Kenton (Ken) L. Chambers (1929-2024)

Kenton (Ken) L. Chambers
(1929 - 2024)

Kenton L. Chambers passed away on May 22, 2024 at Good Samaritan Regional Hospital after a brief illness. He was born in Los Angeles, California on September 27, 1929 to Maynard Macy Chambers and Edna (Miller) Chambers. Ken spent his early years in Pasadena, Whittier and Laguna Beach. He was active in Boy Scouts, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He took piano lessons from an early age, sang in a boys choir, played baritone horn in junior high and trombone in high school and college. He graduated from Paso Robles HS in 1945 and attended Whittier College on a four-year scholarship. He majored in biology and graduated in 1950 with highest honors. While at Whittier, Ken became an accomplished chess player.

Ken's post-graduate studies continued at Stanford University with an emphasis in botany. He received his Ph.D in 1955 and did post-doctoral work at UCLA. In 1956 he joined the faculty in the Department of Botany at Yale University. Ken met his future wife, Henrietta Laing, at Yale and they were married in June 1958. Their daughter Elaine was born in New Haven in 1960 and son David was born in 1961 in Corvallis.

In 1960, Ken accepted a position in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State College (now OSU). His research on several genera of Asteraceae (Compositae) allowed for Ken to have field studies over the next 30 years in Oregon and California. He mentored 15 Ph.D. students and 16 Masters students. Ken took a leave from OSU in 1967 when he chaired the Systematic Biology Program for NSF in Washington, DC. In the mid-1970's Ken became involved with an Oregon state task force on rare and endangered plants which culminated in co-authorship of "Rare, Threatened and Endangered Vascular Plants in Oregon". He was a member of many professional societies including The American Society of Plant Taxonomists where he served as president in 1979. In 1989, the year before Ken retired from OSU, he received the OSU Alumni Distinguished Professor Award and a Certificate of Merit from the Botanical Society of America. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2006, a Botanical Society of America Centennial Award for exemplary service to Plant Science. Ken was the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed papers.

In 1974, Ken and his family built a log cabin from a pre-fab kit on property in Camp Sherman that has become a favorite family destination for 50 years. After Ken retired, he volunteered on the Oregon Flora Project and then collaborated with Dr. George Poinar on publishing 40 species of ancient flowers imbedded in amber. He and Henny enjoyed taking cruise vacations. He performed in eight Gilbert & Sullivan operettas at OSU and played baritone horn in the Corvallis Community and New Horizons bands. He started writing long palindromes to the enjoyment of friends and family and a collection of them will be published in his memory.

Ken is predeceased by his brother, Derrell. He is survived by his wife Henrietta, daughter Elaine Rea (Bill), son David, four grandchildren: Brian Chambers (Jenny Metcalf), Melanie Chambers (Jeremy Laughton), Hayley Rea Sherman (Aaron), and Holly Rea, and three great-grandchildren: Drake Pike, Holden Sherman, and Arlo Sherman. No service is planned per Ken's request. The family will celebrate his life in Camp Sherman later this summer. Memorial donations may be made to The Nature Conservancy or OSU Foundation.

Photo and obituary from Albany Democrat-Herald, 4 June 2024.

For more details on Ken's life and accomplishments, please see the Festschrift published in honor of his 70th birthday.

Derral Raymon Herbst (1934–2023)

photo by: Clyde Imada, BISH

Derral Raymon Herbst, Pacific botanist 
(1934–2023) 

Derral Herbst was a prominent figure in Hawaiian and Pacific botanical science from 1971 until his retirement. Derral was born in Faith, South Dakota, on October 13, 1934 and received his Bachelor’s degree from Black Hills State University in South Dakota. Following a period of high school teaching in Montana, South Dakota, and Guam in 1964 he enrolled in the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, to begin doctoral studies. He was awarded the PhD in 1971 for a dissertation entitled “The ontogeny of the disjunct foliar veins in Euphorbia forbesii Sherff.” Although Derral published widely on floristics, plant taxonomy, and ecology, at heart he was always aplant anatomist. 

