2020 Stafleu Medal

IAPT is pleased to announce the 2020 Stafleu Medal for an outstanding publication on historical, bibliographic, and/or nomenclatural aspects of systematics and taxonomy. For this award the Stafleu Award committee considered papers published in 2017-2018. The 2020 Stafleu Medal is awarded to:

Kathryn Mauz for her 2018 book, C. G. Pringle: Botanist, Traveler, and the “Flora of the Pacific Slope” (1881–1884), Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 120, Heritage Series 3: i–xxii, 1–737 (2018).

This magnificent hardcover volume covers in detail a period in the life of Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, a well-known botanist, plant collector, and photographer that was not well known before. Pringle is well-known for his later work in Mexico. This well written volume represents a high level of botanical scholarship. Dr. Mauz worked at and consulted with 24 herbaria to locate all of Pringle's collections and she verified or updated the determinations for all of them. Pringle left no field books or diaries from this period, so his itinerary was recreated from his personal papers, correspondence with other botanists, and the 2700+ specimens, which are detailed in some of the appendices. The book also sheds light on an era when paid plant collectors explored many parts of North America, ensuring the careers of prominent botanical patrons in universities and botanical gardens in the United States.

Kathryn Mauz is an independent scholar, but her passion is botanical history. She has been a research associate at the University of Arizona Herbarium and the University of Vermont Herbarium. She lives in Colorado, U.S.A., where she has assisted with seed collections for restoration and ex-situ conservation projects, as well as botanical inventories. Kathryn received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Arizona. Her doctoral research involved historical changes in plant diversity of the Tucson, Arizona, area stemming from changes in hydrology and ecology as the city developed into an agricultural and urban center, starting from the first scientific historical accounts in the mid-19th century. This research resulted in her first book, An Agreeable Landscape: Historical Botany and Plant Biodiversity of a Sonoran Desert Bottomland, 1855-1920, which was published in 2011 by BRIT Press. During her herbarium investigations toward her dissertation, Mauz became interested in collections made in Arizona by Pringle. The realization that this period in Pringle’s life was not well known gave rise to the present volume.

Congratulations to Kathryn Mauz!

The IAPT Council is grateful to the Stafleu Award committee for their hard work in making this selection. The Stafleu Award Committee consisted of George Yatskievych (U.S.A.), Nicholas Hind (U.K.), Vinita Gowda (India), and Jefferson Prado, Chair (Brazil).