OREGON FLORA NEWSLETTER Volume 7 Number 3 • Oregon State University • October 2001 LeRoy Ellsworth Detling (1898-1967) Three grants provide important boost to the by Eileen Flory Oregon Flora Project! LeRoy Detling served as curator of the herbarium at by Scott Sundberg the University of Oregon from 1939 until his death in 1967. The Oregon Flora Project has exciting news! Three He worked on the collection and taxonomy of far western new grants, along with continuing support from the Native plants and plant fossils (with monographs on Cardamine Plant Society of Oregon and individual donors, are (Dentaria), Descurainia, and Lupinus), and on the ecology allowing us to embark on work in new directions while and origin of Oregon plant communities, with particular accellerating efforts on the Atlas and Oregon Vascular Plant attention later in his career to plant migration. This subject Checklist. For the first time in the history of the project we took him on several trips to Mexico, where he collected have sufficient funding to support three full-time staff many specimens for the herbarium. All of his herbarium members for one year and have partial staff funding for two specimens now reside at Oregon State University. more years. We are in the process of hiring two Faculty LeRoy Detling was born on October 23, 1898 in Groton, Research Assistants. Computer software developers are South Dakota. His parents, like so many of their generation, being supported by one of the grants and thirteen students emigrated west, where they were farmers and orchardists in started working part-time on the project this fall. The Washington and California. He graduated from Gridley students bring a broad range of skills to the project, and we (California) Union High School in 1916, attended Philomath have been fortunate to have people specializing in data entry, quality control, photography and art in the group. See Detling, page 17 We also hope to involve specialists to assist in a number of other areas, including fund-raising, volunteer coordination, and biogeographical and library research. Rare plant guide prototype: The Friends of the Oregon Flora Project has been awarded a grant from Willamette Industries, Inc. Funds will be donated to the Flora project and will be used to write a prototype of a rare plant guide. The guide will be composed of loose-leaf “fact sheets” on rare plants. Each fact sheet will have photographs, illustrations, descriptions, a distribution map, and identification hints. The prototype will include 20 fact sheets, along with introductory text and an illustrated glossary. County-level species lists: A grant from the Bureau of Land Management will support documentation of plant Photo: Detling family collection. species, subspecies and varieties in Oregon counties. The overall focus of the BLM program is on the promotion of native plant materials in ecological restoration projects; our work will provide lists of plants that are native to each county. Our work will entail a thorough inventory of plant specimens in Oregon and the review of hundreds of botanical references. A side benefit of the work is that the Flora project will compile a database of thousands of plant localities for all Oregon taxa that will greatly enhance the value of our plant Atlas. During the next year we will be inventorying information from a wide variety of sources, including plant specimen collections at several herbaria LeRoy Detling at the University of Oregon Herbarium, Eugene. See Three Grants, page 16 Three Grants, continued from front page assistant (e.g., Palm Pilot) for use in the field. These around Oregon, taxonomic monographs, and other credible “Personal Digital Field Guides” can then be tailored to one’s reports. specific needs. A broad range of users, including nature Online, downloadable Flora: The Project has been lovers, scientists, students, and decision makers, will be awarded a 3-year grant from the National Science able to personalize the way they navigate through the Flora, Foundation for a project entitled “Personal Digital Field selecting the amount and type of information presented as Guides: Mobile Access to Comprehensive Regional Flora.” well as how and when it will be accessed. The PDFG project is a collaboration between the Flora Examples of Personal Digital Field Guides: Project and the Northwest Alliance for Computational • a flora of species likely to be found in a particular Science and Engineering at Oregon State University. The county, BLM district, or USFS forest grant will support design and software development for the • a flora of the ferns of Oregon online version of the Flora of Oregon. The digital Flora will • technical details and identification hints on include identification keys, photographs, illustrations, Oregon’s noxious weeds and rare plants species descriptions, mapping capabilities, and much more. • an atlas of Oregon penstemons The primary focus of the grant is research in computer These projects will greatly speed the completion of