Elizabeth May McClintock (7 July 1912 – 19 October 2004) was a

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 ...

who was born in

San Jacinto, California San Jacinto ( , ; ) is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. It is located at the north end of the San Jacinto Valley, with Hemet, California, Hemet to its south and Beaumont, California, Beaumont to its north. The mountains ...

, United States, and grew up near the

San Jacinto Mountains The San Jacinto Mountains ()Munro, P., et al. ''A Mojave Dictionary''. Los Angeles: UCLA. 1992. are a mountain range in Riverside County, California, Riverside County, located east of Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles in southern California i ...

. She earned a

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

in 1937 and a

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in 1939 from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

and a Ph.D. in

botany 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 ...

in 1956 from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

. She specialized in

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

and distribution of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s, and focused on

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

natives. She documented

invasive plant An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native speci ...

s in California, and compiled information on

toxicity Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance or a particular mixture of substances can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacteria, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect o ...

poisonous plants Plants that cause illness or death after consuming them are referred to as poisonous plants. The toxins in poisonous plants affect herbivores, and deter them from consuming the plants. Plants cannot move to escape their predators, so they must ...

cultivated in the state.

Works

McClintock was a

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 ...

botanist at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

from 1941 through 1947. From 1949 until her retirement in 1977, she was a

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

in the Department of Botany 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 ...

. She added many tree specimens from Golden Gate Park to the herbaria after noticing they were not well documented. She successfully battled the proposed Panhandle Freeway addition to the

Central Freeway The Central Freeway is a roughly one-mile (1.5 km) elevated freeway in San Francisco, California, United States, connecting the Bayshore/ James Lick Freeway ( US 101 and I-80) with the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Most of the freeway is p ...

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 ...

in 1960 and defended the rare dune tansy. In 1976 she launched Pacific Horticulture magazine, after editing the Journal of the California Horticultural Society (1945–1975) for several years. She was also an Associate at the

Jepson Herbarium The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbarium, herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botany, botan ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, and a collaborator on The Jepson Manual project. In 2002 she was awarded with the Royal Horticultural Society's Gold Veitch Memorial Medal. In 2004, Dr. Elizabeth McClintock died peacefully at a convalescent home in

Santa Rosa, California Santa Rosa (Spanish language, Spanish for "Rose of Lima, Saint Rose") is a city in and the county seat of Sonoma County, California, Sonoma County, in the North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay A ...

at the age of 92.

References

External links

*''Trees of Golden Gate Park and San Francisco''. By Elizabeth McClintock. Edited and arranged by Richard G. Turner Jr. Heyday Books, 2001 () This book is based on the writings of E. McClintock, whose column on the trees of Golden Gate Park was a feature of Pacific Horticulture magazine for twenty-five years. Botanists active in California 1912 births 2004 deaths American women botanists People associated with the California Academy of Sciences University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Michigan alumni Scientists from Los Angeles Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area 20th-century American botanists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women American women curators American curators {{US-botanist-stub