ENHS Nature Trails February 2002 Article 1

This month's speaker: Dr. Rhoda Love

(Our scheduled speaker, Alan Dickman, needs to be elsewhere this Friday; he will give his talk on "Forest Health and Forest Disease" in the 2002/2003 lecture series. The ENHS is very fortunate that Rhoda Love, PhD. a wonderful botanist well-known to the community at large, has willingly stepped in to take Alan's place as speaker this month.)

"The 'Grand Old Man' is featured on the cover of the Fall, 2000 (vol 91, no 4) issue of The Pacific NorthwestQuarterly. In an article rich in historic and botanic detail, Rhoda writes a biographical account of a botanist with a long, active, and fascinating life that spanned a golden age of northwest botany, from Civil War times into the Forties. L.F. Henderson's life was filled with historic adventures both personal and botanical. At what was seemingly the apex of his career, his vast collection of specimens, herbaria sheets, and copious personal notes were destroyed in a fire. Temporarily discouraged, he took-up farming. A few days before his 70th birthday, Henderson . . . ."* Well, I won't tell you anymore; enjoy stories of Henderson on Friday from his chief biographer, Rhoda Love. Rhoda, a retired botany teacher from Lane Community College, currently edits the Oregon Flora Newsletter, is a checklist project leader with the Oregon Flora Project and can often be found in her ongoing role leading and inspiring others in workshops, on hikes . . . .

WERE YOU INTERESTED IN NATURE AS A CHILD?
Apparently so, as many photos of me as a child show me holding a flower or leaf. Finding a tiny green tree frog in a well on Marrowstone Island is a vivid memory.

PARENTAL INFLUENCES?
My father took me for walks in Seattle and named the flowers--I especially remember the bachelor button. Mother had a wonderful garden and a strong connection with the soil and growing things. My beloved Austrian-born Uncle Joe told me wonderful tales about seagulls, chipmunks and sow bugs.

ANY NATURE HOBBIES?
Apparently I was a somewhat fey child, wandering in the woods, watching wild animals, caring for orphaned baby birds, climbing in the trees, and making up stories about everything.

WHO INFLUENCED YOU TO PURSUE STUDIES IN BOTANY?
I was awakened to the joys of botany and ecology by superb classes at the University of Washington from C. L. Hitchcock and A. R. Kruckeberg. A fantasic all-summer field trip throughout the West in 1952 with these two outstanding teachers sealed my fate!

WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR TRAINING?
I earned my BS and MS at the University of Washington; I studied for my PhD with super-ecologist Stanton Cook at UO.

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO OUR TOWN?
The 3 of us, my husband Glen, our infant son Stan and I arrived in 1965 when Glen was hired by the UO English Department.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TALK ABOUT?
The life of Louis F. Henderson, botanist extrodinaire!

WHAT HAVE YOU PUBLISHED ON HENDERSON?
In the year 2000, my first published article on Henderson appeared in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, a history journal from the University of Washington. (The PNQ had previously published my account of the life of botanist W. N. Suksdorf). I later expanded the Henderson material into a full-length monograph published in 2001 as an Occasional Paper of the Native Plant Society of Oregon.

Rhoda's lively and informative article on Henderson is available from NPSO at a special discount price of $8.00 to Natural History Society members only. Details at lecture. Doing a little sleuthing, I learned that Rhoda received not one but two National Science Foundation Awards. Under one she studied radiation biology, and under the other she studied ecology for the summer in Minnesota. Many of us will recognize Henderson's name on some of our favorite wild flowers, such as the lovely Erythronium hendersonii pictured here.

Photo by Tanya Harvey. See more of her flowers, butterflies, birds... here.

*Thanks to Louise Parsons of the North American Rock Garden Society who permitted our use of her summary.

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