the science. The central and most challenging aspect of the new Flora of Oregon. All of the data gathered and virtually project is to design the system to allow users to download all of the work accomplished can be applied toward the final portions of the Flora to their own computer. Smaller versions of the Flora and Atlas. These grants represent a versions could even be downloaded on a personal digital wonderful influx of funds to pay for progress in several directions. However, there are still many aspects of the Flora Illustrations of Erythronium oregonum on the front and Project that do not receive targeted support; these will be back covers by Linda Ann Vorobik. the objects of our continued, long-term fundraising efforts. Without the early and constant support of the Native The Oregon Flora Newsletter is published three times a year by Plant Society of Oregon, private donors, and hundreds of the Oregon Flora Project and the Oregon State University volunteers, the Oregon Flora Project would have been Herbarium. The Editor is Rhoda Love and the Production unable to apply competitively for these federal and private Assistant is Miko Nadel. funds. Thank you for being a part of this project! Contributions of stock, tax rebates, or donations honoring a special person are generous ways to support Oregon Flora Project Coordinator: the Oregon Flora Project at year's end. (See donation Scott Sundberg box on page 21). Thank you for your continued support. Checklist Project Leaders: Kenton Chambers Aaron Liston Scott Sundberg Richard Halse Rhoda Love David Wagner Jimmy Kagan Robert Meinke Peter Zika Checklist Advisory Board: Asteraceae database online at Ed Alverson John Christy Frank Lang Karen Antell Tom Kaye Don Mansfield www.oregonflora.org Henrietta Chambers Susan Kephart Kareen Sturgeon by Scott Sundberg Atlas Project Leaders: The Oregon Vascular Plant Checklist-Asteraceae is Wilbur Bluhm Jon Kimerling Scott Sundberg now available on the Oregon Flora Project’s web site, Robert Frenkel Aaron Liston Peter Zika www.oregonflora.org. The checklist is a searchable database Clay Gautier Bruce Newhouse Don Zobel Manuela Huso Charlene Simpson that reflects the latest information on Oregon’s members of Tom Kaye Dick Straw the sunflower family. It includes a few name changes that NPSO State Atlas Coordinator: have been made since the second edition paper copy of the Wilbur Bluhm checklist was printed in May 2000. The online version will Atlas Project Regional Coordinators: be updated periodically as more species are discovered and Bruce Barnes Caroline Lindstedt Veva Stansell names are changed. Lucile Housley Andy Robinson Belinda Vos The Asteraceae checklist is the first family to be made Jerry Igo Charlene Simpson Lisa Wolf available online by the Flora project. Over the next several Address correspondence to: months we will be publishing checklists of other families as Scott Sundberg well. We also plan to publish paper versions of these family Department of Botany & Plant Pathology checklists periodically, but the online versions will be made Oregon State University Cordley Hall 2082 public first. Corvallis, OR 97331-2902 We need your input. Please visit our web site from time E-mail: [email protected] (541) 737-4338; FAX (541) 737-3573 to time and give us feedback. We anticipate that we will http://www.oregonflora.org continue to improve the site for several weeks and your comments will help enormously. Printed on Recycled Paper OREGON FLORA NEWSLETTER 7(3) 2001 16 Detling, continued from front page Winter Twigs back in print! (Oregon) College and then went to the University of Oregon, by Rhoda Love where he received his BA in Romance languages in 1921. In 1921-22 Detling taught high school Latin and French in I am delighted to report that Winter Twigs: a Wallowa, Oregon. A love of languages that would stay with Wintertime Key to Deciduous Trees and Shrubs of him all his life prompted him to go for an advanced degree, and Northwest Oregon and Western Washington, by Helen he received his MA in French from Stanford University in M. Gilkey and Patricia L. Packard is once again 1923. He then returned to Oregon to teach Romance available in a handsome new incarnation. OSU Press languages at Willamette University in Salem (1924-26) and at obtained permission from Dr. Packard, the surviving the University of Oregon (1927-1930). author, to update this much-loved field guide first During the teaching years at Oregon, Louis F. Henderson, published in 1962 and long out of print. With the help then curator of the plant collection, served as Detling’s of Oregon Flora Project botanists, nomenclature was mentor, training him in the techniques of collecting, carefully reviewed and the new edition appeared this identifying, and caring for herbarium specimens. (Henderson fall. Twenty-two of the 81 taxa included in the Guide had a degree in romance languages from Cornell and this were changed to reflect present taxonomic mutual interest may have originally brought the two men understanding.