Mary Bowerman

Mary Leolin Bowerman (January 25, 1908 – August 21, 2005) was an American botanist, co-author of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California; Their Distribution and Association into Plant Communities, and the co-founder of Save Mount Diablo. She helped to preserve tens of thousands of acres of Mount Diablo in the San Francisco East Bay before dying at age 97. In 1936 she was the last person to record the Mount Diablo buckwheat Eriogonum truncatum, until it was rediscovered nearly seventy years later on May 10, 2005. In 1978 the manzanita Arctostaphylos bowermaniae was named in her honor. 2Life and work Mary Leolin "Leo" Bowerman co-founded the activist group Save Mount Diablo in 1971 and served on its Board of Directors until her death. Born in Toronto, Canada, and educated in England, Bowerman eventually became a resident of Pasadena, California during her teenage years. From 1928 to 1954, Berkeley, California was her home. She ultimately settled in Lafayette, California. A botanist and student of the flora of Mount Diablo for over seventy-five years, she received her undergraduate degree in 1930 and her Ph.D in 1936 from U.C. Berkeley. Her doctoral advisor was famed California botanist Willis Linn Jepson; she was his last surviving studen