Robert Ornduff (1932–2000) 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 ...

. He was Director of the

University and Jepson Herbaria The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botanical natural histo ...

, Director of the

University of California Botanical Garden The University of California Botanical Garden is a 34-acre (13.7 ha) botanical garden located on the University of California, Berkeley campus, in Strawberry Canyon. The garden is in the Berkeley Hills, inside the city boundary of Oakland, Cali ...

, Executive Director of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, and Chair of the (former)

Department of Botany Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

and Professor of Integrative Biology at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. Botanist

Phyllis M. Faber Phyllis M. Faber is an American botanist who did extensive work organizing and promoting the California Native Plant Society. She was editor of '' Fremontia: A Journal of the California Native Plant Society'' for 16 years, from 1983 to 1999. It wa ...

said of him following his death, "his extensive knowledge and love of the California flora remains unmatched."''Introduction to California Plant Life''
Robert Ornduff, Phyllis M. Faber, Todd Keeler-Wolf; 2003 revised ed.; Preface, p. x He was a specialist in the systematics of various plant groups in California, particularly the

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

Menyanthaceae Menyanthaceae is a family of aquatic and wetland plants in the order Asterales. There are approximately 60-70 species in six genera distributed worldwide. The simple or compound leaves arise alternately from a creeping rhizome. In the submers ...

, and

Limnanthaceae The Limnanthaceae are a small family of annual herbs occurring throughout temperate North America. There are eight species and nineteen taxa currently recognized. Members of this family are prominent in vernal pool communities of California. Some ...

. He contributed to the treatments of four families in the 1993

Jepson Manual ''The Jepson Manual'' is a flora of the vascular plants that are either native to or naturalized in California. Botanists often refer to the book simply as ''Jepson''. It is produced by the University and Jepson Herbaria, of the University of C ...

. He also worked on the population biology of

cycads Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody ( ligneous) trunk with a crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male o ...

biogeography Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...

, and in biographical research on Charles Darwin historic figures in botanical exploration.Robert Ornduff, University of California Berkeley website
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ornduff, Robert American botanical writers American taxonomists Biogeographers 1932 births 2000 deaths Botanists active in California University of California, Berkeley administrators Writers from California Scientists from California 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American botanists American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American academics