ARKANSAS

Delzie Demaree (1889-1987) refused to buy a car. Instead, he would board a bus and ask the driver to let him off in the middle of nowhere. Then he'd hike into the woods, collect for the day, and hike back to the road to await the next bus. Demaree began work on Arkansas flora in the 1920s. His 1943 catalogue of the vascular plants of Arkansas, self-published in the first and only issue of his journal Taxodium and circulated among friends, expanded on the work of Branner and Coville published in 1891 and that of Bucholz and Palmer in 1926

Demaree, who received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1932, is regarded as one of the botanists who closed up the frontier in the South. Though his work was controversial, with some charging that Demaree's lack of personal transportation meant that he missed many species, his was nonetheless the most thorough catalogue of Arkansas vascular plants at that time. No definitive state flora of Arkansas has yet been published.

Demaree collecting plants
Demaree in Lower California, 1930. This image is courtesy of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, Inc. of Fort Worth. Click on image to enlage. (140 KB)

PANEL 1

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Douglas Holland doug.holland@mobot.org