Alice Faber Tryon

Alice Faber Tryon (1920–2009) was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants (pteridology). She had two general areas of interest in her work, first incorporating the use of spore surface patterns into the understanding of fern diversity and systematics, and second the fern family Pteridaceae.

Biography Alice Faber Tryon was born Alice Elizabeth Faber in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 2, 1920, to Arthur and Laura Bindrich Faber. She first began working with Rolla Milton Tryon, Jr. in 1945 as a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1946, she became a member of the American Fern Society and became an honorary member in 1978. At Harvard, they organized and offered an annual New England Fern Conference, which brought students and professors together in an informal and productive setting. Becoming the first woman member of the New England Botanical Club in 1968, Tryon was elected President in 1978.

Throughout her career she worked closely with her husband, traveling internationally and frequently publishing together—including their systematic survey of the ferns, with emphasis on tropical America. Her work on spore surface patterns was enhanced by her incorporation of scanning electron microscope images. With Bernard Lugardon, an authority on the interior structure of fern spores using transmission electron microscope images, published a complete survey of fern spore diversity in 1991. Tryon also made significant contributions to the study of fern reproductive biology with her studies of apomixis in Pellaea.

In 2002, her collection was donated to the Alice and Rolla Tryon Pteridophyte Library at the University of Vermont.

Tryon died March 29, 2009, in Pensacola, Florida.