Reid Venable Moran

Reid Venable Moran (June 30, 1916 – January 21, 2010) was an American botanist and the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1957 to 1982.[1]

Reid Venable Moran
San Diego Natural History Museum Curator of Botany Reid V. Moran. (Photo: San Diego Natural History Museum Research Library)
BornJune 30, 1916
Los Angeles, California, United States
DiedJanuary 21, 2010(2010-01-21) (aged 93)
Clearlake, California, United States
NationalityAmerican
Scientific career
FieldsBotany
InstitutionsSan Diego Natural History Museum
Author abbrev. (botany)Moran

Moran was the world authority on the Crassulaceae, a family of succulent plants, and in particular the genus Dudleya, the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation. He named at least 18 plants new to science — some in that family and some not — and published many papers elucidating relationships within the Crassulaceae. As a mark of the respect he earned among his peers, more than a dozen plants have been named for him. Jane Goodall described Moran as "a sort of living myth in botanical exploration in Baja California and the Pacific Islands of Mexico," citing specifically his analysis of the environmental impact of introduced species (especially goats) on the flora of Guadalupe Island.[2]

Biography

Born in Los Angeles, California on June 30, 1916 to Edna Louise Venable and Robert Breck Moran (a petroleum geologist),[3] Moran was raised in Pasadena. He received his B. A. from Stanford University in 1939[4] and his M. S. from Cornell University in 1942. After service as a navigator in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946, Moran received his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A Revision of Dudleya (Crassulaceae)." [5][6]

Moran conducted a botanical survey of the Channel Islands for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and performed taxonomic work for the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden[7] and the Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University[8][9] before joining the San Diego Museum of Natural History as curator of botany, succeeding Ethel Bailey Higgins in 1957.[10]

Moran specialized in the systematics of the Crassulaceae (the stonecrop family), and in the floristics of the Baja California peninsula. In addition to a large number of technical research papers, Moran published The Flora of Guadalupe Island[11] and the treatment of the Crassulaceae for the Flora of North America (Vol. 8, published in 2009).[12] He co-authored (with Frank W. Gould) The Grasses of Baja California, Mexico in 1981 and (with Geoffrey A. Levin) The Vascular Flora of Isla Socorro, Mexico in 1989.

Among Moran's publications was "Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles" (1966), a paper which comprised, apart from its title and acknowledgements, just five words and a reference number.[13][14]

Moran died on January 21, 2010, in Clearlake, California.[15]

See the list of genera and species described by Moran. "Author Details for Reid Venable Moran" (HTML). International Plant Names Index. International Organization for Plant Information (IOPI). Retrieved 2015-10-16.

References
  1. "Reid Moran: Scientist was expert on plants from island off Baja". San Diego Union-Tribune. February 2, 2010. Archived from the original on 2016-11-14. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  2. Goodall, Jane (2009). Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink. Grand Central Publishing. pp. 333–335. ISBN 978-0446543385. Retrieved 4 April 2016. jane goodall guadalupe.
  3. Wrather, W. E. (April 1962). "Memorial: Robert Breck Moran (1879-1961)". Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. 46 (4): 554–556. Archived from the original on 2016-04-23. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  4. Pegg, Jenny (2010). "Witty Botanist". Stanford Magazine. Archived from the original on 2016-09-11. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  5. "Moran, Reid V. (1916-2010). Historical Note". University and Jepson Herbaria Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
  6. "Field Notes of Reid Moran". Flora of Baja California (San Diego Natural History Museum).
  7. Moran, Reid (January 1948). "The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden". National Horticultural Magazine. 27.
  8. Oberbauer, Thomas (Jul 2010). "Reid Moran: 1916-2010" (PDF). Fremontia. 38 (2–3): 62–64. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  9. Robinson, B. (1981). "Reid Moran, the biography of a botanist". JSTOR Global Plants. Archived from the original on 2015-11-26. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  10. Engstrand, Iris; Bullard, Anne (1999). Inspired by Nature: The San Diego Natural History Museum after 125 Years. San Diego, Calif.: San Diego Society of Natural History. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-918969-04-0.
  11. Moran, Reid (1996). "The Flora of Guadalupe Island". Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences. 19.
  12. Moran, Reid V. (2009). Flora of North America, Vol 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  13. Jackson, Morgan D. (10 July 2013). ""I got it there then" – Reid Moran, 1962". Madroño. 16: 272. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  14. Moran, Reid (1962). "Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles". Madroño. California Botanical Society. 16 (8): 272.
  15. "Dr. Reid Venable Moran". The San Diego Union-Tribune. February 2010.
  16. IPNI.  Moran.
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