The Research Department and Graduate Program in Botany

From the beginning, scientific research has been an integral component of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden’s activities.  Willis Lynn Jepson, of the University of California at Berkeley and one of Susanna Bixby Bryant’s principal advisors, strongly recommended a scientific director for the Garden.  This recommendation became a reality with the appointment of Dr. Philip A. Munz as Director of the Garden in 1946.

The Graduate Program

Under Dr. Munz’s leadership, the Garden was moved from its Orange County site to Claremont in 1951, and shortly thereafter a Ph.D. program in botany was added at the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University [CGU]). The research botanists at RSABG are the teaching faculty for this graduate program and hold faculty appointments at Claremont Graduate University.

Masters degrees in botany have been offered since 1927 through CGU. Prior to the arrival of RSABG in Claremont, professors at Pomona College were the teaching faculty for this program, which was later augmented with RSABG scientists.  Until a decade ago, Pomona College shared teaching responsibilities, but with the retirement of Dr. Sherwin Carlquist of RSABG and the departure of a Pomona botany faculty member, the entire responsibility for all graduate studies currently rests with RSABG.

Our graduate program is a unique partnership with CGU, which is accredited to grant degrees, and RSABG, a private institution, which provides the teaching faculty, curriculum, offices, facilities, and financial support for graduate students.

Our graduate students pursue M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in systematic botany, evolutionary botany, and floristics.  Systematic botany, sometimes called plant taxonomy, is the study of the relationships between plants and how plants may be grouped or classified.  In essence, it is the “genealogy” of plants which botanists call phylogeny.  Evolutionary botany is the study of how plants have changed or adapted over a period of time.  These changes can be reflected in the genetic makeup of the plant (DNA), in morphological or anatomical differences (changes in shape, internal structure), in physiology (how the plant “works” inside), and in its responses to external environmental changes.  Floristics is the collection and inventory of plant species for a given area.  Thesis research leading to degrees may be carried out in the fields of anatomy (study of structure), conservation biology, floristics, molecular evolution, morphology (study of form), phylogenetics, population genetics, and reproductive biology.