Southern California Botanists

Last Sunday, while many Southern Californians were watching football, others of us were out enjoying the beautiful early spring wildflowers. Here are a few of the better photos captured within Anza Borrego State Park. Things are looking wonderful right now and hopefully the incoming storm will prolong the bloom.

In anticipation of the upcoming Southern California Botanists Symposium, we will be sharing information about this year’s speakers. To see their talks, follow the link in our bio to register today!

Up next is Nick Jensen, who will be speaking on “National Monuments and the 30x30 Initiative”.

Nick Jensen currently serves as the Conservation Program Director for the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) and is a fellow of the Switzer Foundation. In this position, he oversees the conservation work of staff and volunteer advocates statewide. Nick’s work involves state and federal legislative advocacy, project-level work including presiding over litigation, participation in coalitions of environmental organizations, media relations, and collaborating with a team of talented conservation professionals. Nick earned his BS in Environmental Horticulture at UC Davis and completed his Ph.D. in botany at California Botanic Garden/Claremont Graduate University. As a graduate student Nick produced the first Flora of Tejon Ranch, documenting plant diversity on California’s largest contiguous piece of private land. He also studied evolutionary patterns in perennial Streptanthus (jewelflowers). From 2006-2010, he was employed by CNPS, first as a Vegetation Program Assistant, and later as the Rare Plant Program Director. Nick has also worked as a botanist or ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, U.C. Davis, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the private consulting industry. He has taught botany classes to professionals and interested members of the public for CNPS, California Botanic Garden, the Jepson Herbarium, and Theodore Payne Foundation. He feels strongly that, in a rapidly changing world, scientists will play an important role in designing networks of conserved land. These conserved lands will provide plants and animals habitat necessary for survival, while also providing humanity with the ecosystem services necessary for a high quality of life. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, hiking, gardening, and photographing wildflowers, activities that are often not mutually exclusive.

In anticipation of the upcoming Southern California Botanists Symposium, we will be sharing information about this year’s speakers. To see their talks, follow the link in our bio to register today!

Up next is Jon Rebman, who will be speaking on “Plant discoveries and rediscoveries in the Southern California/Baja California Region”.

Jon P. Rebman is the Mary and Dallas Clark Endowed Chair/Curator of Botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum since 1996. Dr. Rebman is a plant taxonomist and conducts extensive floristic research in Baja California and in San Diego and Imperial Counties. His primary research interests have centered on the systematics of the cactus family in Baja California, especially the genera Cylindropuntia (chollas) and Opuntia (prickly-pears). However, he also does a lot of general floristic research and has co-published the most recent edition of the Checklist of the Vascular Plants of San Diego County and the Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plant of Baja California, Mexico. He has over 30 years of field experience with surveying and documenting plants including rare and endangered species. As a field botanist, he is a very active collector of scientific specimens with his personal collections numbering over 37,200. To date, he has named and described 33 new plants for science from the southern California and Baja California
region.