In the late nineteenth century, it would have been a brave undertaking for a woman to tromp around the wilds of the Colorado Plateau. But that is what Alice Eastwood did, in long skirt and fine flowered hat, following her passion for plants.
Born in Canada in 1859, Eastwood grew up in Denver and was a high school teacher there for a time. Armed with field guides and a plant press, she spent vacations exploring all over the West. An energetic woman, she traveled by foot, horse, and rail, and eventually won welcome to an all-male hiking club.
Though self-taught, Alice Eastwood earned respect among her peers, and has been declared “Colorado’s first resident botanist.” During her forays in that state and in southeast Utah and Arizona, she discovered a red monkeyflower growing in hanging gardens on sandstone walls. It is named Mimulus eastwoodiae, one of seventeen plant species named in her honor.
She spent most of her professional career as curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences, and built a huge plant collection for the herbarium. In the San Francisco earthquake and fire in April 1906, Eastwood entered the damaged building and saved a significant number of the most important specimens.
“Miss Eastwood,” as she was known, was a free thinker and a strong conservationist. She worked until she was 90 years old, and died in 1953. And her legacy lives in the names of some of the Plateau’s most beautiful plants.
Earth Notes is produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.