Dennis Breedlove, an Appreciation

TAXON 61 (5) • October 2012: 1137–1141 Plant Systematics World Plant SyStematicS World Edited by Vicki A. Funk DENNIS BREEDLOVE, AN APPRECIATION Dennis Eugene Breedlove (1939–2012), curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences from 1969 to 1994 and a prominent collector of Mexican plants, died on 4 June 2012. Breedlove was born in Oakland, California, received an A.B. degree in 1962 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed a Ph.D. in 1968 at Stanford University. His doctoral studies on Fuchsia sect. Encliandra (Onagraceae; Breedlove, 1969) were directed by Peter H. Raven. After a brief stint as a research botanist at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley, Breedlove came to the Academy in 1969. With the exception of brief collecting trips to Trinidad and the páramo in the Cordillera Oriental of Colombia, his field work was centered in western North America and northern Latin America. Research on plants of California and Nevada (especially in the Sweetwater Mountains on the border between these states), Mexico (especially Chiapas, the Sierra Surutato in Sinaloa, and the peninsula of Baja California), and Guatemala led him on numerous collecting trips. His studies of Mexican plants reinvigorated an interest in tropical botany at the Academy, and led to significant growth of the herbarium’s collections. Breedlove is best known for his collections and floristic studies in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and his ethnobotanical work in that state with various collaborators. His activities in Chiapas were supported, in large part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF). His more than 72,000 sets of collections consisted of vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, fungi, insects, snails, and reptiles. He collected seeds of plants from higher elevations in Chiapas and Oaxaca that led to the establishment of the New World Cloud Forest at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Some of the species that he brought back from Chiapas for cultivation (e.g., Deppea splendens, Magnolia sharpii, Symplocos hartwegii, and S. tacanensis) are now either very rare or presumed extinct in the wild. The first set of Breedlove’s collections (except fungi) is deposited at the Academy (with the earliercollected specimens in DS and the later-collected ones in CAS) with duplicates widely distributed among herbaria in Mexico and the United States. The CAS collection of macrofungi (including Breedlove’s Chiapan collections) was transferred to NY in 2001. Dennis E. Breedlove in Chiapas, Mexico in the early 1970s with a plant of Bixa orellana (left; photo by G. Lindsay, C.A.S. Special Collections), and in the New World cloud forest at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in the early 1990s (right; photo by C. Kopp, C.A.S. Special Collections). Version of Record (identical to print version). 1137 TAXON 61 (5) • October 2012: 1137–1141 Plant Systematics World With collaborating colleagues Breedlove published on diverse plant families (including Actinidiaceae, Apiaceae, Asteraceae, Ericaceae, Fabaceae, Gentianaceae, Hypericaceae, Onagraceae, Scrophulariaceae, Rubiaceae, and Thymelaeaceae) in numerous botanical subdisciplines (including cytology, ecology, ethnobotany, evolution, floristics, and taxonomy). In the mid-1980s, while studying Quercus for a treatment of Fagaceae for the Flora of Chiapas and Flora Neotropica, Breedlove developed an intense interest in this genus, which was to direct most of his field activities and herbarium studies until retirement. His collections of oaks, often consisting of mass samples, were obtained throughout Mexico. His many field trips led to a detailed understanding of the rich oak flora of Mexico including the importance of natural hybridization as a factor in both variation and possible speciation. Unfortunately, he did not publish his findings and conclusions about Mexican oaks. After 25 years at the Academy, Breedlove retired in June, 1994. In retirement, he was appointed curator emeritus at the Academy, but he devoted his time to pursuits other than botanical research and was rarely in contact with his friends and colleagues. He and his wife, Chrissie (nee Spreckels) Breedlove, lived in the Marin county town of Bolinas where they grew orchids, apples, Mexican oaks, and other plants in a large garden. Breedlove is survived by his wife Chrissie, and two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage. Dennis Breedlove had a complex and sometimes puzzling personality. He could be both helpful and generous or withdrawn and secretive. Many of his friends and colleagues experienced both aspects of his personality, and it was the former tendencies, in spite of the latter ones, that drew people to Dennis. He loved to recount tales from his collecting trips in Mexico and his years in the Academy’s Department of Botany to those at the department’s daily gathering for lunch. He was much admired and respected by his colleagues, and by those for whom he collected specimens (plant or animal). A memorial service for this remarkable man was held in June, 2012 on Mt. Tamalpais near his home in Bolinas. Breedlove’s primary contributions to botany consist of his collaborative ethnobotanical studies, the Flora of Chiapas project and publications, and the more than 72,000 collections that he made, mostly in Chiapas. Although the locality data for some collections