Reid Venable Moran

Reid Venable Moran (June 30, 1916 – January 21, 2010) was an American botanist and the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1957 to 1982. He was also well-known among colleagues for his sense of humor that he imparted into his publications.

Moran was the world authority on the Crassulaceae, a family of succulent plants, and in particular the genus Dudleya, the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation. He named at least 18 plants new to science — some in that family and some not — and published many papers elucidating relationships within the Crassulaceae. As a mark of the respect he earned among his peers, more than a dozen plants have been named for him. Jane Goodall described Moran as "a sort of living myth in botanical exploration in Baja California and the Pacific Islands of Mexico," citing specifically his analysis of the environmental impact of introduced species (especially goats) on the flora of Guadalupe Island. Moran was raised in Pasadena. At the age of 10, Moran was already interested in botany, and had a collection of Dudleya in his backyard. He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1939 and his M.S. in botany from Cornell University in 1942 before his studies were interrupted by World War II. Austria on its first mission, but the crew had managed to complete their bombing run and bailed out over German-controlled Yugoslavia. Moran ended up tangled in a tree, which he tried to identify,

Later life

After service in World War II, Moran worked at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for a year and a half, but left when he was expected to become its next director, as he found the position too restrictive.

He then went on to join the Bailey Hortorium at Cornell, and then left to join the University of California's Far East Program teaching biology to military personnel in Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Okinawa. While there, Moran spent time collecting specimens of Crassulaceae and sending them to Charles H. Uhl at Cornell for cytology. After his time in Asia, Moran was hired by his longtime collaborator George Edmund Lindsay, who by then was the director of the San Diego Natural History Museum, as the curator of botany. Moran worked as curator from 1957 to 1982. and the Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University

Moran specialized in the systematics of the Crassulaceae (the stonecrop family), and in the floristics of the Baja California peninsula. In addition to a large number of technical research papers, Moran published The Flora of Guadalupe Island and the treatment of the Crassulaceae for the Flora of North America (Vol. 8, published in 2009). He co-authored (with Frank W. Gould) The Grasses of Baja California, Mexico in 1981 and (with Geoffrey A. Levin) The Vascular Flora of Isla Socorro, Mexico in 1989.

Scientific humor Moran's serious scientific publications were often characterized by his "well-known, unique sense of humor" that he imparted into a number of papers. Apart from its pangrammatic title and 29 lines of acknowledgements, the entire text of the paper contains just five words and a reference number. As Moran described in a 1983 book on insular biogeography, this disjunct population is part of a relict community of otherwise more northerly distributed chaparral plants that have continued to survive in the higher elevation mountains ("sky islands") of southern Baja California.

Moran and his colleague Glen Ives visited the Sierra de San Borja in March 1960 to conduct a natural history survey, with Moran responsible for collecting plant specimens and Ives for birds and mammals. After driving to Bahía de los Ángeles from San Diego, they packed into the mountains for 10 days. They reached the Cerro Quemazón on March 26, where Moran collected his specimen from a Cneoridium plant on the summit.

The full text of the paper, published in 1962 in volume 16 of Madroño, reads: "I got it there then (8068)" where 8068 is the parenthetical reference number of the specimen collected.

Moran's closing acknowledgement reads:

The paper was republished as a "Reprinted Classic Madroño Article" in 2013, the California Botanical Society's centennial year. The article was also reproduced in a 1993 issue of the Australian Systematic Botany Society's newsletter.

Tacitus bellus, un nuevo género y especie de Crassulaceae de Chihuahua, México In 1974, Moran described a new species and genus, Tacitus bellus, with collaborator Jorge Meyrán. As reported in a 1977 profile of Moran in Madroño by Dr. John H. Thomas, he described naming the genus not after the Roman historian or emperor, but rather from the Latin word tacitus, meaning silent, because of the peculiar form of the corolla, with his reason being: