From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2025.
There are lots of flowery (and punny) metaphors that have been made about botany professors being the nurturing mentors in a garden of life. And for all these poetic analogies, Carl completely personified and transcended them. Carl had an infectious sense of positivity that made everyone around him really excited about plants. This is probably why he had so many productive collaborations with fellow botanists around the world and here in the Department of Botany. His seemingly magical ability to make anything super-exciting is probably why all the graduate students he advised were so focused and dedicated and went on to have such successful careers. There is no doubt that all field botany classes at the local universities, field trips with Natural History Research Experiences (NHRE) interns, and Q?rius high-school botany workshops were made ten-fold more enriching by Carl’s involvement.
Carl’s humble, down-to-earth demeanor often shrouded the erudite polylingual scholar that he was. As a Research Associate here at the U.S. National Herbarium, his work was multifaceted, integrating all dimensions of life science research. He brought to our lab his nuclear gene cloning and cytology methods where he worked at the lab bench side-by-side with his students, even on weekends. His work on allopolyploid speciation was cutting-edge and provided important data for critically endangered species and the understudied floras of the American southeast. He was a true organismal biologist growing specimens from spores in axenic lab culture as well as in his incredibly diverse home greenhouse and garden. During field excursions, he taught the next generation of botanists proper hand-lens techniques and specimen pressing with symmetry as perfect as the neatness and accuracy of his field notebooks.
In an age of uncertainty and scientific demoralization, Carl’s unwavering optimism, kind personable demeanor, and stoic wisdom were a panacea. He gave so selflessly and brought energy and life to everyone around him. Like Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, he provided all he could to support his students and colleagues without complaint or hesitation. Although Carl may no longer be with us, he surely knew that he would live on for many generations through the community of the brilliant scientists he had nurtured.
- Gabe Johnson
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