from remote regions of Chiapas is often frustratingly vague, the collections themselves are generous, well pressed, and dried so as to preserve colors when possible. Botanists and students-in-training continue to describe new taxa of flowering plants based on his Mexican collections. Breedlovea, a genus of Chiapan mosses, was described by the eminent bryologist Howard Crum in his honor, and more than 60 species of vascular plants bear his name—a fitting testament to the most prolific collector of Chiapan plants. Ethnobotanical studies. — In 1962, Breedlove worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Although systematics and floristics were to be the focus of his training, Breedlove was able to combine anthropological and botanical interests during his career. In collaboration with his graduate advisor and several anthropological colleagues, Breedlove was involved in both the theory and practice of ethnobotany. A seminal series of high-profile papers (Berlin & al., 1966, 1968, 1973; Raven & al., 1971) espoused theories and practices for studying classifications in traditional (non-western) cultures and the relationships of these folk taxonomies to modern systems of 1138 classification. The culmination of their efforts was the publication of Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification, an Introduction to the Botanical Ethnography of Mayan Speaking People of Highland Chiapas (Berlin & al., 1974), one of the more influential treatises in the field of ethnobotany. It reveals the underlying classificatory principles of the Tzeltal and the cultural significance of their botanical knowledge. Breedlove’s collaborative ethnobotanical work on Mayan speaking peoples of Mesoamerica resulted in two other important studies, Breedlove & Hopkins (1970, 1971a, b) and Breedlove & Laughlin (1993). Flora of Chiapas. — In graduate school Breedlove was considering a doctoral project involving taxonomy of the Eriogonum umbellatum (Polygonaceae) complex when he learned that a botanist was being sought to identify plants used by the Tzeltal Indians in Chiapas. Breedlove took the position and spent two years collecting plants in Chiapas. This presented an opportunity to learn scientific and local names of plants and their uses. He also became interested in learning the language of the indigenous people from whom he learned so much. Chiapas, in southernmost Mexico, is botanically the second-richest state in country with some 8250 species (Breedlove, 1981). When Breedlove began his work there, the state’s flora was little-collected and poorly known. Breedlove collected in Chiapas, often for extensive periods, every year between 1964 and 1992 (except for 1969 and 1990). He lived in and used the colonial town of San Cristóbal de las Casas as his base of operations intermittently for two decades. His collections were made during a time when much of the original vegetation of that state was still intact. Breedlove undertook many of his collecting trips to Chiapas accompanied by other Academy botanists (e.g., F. Almeda, B. Anderson, B. Bartholomew, M. Bourell, T. Daniel, B. Keller, E. McClintock), scientists from other herbaria (e.g., G. Davidse, R. Dressler, E. Palacios, P. Raven, A. Smith, J. Strother, R. Thorne), horticulturists (e.g., D. Mahoney, J. Sigg), and others (e.g., C. Burns, D. Axelrod). In the field, Breedlove was often accompanied by his longtime ethnobotanical informant and co-collector, Alush Ton, a Tzeltal Mayan from Tenejapa, Chiapas. During his early years in Chiapas, Breedlove decided to augment the floristic and vegetational studies begun on Chiapan plants by Eizi Matuda and Faustino Miranda, and to produce a comprehensive Flora of the state. The first part of the Flora of Chiapas was published by the California Academy of Sciences in 1981; it consists primarily of an introduction to the state’s physiographic regions and vegetational formations, and a history of botanical exploration in the state (Breedlove, 1981). Six parts of the Flora of Chiapas followed with Breedlove editing most of them: pteridophytes (Smith, 1981), Malvaceae (Fryxell, 1990), Acanthaceae (Daniel, 1995), Compositae-Heliantheae s.l. (Strother, 1999), and five miscellaneous small families (Actinidiaceae, Keller, 2005; Garryaceae, Daniel, 2005; Krameriaceae, Daniel, 2005; Styracaceae, Fritsch, 2005; Symplocaceae, Kelly & Almeda, 2005). A complete checklist of the flora of Chiapas, including bryophytes and vascular plants, was published in 1986 (Breedlove, 1986). The comprehensive floristic account remains incomplete, but a solid foundation for it remains in place with the widely distributed collections and a database of the entire Chiapan collection (Breedlove and all other collectors) at the California Academy of Sciences (http://research .calacademy.org/redirect?url=http://researcharchive.calacademy .org/research/botany/coll_db/index.asp&xAction=ShowForm&Co untry=Mexico&State=Chiapas). Version of Record (identical to print version). TAXON 61 (5) • October 2012: 1137–1141 Plant Systematics World Literature cited Berlin, B., Breedlove, D.E. & Raven, P.H. 1966. Folk taxonomies and biological classification. Science 154: 273–274. Berlin, B., Breedlove, D.E. & Raven, P.H. 1968. Convert categories and folk taxonomies. Amer. Anthropologist 70: 290–299. Berlin, B., Breedlove, D.E. & Raven, P.H. 1973. General principles of classification and nomenclature in folk biology. Amer. Anthropologist 75: 214–242. Berlin, B., Breedlove, D.E. & Raven, P.H. 1974. Principles of Tzeltal plant classification: An introduction to the botanical ethnography of a Mayanspeaking people of highland Chiapas. New York: Academic Press. Breedlove, D.E. 1969. The systematics of Fuchsia section Encliandra (Onagraceae). Univ. Calif. Publ. Bot. 53: 1–69. Breedlove, D.E. 1981. Flora of Chiapas, pt. 1, Introduction to the Flora of Chiapas. