Posted with permission. I added the links. -jsq
Remembering Elsie Quarterman
by Paul Somers, Ph.D.
Retired State Botanist, Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program
and former botanist, Tennessee Natural Heritage Program
Not wanting to miss a chance to pay tribute to my friend, the 103+
year old Dr. Elsie Quarterman, I’m sitting down to reflect on my
remembrances of this wonderful woman who befriended me and many
other botanical and conservation colleagues. It was the summer of
1976 when I moved to Nashville to join the young staff of the
Tennessee Heritage Program as its first botanist. The program, now
well established with the State Department of Environment and
Conservation, benefited greatly from the prior work of Dr.
Quarterman (Elsie) and many of her graduate students at Vanderbilt
University who had done vegetation and rare plant studies in the
Central Basin of Tennessee.
For help with understanding and
conserving the best examples of cedar glades and their many endemic,
nearly endemic, or otherwise rare Tennessee plant species, I and
other colleagues frequently turned to Elsie and her Continue reading →