Following completion of his PhD, Derral was the first botanist hired in 1971 at the nascent Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden (now the National Tropical Botanical Garden) and he then worked in turn for the University of Hawaiʻi, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS, where he was the Endangered Species Botanist), and finally at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers(USACE), Honolulu office. For much of his working career he maintained a close working relationship with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, where he was a Research Associate in Botany. Following retirement, Derral stopped all botanical work and took up research on genealogy, a pastime he greatly enjoyed. He loved to tell stories about his grand-aunt, Mattie Goff Newcombe, a famous rodeo trick rider and, later, cattle ranch owner; his genealogical explorations found many interesting details about his family history in the Dakotas. 

During Derral’s working career he was able to travel extensively throughout the Hawaiian Islands, including the remote and seldom visited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, as well as many islands and atolls of Micronesia and parts of Polynesia. Derral was an old-school plant collector who documented his field work with carefully prepared voucher specimens, typically with some duplicates for distribution. The principal set was deposited at BISH with duplicates widely distributed in A, GH, HAW, L, PTBG, US and others. Derral’s early botanical collections formed the foundation of the PTBG herbarium. His field collecting books are deposited in BISH and will be digitized in time (B. Kennedy, pers. comm., 2023). To date we have been able to verify Derral’s collection numbers ran at least as high as 9,881. 

Although Derral was deeply committed to plant conservation and devoted his career to working toward the preservation and protection of rare species in the Hawaiian flora, his position with the federal agency responsible for listing endangered species put him directly on the firing line for criticism from organizations and individuals who felt the USFWS was dragging its feet on listing efforts. Throughout the 1990s, as pressure and criticism of the slow pace for new endangered species listing grew, Derral took this personally; he often remarked to me, sadly, that the lawyers were running the show with the listing process, instead of the biologists. When several conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the USFWS to try and force them to speed up listing efforts, Derral took it very hard. Ultimately, the stress from this tense, acrimonious situation led him to make a transfer to the USACE, where he was still available to serve as a resource to aid conservation efforts, but was no longer directly in the line of fire. He remained with the Army Corps of Engineers until his retirement. 

Derral believed deeply in public service: he often said that scientists who were able to conduct research funded by governments, agencies, or grants had an ethical obligation and responsibility to share the knowledge they gained with the community they served. Derral lived this ideal to the fullest and was extraordinarily generous with his time and knowledge, sharing his mana‘o to educate and inform anyone who asked for his help. His knowledge of Hawaiian, Micronesian, and Polynesian flora was encyclopedic and also extremely detailed. Derral was an active member of the Hawaiian Botanical Society for many years, serving as Vice President in 1974, President in 1975, a Director in 1976, and as Treasurer from 1982–1989. Among his many public service roles he very much looked forward to volunteering each year as a lei plant identifier for the annual Honolulu Lei Day competition on May 1. He also served pro bono for several years on a committee that crafted an updated Mission Statement and created the first Living Collections Policy for the Honolulu Botanical Gardens, the oldest and most extensive tropical plant collection in the Islands. 

Derral published more than one hundred peer reviewed scientific articles and technical reports as well as several books, including the Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawaii (with W.L. Wagner and S.H. Sohmer, 1990, revised 1999); A Tropical Garden Flora (with G. Staples, 2005); and Hawaiian Plant Life: Vegetation and Flora (with R. J. Gustafson and P. W. Rundel, 2014). The Manual was recognized by IAPT with the Engler Medal in Silver in 1990 and A Tropical Garden Flora was awarded the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Literature Award in 2007. Never a boastful person, Derral was quietly and deeply proud of these recognitions. It was always amusing to see Derral approach an award ceremony, or almost any social occasion really: he was a self-professed curmudgeon, a role he played quite well. It took a fair amount of wheedling and persuasion to convince him to go to any event where there were going to be people present. But then when he got there, Derral came out of his shell and became animated and talkative; afterwards he glowed for days! Quite an amusing transformation to see the curmudgeon had a social butterfly hidden inside. 

