Alice Eastwood (1859-1953) had a challenging childhood. Born in Toronto, her mother died when she was only 6, admonishing Alice from her deathbed to look after two younger siblings. Her father struggled to have a viable career and keep the family together. At times, Eastwood was forced to stay with relatives or at a boarding school. It wasn’t until many years later the family reunited in Denver.
Despite these hardships, Eastwood was fortunate to have mentoring by different individuals who fostered her great love of plants. Exploring the native flora in the mountains of Colorado deepened that passion. Her story is told in a delightful, memoir-style book from 1955, “Alice Eastwood’s Wonderland: The Adventures of a Botanist,” by Carol Green Wilson (1892-1981).
In her early 30s, Eastwood traveled to California and met two other influential women of plants. The first was horticulturist Kate Sessions (1857-1940) in San Diego. Wilson describes their friendship, which lasted for fifty years, as one that “often drew Alice Eastwood from the cloisters of pure science to the practical field of horticulture.”
Continuing her journey to San Francisco, Eastwood intentionally visited the California Academy of Sciences to meet Katherine Brandegee (1844-1920) and her husband, Townshend Stith (T.S.) Brandegee (1843-1925). Their friendship was cemented by joint botanical excursions around the Bay Area.
The Brandegees eventually convinced Eastwood to become the joint curator of the botanical collection at the Academy. It was not easy to lure Eastwood away from her beloved Rockies, but the salary of $75/month, all of Katherine’s income, sealed the deal. Within two years, the Brandegees retired, leaving Eastwood as sole curator and head of botany for the Academy, a position she held until her own retirement over fifty years later.
While regarded as one of the supreme botanists in California’s history, Eastwood is probably most famous for her rescue efforts of the Academy’s herbarium collections threatened by the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake. Well before that fateful day, she had anticipated the dangers of fire and housed the most valuable herbarium specimens in an easily-accessible case. This allowed her, with the help of one chance volunteer, to lower nearly 1,500 collection items six stories using rope, strings, and her work apron! She continued her efforts to save Academy collections over the following days, even while losing her own home to the fires.
Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s the Winter 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin