Early life and education

James Lauritz Reveal was born on March 29, 1941, in Reno, Nevada to Arlene Hadfield Reveal and Jack Lilburn Reveal (1912-1988), a librarian and a forester/botanist, respectively.^[5][6][7] Reveal attended Utah State University (B.S. 1964, M.S. 1966) and received his Ph.D. from Brigham Young University in 1969. He held a post-doctoral fellowship with the Smithsonian Institution from 1967 to 1969.

Career

In 1969, Reveal joined the Botany faculty at the University of Maryland, serving as director of the Norton-Brown Herbarium of the University of Maryland between 1979 and 1999. During his tenure, the Norton-Brown Herbarium amassed one of the greatest collections of Polygonaceae subfam. Eriogonoideae in the world.^[8]

Reveal's research interests included botanical studies in the American West, especially endangered and threatened species. He studied the history of botanical exploration in the New World and botanical nomenclature and taxonomy as well, with much of his research and writing devoted to the Polygonaceae subfamily Eriogonoideae, commonly known as the wild buckwheats. His interest in combining history and botany led to projects on botanical history of colonial Maryland and on the botanical discoveries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, about which he wrote several books and articles.^[8] A prolific collector, author, and speaker, Reveal collected more than 9,000 plant specimens from North America, Central America, and China, and published over 500 papers; he presented more than 100 invited talks.^[9]

As a member of the Smithsonian Institution's Endangered Species Committee (1974-1982), Reveal was instrumental in attaining the addition of endangered plant species to the original Endangered Species Act.^[5]

Reveal discovered or identified over fifty plant varieties, most of these discoveries being flowering plants of the American Southwest. In 1968, Reveal identified five new plant varieties at a Nevada nuclear testing site. In 1981, Reveal and Norlyn James Bodkin, then professor of Botany at James Madison University, identified a new lily variety, the first new plant discovery along the eastern U.S. seaboard since the 1940s. They named the new variety of Virginia Wake Robin Trillium pusillum var. monticulum (Shenandoah Wake Robin).^{[10][5][11][12]}

In 1978, Reveal married his University of Maryland colleague, the botanist C. Rose Broome (later with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture). They collaborated on many research projects, most notably the botanical studies of colonial Maryland and explorations in Mexico that identified two new plant varieties.^[5] Reveal helped document the flora of Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic and assisted in Broome's 1979 publication of the first checklist of Rare and Endangered Vascular Plant Species in Maryland.^[13]

In 1992, Reveal's illustrated Gentle Conquest: The Botanical Discovery of North America was published. Gentle Conquest encompasses the history of botanical exploration in the New World from the first settlement to the end of the Western frontier.^[14]

Reveal retired from the Botany Department at the University of Maryland in 1999, but remained active, holding emeritus appointments including Honorary Curator of the New York Botanical Garden (2003-2015) and Adjunct Professor at Cornell University (2007-2015), working on the Intermountain Flora project and collecting plant specimens throughout several Western U.S. states, including California, Colorado, and Nevada.^[4] He made numerous contributions to the website, Discovering Lewis & Clark.^[15]

In 2009, Reveal received the North American Rock Garden Society's Edgar T. Wherry award for his contributions to the genus Eriogonum.^[16] Reveal died on January 9, 2015, in Ithaca, New York.^[8]