features that include a netted surface on the ...

'' due to a misidentification of type material. It still bears the common name of Alice Eastwood's bolete. *Eastwood worked to save a redwood grove in Humboldt County, which was later named Alice Eastwood Memorial Grove.

Plant species named after Eastwood

* ''Agoseris apargioides'' var. ''eastwoodiae'' (woolly goat chicory, Eastwood's seaside agoseris, Beach Dandelion) *'' Amsinckia eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's Fiddleneck) * ''Delphinium parryi'' ssp. ''eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's larkspur) *'' Fritillaria eastwoodiae'' (Butte County fritillary) *'' Salix eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's willow) *'' Aliciella latifolia'' *'' Erigeron aliceae'' *'' Eastwoodia elegans'' *'' Erythranthe (Mimulus) eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's Monkeyflower)

Genera named after Eastwood

* '' Eastwoodia'' * '' Aliciella''.

Selected publications online

Bergen's botany
(1901) With Joseph Young Bergen.
A flora of the South Fork of Kings River
(1902)
Leaflets of western botany
Vol. 1–10 with index (1932–1966) With J.T. Howell.
Zoe: a biological journal
Vol. 3–4. (1892) With K.L. Brandegee and T.S. Brandegee. Retrieved 2009-08-19.
A Handbook of the Trees of California
(1905) San Francisco, California Academy of Sciences.

References

External links

Works by Alice Eastwood
available online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Fourth series, Vol. XXV
available online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Inventory to the papers of Alice Eastwood at the California Academy of Sciences Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eastwood, Alice 19th-century Canadian botanists American taxonomists Botanists active in California 1859 births 1953 deaths Women taxonomists People associated with the California Academy of Sciences American women botanists Canadian women botanists American science writers Canadian science writers Botanists active in North America Scientists from Toronto Writers from Toronto People from San Francisco Scientists from California 19th-century American botanists 20th-century American botanists 20th-century American women scientists 19th-century Canadian women scientists 20th-century Canadian women scientists 19th-century American women scientists 20th-century Canadian botanists