The collection consists of photographic materials, correspondence, diaries, publications, and manuscripts by American botanist and geologist Marcus E. Jones.

Marcus E. Jones (1852-1934) was a botanist who collected and described plants across the western United States and Mexico during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Ohio and attended Grinnell College (at the time Iowa College). In the late 1870s, he made his first botanical collecting trips to the western United States and settled in Salt Lake City in 1880 with his wife Anna Richardson, where they worked as teachers. Although he was not formally educated as a botanist, he went on to describe over 900 plant taxa over the course of his career. He wrote numerous works on botany, mining, and other subjects, including his self-published journal, Contributions to Western Botany, and Revision to the North American Species of Astragalus (1923). After the death of his wife in 1915, Jones sold his herbarium and library to Pomona College and moved to Claremont, California in 1923, where he continued his travels and botanical work until his death in a car accident in 1934.

65.5 linear feet (105 boxes and slide projector)

Copyright of the materials in this collection is held by California Botanic Garden.

The collection is open to research.