Botanist’s Credit for Species’ Distinctions

The Aug. 20 story on the botanist and Pholisma paniculatum (“Botanist’s Belated Reward,” by Kim Kowsky) was interesting for the wrong reasons. Bonnie Templeton was curator of botany when I came to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History as senior curator of botany in 1970. She incorrectly stated that she had no assistants. Robert Gustafson, himself an eminent botanist and expert on tropical plants, had worked for her many years with little credit for his efforts. Discrimination was not the problem with Templeton’s lack of widespread recognition, and it is not true that men in the museum were able to purchase books at museum expense and she was not.

I also had the pleasure of knowing the extraordinary botanist Philip A. Munz, who was director of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and professor of botany at the Claremont graduate schools. He, in collaboration with David D. Keck, then head curator of the New York Botanical Garden, in 1959 published “A California Flora.” On page 551 of this 1,681-page volume, there is cited “Pholisma arenarium Nutt. ex Hook” (Nuttal and Hooker being responsible for the name of the genus and this species). After giving a synopsis of the habit, habitat and chromosome number (determined by the California botanist Sherwin Carlquist), he notes its parasitic nature and writes, “The coastal form tends to differ from the desert plants by more branched (inflorescence) and the style (is) longer than the stamens; it has been named P. paniculatum Templeton. “ Yes, Bonnie Templeton.

How much recognition does she need? Is she still reduced to tears by every event that does not correspond to her perceptions? Botanists disagree often on species distinctions, and it was generous of Munz and Keck to cite her impression of a separate species. There are many fine women botanists leading the discipline with their excellent research. I am pleased to find that Templeton is still on (the dunes) with her Pholisma paniculatum, for which opinion (not research) she is duly credited.

WILLIAM A. EMBODEN Ph.D., F.L.S.

Professor emeritus, biology

California State University, Northridge