Dennis Eugene Breedlove (September 14, 1939,

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

– June 4, 2012) was an American botanist, herbarium curator, and plant collector. He is "best known for his collections and floristic studies in the Mexican state of

Chiapas Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises Municipalities of Chiapas, 124 municipalities and its capital and large ...

, and his

ethnobotanical Ethnobotany is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of natural and social sciences that studies the relationships between humans and plants. It focuses on traditional knowledge of how plants are used, managed, and perceived in human societi ...

work in that state with various collaborators."

Education and career

After graduating from St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in 1957, Dennis Breedlove attended the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

, where he graduated with an A.B. degree in 1962. In 1968 he graduated from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

with a Ph.D. His doctoral dissertation, entitled "The systematics of ''Fuchsia'' section ''Encliandra'' (Onagraceae)", was written under the supervision of

Peter H. Raven Peter Hamilton Raven (born June 13, 1936) is an American botanist and environmentalist, notable as the longtime director, now President Emeritus, of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Early life On June 13, 1936, Raven was born in Shanghai, Chin ...

. After briefly working as a research botanist at the

University of California Botanical Garden The University of California Botanical Garden is a 34-acre (13.7 ha) botanical garden located on the University of California, Berkeley campus, in Strawberry Canyon. The garden is in the Berkeley Hills, inside the city boundary of Oakland, wit ...

on the Berkeley campus, Breedlove became in 1969 an assistant curator at San Francisco's

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

herbarium. For his entire career he was employed by the California Academy of Sciences, where he was promoted to associate curator, chaired the botany department, and retired as curator emeritus and a lifetime fellow. In 1960, he began working with ethnographer, anthropologist, and linguist Robert M. Laughlin to compile a comprehensive ethnobotanical inventory of the plants known to the Tzotzils living in the municipality of

Zinacantán San Lorenzo Zinacantán () is a town and Municipalities of Chiapas, municipality in the List of states in Mexico, Mexican state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. 99.1% of its population is Tzotzil people, Tzotzil Maya, an indigenous peoples of Mexico ...

in the highlands Chiapas. In 1964, Breedlove (who could speak Tzeltal Mayan), Brent Berlin, and Peter H. Raven began 10 years of ethnobotanical research among the Tzeltals and other

Maya peoples Maya () are an ethnolinguistic group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived w ...

in the highlands of Chiapas. Their 660-page book ''Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification'' was published in 1974 with a paperback reprint in 2013. San Francisco Botanical Garden's Apulca pines, which can grow to over 45 meters, were grown from seed brought back to San Francisco by Breedlove in 1986. ''Deppea splendens'' is a synonym of ''Csapodya splendens''. In 1968, a species of lizard ''Anolis breedlovei'' (junior synonym of ''

Anolis cuprinus ''Anolis'' is a genus of anoles (), iguanian lizards in the family Dactyloidae, native to the Americas. With more than 425 species, it represents the world's most species-rich amniote tetrapod genus, although many of these have been proposed to b ...

'') was named in honor of Dennis Breedlove.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Breedlove", p. 38).

Selected publications

Articles

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Books

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References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Breedlove, Dennis Eugene 1939 births 2012 deaths 20th-century American botanists 21st-century American botanists American ethnobotanists Plant collectors University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Stanford University alumni People associated with the California Academy of Sciences