__NOTOC__ Alice Eastwood (January 19, 1859 – October 30, 1953) was a

Canadian American Canadian Americans () are American citizens or in some uses residents whose ancestry is wholly or partly Canadian, or citizens of either country who hold dual citizenship. Today, many Canadian Americans hold both US and Canadian citizenship. Th ...

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

. 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, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. 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 ''Aliciella'' is a genus of plants in the Polemoniaceae, phlox family. It includes 23 species native to the western United States and northwestern Mexico. These plants have been treated as members of genus ''Gilia'' until recently, when it was pr ...

''.

Biography

Alice Eastwood was born on January 19, 1859, in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Canada West, to Colin Skinner Eastwood and Eliza Jane Gowdey Eastwood. Her father worked at the

Toronto Asylum for the Insane Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the fourth-most populous city in North America. The city ...

. When she was six her mother died; Eastwood and her siblings were cared for by various relatives, and for a time, Alice and her sister were placed at the Oshawa Convent in Toronto. In 1873, Eastwood and her siblings were reunited with their father and moved to

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

, Colorado. In 1879, she graduated as

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the class rank, highest-performing student of a graduation, graduating class of an academic institution in the United States. The valedictorian is generally determined by an academic institution's grade poin ...

from East High School, where she then taught for ten years. Eastwood was a self-taught botanist and learned from published botany manuals including '' Gray's Manual'' and the ''Flora of Colorado''. Her botanical knowledge led her to being asked to guide

Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 pap ...

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 Contine ...

in Denver. Eastwood was also a member of

Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (22 August 1866 – 26 January 1948) was an American entomologist and Systematics, systematic biologist who published nearly 4,000 papers, some of them only a few lines long. Cockerell's speciality was the insect or ...

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

Mary Katharine Brandegee Mary Katharine Brandegee (formerly Curran, Layne; October 28, 1844 – April 3, 1920) was an American Botany, botanist known for her comprehensive studies of flora in California. Life Brandegee was born Mary Katharine Layne in Tennessee on Oct ...

, Curator of the Botany Department at the

, hired Eastwood to work in the academy's

herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant biological specimen, specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sh ...

. In 1892, she 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 she retired in 1949. Eastwood died in San Francisco on October 30, 1953. The California Academy of Sciences retains a collection of her papers and works.

Work

Early in her career, Eastwood made collecting expeditions in Colorado and the

Four Corners Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. Most of the Four Corners regio ...

region. She became close with the Wetherill Family, and visited Alamo Ranch in

Mesa Verde Mesa Verde National Park is a national park of the United States and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, and the only World Heritage Site in Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Pueblo ...

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 an interest in her work. In 1892, he served as her guide on a 10-day trip to southeastern

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

to collect desert plants. Eastwood also made collecting expeditions to the edge of the

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of the U.S. state of California, between Carmel Highlands and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Range, Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from th ...

region, which at the end of the 19th century was a virtual frontier, since no roads penetrated the central coast beyond the Carmel Highlands. On those excursions, she discovered several plants, including Hickman's potentilla. Eastwood is credited with saving the academy's type plant collection after the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli inte ...

. Departing from the curatorial conventions of her era, Eastwood segregated the type specimens from the main collection. This

classification system Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identif ...

permitted her to retrieve 1,497 specimens from the damaged building. The cabinet she had stored them in was damaged; using her apron, she lowered the specimens from a window to a friend as the fire after the earthquake approached, then commandeered a wagon. The specimens and records she saved were almost all that survived of the academy's collection. 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 Harvard University Herbaria and Botanical Museum are institutions located on the grounds of Harvard University at 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Botanical Museum is one of three which comprise the Harvard Museum of Natural ...

, 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 (NMNH) 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. With 4.4 ...

of Paris, the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. In 1912, with completion of the new academy facilities at

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park is an urban park between the Richmond District, San Francisco, Richmond and Sunset District, San Francisco, Sunset districts on the West Side (San Francisco), West Side of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the Lis ...

