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Joseph Ewan files for a flora of the San Gabriel Mountains
MS.12
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Title: Joseph Ewan files for a flora of the San Gabriel Mountains
Dates: 1940-2016, undated (bulk 1940-1942)
Collection Number: MS.12
Creator/Collector:
Ewan, Joseph, 1909-1999
Extent: 1.9 linear feet (3 boxes)
Repository:
California Botanic Garden
Claremont, California 91711
Abstract: The collection consists of a manuscript, notes, and transparencies and negatives compiled around 1942 by American botanist
Joseph Ewan (1909-1999) for an unpublished flora of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California, and a small biographical
file on Ewan.
Language of Material: English
The collection is open to research. Contact the repository for access.
Copyright of most materials in this collection is held by the creator. Consult the Librarian for details.
Joseph Ewan files for a flora of the San Gabriel Mountains. California Botanic Garden
Biography/Administrative History
Joseph Andorfer Ewan was born in Philadelphia in 1909. His family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1912. In 1928, he studied
botany at the University of California Los Angeles and then transferred to Berkeley in 1933, where he received his Bachelor
of Arts and worked as assistant to Willis Linn Jepson on A Flora of California. He married Ada Nesta Dunn in 1935. They left
California in 1937 and moved to the University of Colorado Boulder, where Ewan worked as an instructor. During World War II,
he served in the U.S. Foreign Economic Administration in South America, and worked briefly at the Smithsonian and U.S. Department
of Agriculture. In 1947, Ewan was appointed Assistant Professor of Botany at Tulane University. He became Associate Professor
in 1952, Professor in 1957, and Chair of Botany in 1972. He retired in 1977. Over the course of his career, Ewan published
over 400 works, with a special focus on the history of botany in the United States. His systematic research interests included
Delphinium, Gentianaceae, Macrocarpaea, and Vismia. Along with his wife Nesta, Ewan also compiled a large library on natural
history, which was purchased by Missouri Botanical Garden in 1986. Ewan died in Mandeville, Louisiana in 1999.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection consists of an unpublished manuscript and notes by Joseph Ewan titled Flora Gabrielensis, written around 1942
while Ewan was teaching botany at the University of Colorado Boulder. The manuscript is based on a series of collecting trips
by Ewan to the San Gabriel Mountains from 1926 to 1937. The manuscript is divided into eight sections and two appendices,
following Ewan’s original organization. Most sections contain a mixture of handwritten notes and typescripts. Also included
are nearly sixty black-and-white transparencies, negatives, and photographs depicting plant specimens and magnifications of
specimens by Ewan and others, and a small research file on Ewan and earlier collection inventories.
Botany--San Gabriel Mountains (Calif.)
Manuscripts (documents)
Black-and-white transparencies