Donovan "Don" Stewart Correll (13 April 1908,
Wilson, North Carolina
Wilson is a city in and the county seat of Wilson County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, 23rd-most populous city in North Carolina. Located about east of the capital city of Raleigh, North Car ...
– 28 March 1983,
Miami, Florida
Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...
) was an American botanist, plant collector, and plant taxonomist, specializing in
orchid
Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Orchids are cosmopolitan plants that are found in almost every habitat on Eart ...
s.
Biography
Correll grew up in North Carolina. For two years, before entering college, he took voice lessons and sang solos in church and on radio. He also spent a year doing various jobs in Florida. At Duke University, he graduated with A.B. in 1934, A.M. in 1936, and Ph.D. in 1939. Some of his doctoral work was done at Harvard University, where he worked under the orchidologist
Oakes Ames, who introduced him to
economic botany
Economic botany is the study of the relationship between people (individuals and cultures) and plants. Economic botany intersects many fields including established disciplines such as agronomy, anthropology, archaeology, chemistry, economics, ethn ...
. At Harvard, Correll was financially assisted by the Anna C. Ames Memorial Scholarship.
In 1937 he married Helen Elizabeth Butts (1907–2000).
She received her Ph.D. in zoology from Duke University in 1934. She worked extensively on botany with her husband and became an expert on grasses and sedges.
He was from 1939 to 1943 a research associate at the
Harvard University Botanical Museum. In 1943 he also worked as a botanist for the
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...
(USDA) on the Alaska Highway Botanical-Geological Survey, which was connected with the