, 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 ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

(1914),

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

and

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

. Her well-known

exsiccata Exsiccata (Latin, ''gen.'' -ae, ''plur.'' -ae) is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae are numbered collections of dried herbarium Biological specimen, spe ...

-like series of plant specimens from California has in parts printed labels entitled ''California Academy of Sciences, Flora of California''. Starting in 1928, Eastwood accompanied fellow botanist

Susan Delano McKelvey Susan Adams Delano McKelvey (1883–1964) was an American botanist and writer, noted for her work at the Arnold Arboretum. Early life McKelvey was born as Susan Magoun Delano on March 13, 1883, in Philadelphia and was a member of the prominent ...

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 John Thomas Howell (November 6, 1903 – May 7, 1994) was an American botanist and taxonomist. He became an expert of ''Eriogonum'' (buckwheat) species, which are widely represented in the native California flora. He was the assistant of Alice ...

. 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 fai ...

and the genera ''

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

'', ''

Arctostaphylos ''Arctostaphylos'' (; from "bear" and "bunch of grapes") is a genus of plants comprising the manzanitas () and bearberries. There are about 60 species of ''Arctostaphylos'', ranging from ground-hugging arctic, coastal, and mountain shrub t ...

'' and ''

Castilleja ''Castilleja'', commonly known as paintbrush, Indian paintbrush, or prairie-fire, is a genus of about 200 species of Annual plant, annual and Perennial plant, perennial mostly herbaceous plants native to the west of the Americas from Alaska sout ...

''.

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 '' Eastwoodiella''. *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 women listed in ''American Men of Science'' to be denoted, by a star as 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 A bolete is a type of mushroom, or fungal fruiting body. It can be identified thanks to a unique cap. On the underside of the cap there is usually a spongy surface with pores, instead of the gills typical of mushrooms. A similar pore surface i ...

of western North America which she collected. However, this was renamed '' Boletus pulcherrimus'' 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) *''

Arctostaphylos crustacea ssp. eastwoodiana ''Arctostaphylos'' (; from "bear" and "bunch of grapes") is a genus of plants comprising the manzanitas () and bearberry, bearberries. There are about 60 species of ''Arctostaphylos'', ranging from ground-hugging arctic, coastal, and mountai ...

'' (Eastwood's Brittleleaf Manzanita) *''

Arctostaphylos glandulosa ssp. glandulosa ''Arctostaphylos'' (; from "bear" and "bunch of grapes") is a genus of plants comprising the manzanitas () and bearberries. There are about 60 species of ''Arctostaphylos'', ranging from ground-hugging arctic, coastal, and mountain shrub to ...

'' (Eastwood's Manzanita) *''

Amsinckia eastwoodiae ''Amsinckia eastwoodiae'' is a species of fiddleneck known by the common name Eastwood's fiddleneck. It is endemic to California, where it grows in the varied plant habitat of the hills, mountains, valleys, and coastlines. ''Amsinckia eastwoodi ...

'' (Eastwood's Fiddleneck) * ''Delphinium parryi'' ssp. ''eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's larkspur) *'' Erigeron aliceae'' *'' Erythranthe (Mimulus) eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's Monkeyflower) *'' Fritillaria eastwoodiae'' (Butte County fritillary) *''

Malacothamnus eastwoodiae ''Malacothamnus eastwoodiae'' is a species of flowering plant in the mallow family known by the common name Alice's lovely bushmallow. It is named after the botanist Alice Eastwood. It is endemic to Santa Barbara County, California and currently ...

'' (Alice's lovely bushmallow) *'' Podistera (Lomatium) eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's Woodroot) *'' Salix eastwoodiae'' (Eastwood's willow)

Genera named after Eastwood

* ''

'' * '' Eastwoodia'' * '' Eastwoodiella''

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 19th-century American botanists 20th-century American 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 Botanists from Colorado People from Old Toronto Scientists from San Francisco Scientists from California 20th-century American women scientists 19th-century Canadian women scientists 19th-century Canadian scientists 20th-century Canadian women scientists 19th-century American women scientists 20th-century Canadian botanists Canadian emigrants to the United States