Florence Signaigo Wagner (February 18, 1919 – October 21, 2019) was an American

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

who served as president of the

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Biography

Florence Signaigo was born in Birmingham, Michigan, on February 18, 1919 and grew up in Highland Park. Her first botanical interest focused on

red algae Red algae, or Rhodophyta (, ; ), are one of the oldest groups of eukaryotic algae. The Rhodophyta also comprises one of the largest phyla of algae, containing over 7,000 currently recognized species with taxonomic revisions ongoing. The majority ...

. She studied at the College of William & Mary (B.A. Philosophy), and the University of Michigan (M.A. Latin American studies), before receiving a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation, under the phycologist

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, was titled, ''Contributions to the Morphology of the Delesseriaceae''. Florence Signaigo Wagner" (1954). She graduated in 1952, and published her thesis as a paper, in which she described the new genus Marionella, named for her landlady, the Berkeley embryologist and cytologist

Marion Elizabeth Stilwell Cave Marion Elizabeth Cave (11 February 1904 – 26 September 1995) was an American plant embryologist and cytogeneticist. She obtained her PhD from University of California, Berkeley where she pioneered the approach to distinguish plant taxonomy us ...

(1904–1995). After marrying a fellow graduate student, she moved with him to Michigan in 1951 and they both joined the University of Michigan. She was employed as a botanist in Tunja, Colombia, and at the University of Michigan as a research scientist for more than five decades. Although known as a researcher, she also undertook field work collecting specimens. Her international identifier on the International Plant Names Index is 31701-1. As is usual in botany, she is listed as an abbreviation rather than using her full name when quoted or mentioned: F.S. Wagner.

Offices held

She held many offices in university, regional, and national societies including Chair of the Pteridological Section of the

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(1982-1984) and Vice-President (1984-1985) and then President (1986-1987) of the

Personal life

She married the botanist Warren "Herb" Wagner, Jr. (1920–2000), who also became her work partner and co-author, and they had two children, Margaret and Warren. She died in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...

, on October 21, 2019.

Selected publications

Wagner published dozens of scientific papers. * Wagner, F. S. (1954). Contributions to the morphology of the Delesseriaceae. ''Univ. Calif. Publs Bot.'', ''27'', 279-346. * Wagner, F. S. (1955). CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MORPHOLOGY. ''University of California Publications in Botany'', ''7'', 279. * Wagner, W. H., Wagner, F. S., Sutton, R. G., Rukavina, N. A., Towle, E. L., Tanghe, L. J., & Riggsby, E. D. (1965). Rochester area log ferns (Dryopteris celsa) and their hybrids. Rochester Academy of Science. * Wagner, W. H., & Wagner, F. S. (1966). ''Pteridophytes of the Mountain Lake Area Giles Co., Virginia: Biosystematic Studies 1964-1965''. * Wagner, W. H., & Wagner, F. S. (1975). ''A hybrid polypody from the New World tropics''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Florence Signaigo 1919 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American botanists American women botanists American botanists College of William & Mary alumni University of Michigan alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni American centenarians Women centenarians People from Birmingham, Michigan