At least six plants (species or infraspecific taxa) are named in honor of Derral R. Herbst and he authored or co-authored eight plant species names. 

In his later years, through 2019, Derral gifted more than 1,700 botanical books and bound journals to the Herbarium Pacificum (BISH) where they are kept as a reference resource for staff and visitors. Some of his manuscripts and project-related files are also kept in BISH. Additional botanical books that formed part of his estate at the time of his death will be donated to the Black Hills State University in South Dakota. 

For those who wish to read personal reminiscences of Derral, many of them citing instances of his kindness and generosity in sharing with others, a memorial site has been set up: https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/0VeqekBA where friends and colleagues shared photos and stories about him and may continue to do so. 

Derral R. Herbst died in his sleep on March 6, 2023, aged 88, in Honolulu, Hawaii, after a period of declining health. He was buried April 1 in the cemetery at White Owl, South Dakota. His life partner, Stanley Yamashita, had predeceased him. 

Ua pau ka lei aloha a Derral, ua hoʻomaka ʻia ā ua pau pono nō ia.

Biography submitted by George Staples

Obituary: Dr. Alan Graham

From: www.alangrahambotanist.com

Alan Graham, PhD. (1934–2021)

Alan was a native of Houston, Texas, who moved north to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, after receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Botany at the University of Texas, supported by a full athletic tennis scholarship. At the University of Michigan, he met and married his wife of over 60 years, Shirley.  Following completion of their PhDs, they spent a post-doctoral year at Harvard University, then moving then to Kent State University, where he held a joint faculty appointment in Botany and Geology for nearly 40 years. He is survived by his wife, son Andrew Graham and daughter-in-law Julia, daughter Alison Graham, son Bruce Graham and granddaughter Kenzie Graham.
 

Alan leaves an exceptional record of success as a teacher and Professor of Botany and Geology at Kent State University, and as a scholar through his internationally recognized research on fossil plants and vegetational history. He published over 200 research papers and authored seven books. Among many awards for his work were: Distinguished Scholar Award, Kent State University; Outstanding Teacher Award from the College of Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Council at Kent State; The Smithsonian Institution Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany; the Asa Gray Medal; the highest award of the American Society of Plant Taxonomy; the Natural History Museum (London)/Marsh Trust Award for Best Earth Sciences Book of the Year, Land Bridges, 2018; and Distinguished Fellow and Merit Award, Botanical Society of America.
 

Alan also leaves a personal legacy to all he knew. He was a loving and generous teacher and father, a mentor to his many students, including over 350 whom he guided through 12 summers of “Biological Field Studies in Mexico and the American West”, a scholar, world traveler, and one who touched lives over many decades with his friendship and erudite humor.

Obituary: Dr. Karl Peter Buttler

Dr. Karl Peter Buttler (1942-2018) was a botanist, ecologist, systematist and expert in orchids. He was a member of ASPT from 1976 until his death. Colleagues at the Wetterau Society described Karl a very sympathetic, calm and active person.

Dr. Buttler studied biology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main , from 1961 to 1963 and then at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. In 1967 he received his doctorate in Munich in the working group of Hermann Merxmüller with a dissertation on "Cytotaxonomic studies on Central and southern European Draba species". He was then employed as a scientific assistant at the Institute for Systematic Botany at the University of Munich. In later years he worked as a freelance Botanist and non-fiction author in Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach am Main.

Dr. Buttler collected numerous plants for various herbaria; 32,000 of which are at the Herbarium Senckenbergianum Frankfurt/M. (FR). He was the lead author of the updated "List of Vascular Plants in Germany", which was published in December 2018 in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). Karl also helped co-author the third and fourth versions of the IUCN Red List of Ferns and Seed Plants in Hesse in 1997 and 2008.

A funeral for Dr. Karl Peter Buttler was held on 11 Jan 2019 and he was buried in the Frankfurt-Bornheim cemetery.