 Steve Boyd in the Chocolate Mountains
I am a native southern Californian, and was born, raised, and continue to live in the city of Riverside.
I was educated at the University of California, Riverside (BS in 1980, and MS in 1983), where I was a student of Dr. Frank C. Vasek, both as an undergraduate, and graduate student. My Master's thesis was a study of the vascular flora of the Gavilan Hills region, western Riverside County, California.
While an undergraduate at UCR, I assisted in curatorial activities of the UCR herbarium (1979-1980), including moving the collection from temporary quarters into the UCR Botanic Garden. Other major activities were culling poor quality specimens from the then under-curated collection, and processing the recently donated extensive private herbarium of John and Albert Roos.
During graduate school and for two years afterwards, I worked as a biological consultant (1980 -1985), helping to found the consulting firm, Tierra Madre Consultants, and participating in fieldwork throughout southern California, and to a lesser extent, southern Nevada, Utah, and Arizona.
Seeking to expand my botanical horizons, I left the consulting business and came to work at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in 1985, starting as a part-time herbarium technician. I then became Herbarium Manager in 1986, Administrative Curator of the Herbarium in 1993, and finally, Curator in 1999.
Significant accomplishments within the RSA herbarium include the following: - Shepherd the herbarium through a period of substantial growth, and modernization of both facilities and collection management functions.
- Specimen storage space optimized through installation of compactor systems in three of the four collection ranges (all of the areas capable of supporting these units), and the purchase of many new herbarium cases.
- Organized the transfer and integration into RSA of several sizable vascular plant collections including those of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LAM), University of Southern California (USC), Alan Hancock Foundation (AHFH), and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CSPU), as well as the personal herbaria of three important southern California collectors, Louis C. Wheeler, Mary DeDecker, and Bonnie Templeton.
- Developed and implemented a computer-based system for tracking specimen transactions (e.g., loans, gifts, etc.) and accession records.
- Working in collaboration with the herbarium of the University of California, Riverside (UCR), developed and implemented an integrated system to manage specimen label data, including retrospective data capture and generation of labels for new collections.
- Developed a cadre of volunteers to mount nearly all the new specimens being added to the herbarium holdings (saving the Garden over 1/2 FTE).
- Established an effective model for incorporating undergraduate students as paid interns, providing students exposure to the diversity of activities and functions associated with a large and active herbarium.
- Helped to develop the Garden's highly regarded program of applied botanical field conservation projects, including close collaboration with the Angeles National Forest, San Bernardino National Forest, and Cleveland National Forest.
My personal research interests revolve around documentation of the southern California flora, especially the Transverse and Peninsular ranges. Of particular note are studies of the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness, and Agua Tibia Wilderness areas of the Cleveland National Forest, and the Liebre Mountains region of the Angeles National Forest. During the course of fieldwork, I've been involved in the discovery and or description of several taxa new to science, including Sibaropsis, a new, monospecific member of the Brassicaceae.
Currently I am working on a guide to the southern California flora, "Munz's Manual of Southern California Botany," which builds upon the spirit of Philip A. Munz's 1935 classic, "Manual of Southern California Botany." Working in collaboration with Andrew C. Sanders (Curator of the UCR Herbarium), this new publication will place particular emphasis on useful field and laboratory identification characters, and detailed geographic information for each treated taxon.
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