Kareen Sturgeon richly deserves the Fellows Award for 33 years of contributions to the Native Plant Society of Oregon. NPSO was the first organization that Kareen joined when she arrived in Oregon in 1980, and she immediately met many like-minded plant- lovers who remain friends to this day. Despite the length of her service, she…
A computer search for photos of Pacific Northwest plants, using a scientific or common name, often finds Paul Slichter’s treasure trove of plant photos and information called Flora and Fauna Northwest. Over the years, Paul developed this website that offers plant lists for a variety of popular locations in Oregon and Washington, plant images, user-friendly…
As an active member who has dedicated his skills and talents to the Native Plant Society of Oregon for over twenty-five years, Dan Luoma has rotated through a number of board positions during that time. He joined our Society in 1982 when Esther McEvoy was getting people together to form the Corvallis Chapter. Dan served…
Dave was born in 1946 in New York and grew up in New York and Washington, DC. His earliest memories of being inspired by plants were on family visits to the New York Botanical Garden. He earned degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado and Stanford University. Moving to the Rocky Mountains opened…
Physicians as botanists were common in the early exploration of the Northwest, including George Engelmann, Archibald Menzies, William Fraser Tolmie, William Tennant Gairdner, and John Strong Newberry. Bend physician Stu Garrett carries on this physician-naturalist tradition, not exploring and reporting new species, but conserving Oregon’s native flora. It is particularly fitting that Garrett worked for…
When Frank Callahan was an impressionable lad of ten his grandfather Walter LaMinter told him: “You are from a long line of pioneers, you need to go out and make discoveries.” Fortunately Frank took his grandfather’s advice and applied it to the plant world with a keen eye for seeing what others have overlooked. He…
This is the story of four Douglas County women, self-proclaimed “Little Old Ladies in Hiking Boots,” whose passion for native plants placed their county at the forefront of the Oregon Flora Project. The four women, Lois Wesley Hopkins, Mildred Thiele, Joan Fosback, and Mary Carlson, founded the herbarium at the Douglas County Museum of History…
When Barbara Robinson first saw the oak/pine area of the Columbia Gorge, she knew she had found home. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Barbara came west to attend Reed College in Portland, finishing a joint major in psychology and philosophy in 1970. In 1972 she completed a MS in psychobiology from the University of California, Irvine….
Russell I. Jolley was born in Texas on December 6, 1922. He obtained a BS in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M. After graduation, he served in the US Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He studied astronomy at the University of Leiden in Holland where he discovered two variable stars, before realizing…
Charlene McMahon Holzwarth was born in Beattie, Kansas, in 1927. After earning a BS degree from Kansas State University, she moved west to Oregon. Here she continued her education, earning an Oregon Teaching Certificate. She began a career of teaching elementary age children in Portland which lasted 34 years, mostly as a full-time substitute teacher….
Rex Jerrold Igo was born April 25, 1929 in Weleetka, Okla-homa, the youngest of ten children of William Everett Igo and Mary E. Igo. They moved west in the early years of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, arriving in Medford, Oregon, in 1933 where the family farmed and grew peaches. Jerry graduated from Medford…
Long-time plant en-thusiast Veva Stansell knows there is much work to be done when it comes to cataloguing plants in Oregon, but the 73-year-old south-western Oregon resident welcomes the challenge. “There are times I wish I lived closer to a univer-sity, but on the other hand there are advantages to living far away,” said Veva,…