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Breedlove, D.E. (ed.) 1986. Listados florísticos de México IV. Flora de Chiapas. México: Instituto de Biología, UNAM. Breedlove, D.E. & Laughlin, R.M. 1993. The flowering of man: A Tzotzil botany of Zinacantán. Smithsonian Contr. Anthropol. 35(1–2): 1–706. Breedlove, D.E. & Hopkins, N.A. 1970. A study of Chuj (Mayan) plants, with notes on their uses. Wasmann J. Biol. 28: 275–298. Breedlove, D.E. & Hopkins, N.A. 1971a. A study of Chuj (Mayan) plants, with notes on their uses. II. Wasmann J. Biol. 29: 107–128. Breedlove, D.E. & Hopkins, N.A. 1971b. A study of Chuj (Mayan) plants, with notes on their uses. III. Wasmann J. Biol. 29: 189–205. Daniel, T.F. 1995. Acanthaceae. Pp. 1–158 in: Breedlove, D.E. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 4. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Daniel, T.F. 2005a. Garryaceae. Pp. 15–19 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 6. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Daniel, T.F. 2005b. Krameriaceae. Pp.20–23 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 6. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Fritsch, P.W. 2005. Styracaceae. Pp. 24–32 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 6. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Fryxell, P.A. 1990. Malvaceae. Pp. 1–90 in: Breedlove, D.E. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 3. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Keller, B.T. 2005. Actinidiaceae. Pp. 1–14 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 6. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Kelly, L.M. & F. Almeda. 2005. Symplocaceae. Pp. 33–40 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 6. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Raven, P.H., B. Berlin & Breedlove, D.E. 1971. The origins of taxonomy. Science 174: 1210–1213. Smith, A.R. 1981. Pteridophytes. Pp. 1–370 in: Breedlove, D.E. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 2. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Strother, J.L. 1999. Compositae-Heliantheae s.l. Pp. 1–232 in: Daniel, T.F. (ed.), Flora of Chiapas, pt. 5. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences. Thomas F. Daniel & Frank Almeda Department of Botany, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California 94118, U.S.A. the Genetics section, then part of the Botany Department at CEPEC, the research center of CEPLAC. His first collection, made with CEPEC colleague, Raimundo Talmon Soares dos Santos of the Herbarium of the Centro de Pinheiro, was Glycydendron amazonicum Ducke (Euphorbiaceae) Pesquisas do Cacau (CEPEC) of the Comissão Executiva do Plano and almost ended his collecting career when he sampled the fruits. da Lavoura Cacaueira (CEPLAC) in Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil, died in In October of that year, he started working under the direction of Itabuna, Bahia on 15 June 2012. Talmon was a brilliant botanist and Sergio da Vinha, Director of the CEPEC Herbarium, on a large represented an important but undersurvey of the flora of the cocoa region appreciated group: the self-trained of Bahia and Espírito Santo. On one of his early collecting trips, he pressed, field botanist. In Brazil, this group includes some of the most important numbered, and dried the specimens, and perceptive plant collectors in the took his field book to the secretary country. Talmon was instrumental in to get labels made, mounted the best revealing one of the richest and most specimen for CEPEC, and separated the duplicates. Once da Vinha saw interesting floras on earth, that of the this, Talmon was sent into the field Atlantic forests of Bahia. Talmon was born in Itabuna on 25 more, and he was appointed trip coorMay 1935, the son of Raphael Soares dinator. He was promoted to Field Asdos Santos and Maria Carmosina dos sistant and then to “Prático Agricola.” Santos, and married to Josefa dos SanIn 1978, he was awarded a gold medal tos who predeceased him. They had and the equivalent of US$ 15,000 as one daughter, Tanelícia, who lives in Model Employee for all of CEPLAC. Itabuna. Talmon received a primary Also in 1978, Dr. Scott Mori school education and later worked as a assumed the position of Director of mason and as a wood cutter. During his the CEPEC Herbarium. With the actime as a wood cutter, he familiarized tive participation of the CEPEC staff himself with the trees of coastal Bahia. (André M.V. de Carvalho and the seIn March of 1964, at the age of 29, nior author, LAMS) Mori initiated one he joined CEPLAC (then called the Esof the most active periods of collecttação Experimental Arnaldo Medeiros) ing at CEPEC, most of it involving as a field hand. His hard work and inTalmon. Soon after Mori’s arrival, he telligence was quickly recognized, and met Talmon, José Leandro Hage, and Talmon S. dos Santos in Uruçuca, Bahia in November, 2002 (photo by Wayt Thomas). by June of that year, he was shifted to Luiz Alberto Mattos Silva and spent TALMON SOARES DOS SANTOS (1935–2012) Version of Record (identical to print version). 1139