Passing of Robert Ornduff

[Tim Lowrey]

California botanist Robert Ornduff,
former director of UC Botanical Garden
and UC Berkeley professor, dies at 68

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

     Berkeley - Botanist Robert Ornduff, an expert on California
plants and former director of the University of California,
Berkeley's Botanical Garden, died Sept. 22 at Alta Bates Medical
Center in Berkeley from complications of metastatic melanoma.
     Ornduff, a professor emeritus of integrative biology at UC
Berkeley, was 68.
     Ornduff was a field biologist who concentrated on California
native plants as well as plants that grow in similar Mediterranean
climates, such as in South Africa and Western Australia. His book,
"Introduction to California Plant Life" (UC Press, 1974), is still in
print and is a popular layman's field guide to one of the most varied
floras in the world. He also was a longtime member of the California
Native Plant Society and served as editorial advisor for its
publication, Fremontia, for 27 years.
     "Bob was a very, very caring person and a great teacher who
deeply loved and appreciated plants," said Peter Raven, his friend
for the past 45 years and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden,
an organization dedicated to the study and conservation of the floras
of the New World. "This came through in one of his biggest
contributions, which was turning the UC Botanical Garden into a
world-class garden and a leading place for studying and displaying
the unique variety of California plants."
     Ornduff directed the garden from 1973 until 1991, expanding
its plant collection to include specimens from areas like South
Africa and Chile that have similar Mediterranean climates. He was
particularly proud of the docent program he instituted while there,
said Phyllis Faber, co-editor with Ornduff of the Natural History
Series at University of California Press.
     During his 48-year career, Ornduff wrote more than 100
scientific papers and 50 other papers on horticultural and related
topics. His interests ranged from the giant sequoias of the Sierra
Nevada to the small but showy yellow flower called goldfields that
carpet California's Central Valley in the spring.
     "Bob was one of the treasures of the botanical world," said
Arthur Kruckeberg, professor emeritus of botany at the University of
Washington, Seattle, and one of Ornduff's mentors. "He was a
green-thumb botanist who delighted in growing plants and
disseminating his interest to the general public."
     Among his abiding interests, however, were the unusual
reproductive strategies of plants and how they evolved. After
encountering early in his career a peculiar fall-blooming California
plant called Jepsonia, he got interested in heterostyly, a
peculiarity of some plants where a single species develops two or
three different types of flowers that encourage outcrossing and
discourage self-pollination.
     He also was fascinated by the plants that evolved to inhabit
small islands - essentially rocks frequented by birds - that he
referred to as guano islands, Kruckeberg said.
     Born in Portland, Oregon, on June 13, 1932, Ornduff attended
Reed College, graduating in 1953 with a BA in biology. As a Fulbright
Scholar, he spent the next year in New Zealand, where he collected
material for his thesis. He completed his MSc at the University of
Washington in 1956 and his PhD at UC Berkeley in 1961.
     After a year teaching biology at Reed College and a year at
Duke University, he returned to UC Berkeley in 1963 to assume the
faculty position of his retiring major professor, Herbert Mason.
Ornduff retired in 1993.
     As a botany professor, he instituted a popular course on
California flora that he taught for 30 years. The notes and
experiences teaching this course resulted in his book on California's
plant life. He also wrote two chapters for a recent book,
"California's Wild Gardens: A Living Legacy," edited by Faber and
published by the California Native Plant Society.
     His other positions while at UC Berkeley included curator of
seed plants and, eventually, director from 1967 to 1982 of the
University Herbarium; director of the Jepson Herbarium, a repository
for California plants, from 1968 to 1982; chair of the Department of
Botany from 1986 until 1989, when the department was reorganized into
the Department of Integrative Biology; and executive director of the
Miller Institute at UC Berkeley from 1984 to 1987.
     Ornduff was involved with many plant and plant conservation
organizations. In addition to being a fellow of the California Native
Plant Society, at the time of his death he was a member of the board
of councilors of the Save-the-Redwoods League, the board of directors
of the Pacific Horticultural Foundation and the board of trustees of
the Center for Plant Conservation, a national organization dedicated
to preserving rare and endangered plants of the United States. He
also served as president of the California Botanical Society in
1981-82, and was a long-time trustee of UC Berkeley's Jepson
Herbarium.
     For the past eight years, he was grants director of The
Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, which funds research and education
in horticulture. Ornduff redirected the trust's grants towards small
gardens and publication projects both in the United States and abroad.
     He also served as president of the American Society of Plant
Taxonomists in 1975 and chaired the editorial committee of UC Press
from 1975 to 1989.
     Among his honors were an Award of Merit from the American
Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (1993), a Merit Award
from the Botanical Society of America (1993) and the F. Owen Pearce
Award of Horticulture from the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco
(1994).
     Ornduff, a resident of Berkeley, is survived by a sister,
Anne Vial, of Lake Oswego, Oregon.
                              ###
NOTE: A print quality image of Robert Ornduff can be downloaded from:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/download/


--Bob Sanders, Senior Science Writer
--Media Relations, Public Affairs
--University of California
--2120 Oxford St. #4204
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Dr. Tim K. Lowrey
Director of the Museum of Southwestern Biology, Associate Professor of
Biology, and Curator, UNM Herbarium
Dept. of Biology
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87120
Phone: (505)277-2604
Fax: (505)277-6079
WWW: http://www.unm.edu/~museum