Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Women in Botany Project

June McCaskill

HERBARIUM SCIENTIST
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

With an Introduction by
John Tucker

An Interview Conducted by

Ann Lage

in 1988

Copyright (c\ 1989 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing
leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the
development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is
a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed
interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed,
lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee.
The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with
photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at
the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for
scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended
to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a
spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as
such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal
agreement between the University of California and June
McCaskill dated February 28, 1989. The manuscript is
thereby made available for research purposes. All literary
rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish,
are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be
quoted for publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley.

Request for permission to quote for publication should
be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486
Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and
should include identification of the specific passages to be
quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification
of the user. The legal agreement with June McCaskill
requires that he be notified of the request and allowed
thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as
follows :

June McCaskill, "Herbarium Scientist,
University of California, Davis", an oral
history conducted in 1989 by Ann Lage, the
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1989.

Copy No.

JUNE McCASKILL
1980

Photograph by Sonia Cook

Catalogue card

MCCASKILL, June (b. 1930) Herbarium scientist

Herbarium Scientist. University of California. Davis. 1989, iv, 83pp.

McCaskill Gardens, family nursery in east Pasadena, California, 1930s -1940s:
camellias, native iris, southern California horticulturists; studying botany
with Professor Howard McMinn, Mills College, 1949-1953; the herbarium at UC
Davis, 1953-1988: management, curatorial functions, public service in plant
identification, weed control, crime cases; Professor Katherine Esau; Friends
of the Davis Arboretum: founding, 1971, travel program; women in botany.
Appended article on Vern and Jack McCaskill.

Introduction by John Tucker, Professor of Botany Emeritus, University of
California, Davis

Interviewed 1988 by Ann Lage

On behalf of future scholars, the Regional Oral History Office wishes to
thank those who have made possible the completion of the June McCaskill oral
history. Donors to the volume are listed below:

Academic Affairs/Affirmative Action
University of California, Davis

Botany Department Graduate Student Association
University of California, Davis

Department of Botany
University of California, Davis

David and Evelyne Lennette

TABLE OF CONTENTS -- June McCaskill

INTRODUCTION by John Tucker
INTERVIEW HISTORY
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

i

iii
iv

I FAMILY ROOTS IN BOTANICAL PURSUITS

Origins of McCaskill Gardens, 1930s 1
Growing Up in a Nursery—A Family Enterprise

Pasadena Schooling and On to Mills 7
Southern California Horticulturists:

Charlotte Hoak, Kate Sessions, Jack Hahn 10
The Pasadena Environment

The Southern California Camellia Society 13

II EDUCATION AND WORK AT MILLS COLLEGE, 1949-1953 14

Professor Howard McMinn: Lasting Contributions 14
Interest in Allergenic Plants

Mills as a Women's College 19

III DAVIS: THE TOWN, CAMPUS AND HERBARIUM IN THE 1950s 21

A Small -Town Atmosphere 21
Herbarium Headquarters and Directors

Chief Cook and Bottle Washer 23

History of Herbaria at Davis 25

IV DUTIES OF A HERBARIUM CURATOR 27
Curatorial Functions: Exchanges, Loans, Mounting, Cataloging

Public Information and Reference Service 28

Enemies of Specimens: Light, Insects, and People 30

Retrieving Specimens 32

V FROM SOUP TO NUTS: PUBLIC SERVICE 35

Service to Cooperative Extension Farm Advisors in Weed Control 35

Identifying Rare and Endangered Plants 38

Assistance in Crime Control 39
The "Magic" of Identification: Experience, Aroma, and

the Right Book 42

Service to Poison Control Centers: "Miss Nightshade" 44

Thirty- five Years of Student Assistants 45

Professor Katherine Esau 46

Assisting Weed Control Scientists Bill Harvey and Alden Crafts 48

Botany Department Chairmen 50

VI EXTRACURRICULAR BOTANICAL EXPERIENCES 53

A Summer Job at Caltech's Phytotron, 1951 53

With the University Research Expeditions Program in Greece, 1985 56

Friends of the Davis Arboretum 60

Founding and Fostering the Friends 60

Special Arboretum Gardens: the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden 64

Organizing and Leading Arboretum Trips: Southern California,

Canada, Hawaii, and the Mid- Atlantic States 65

Memorable Plant People: Taxonomic Characters 69

Women in Botany 71

TAPE GUIDE
APPENDIX A -
APPENDIX B -
APPENDIX C -
INDEX

- Resume of Billie June McCaskill

- "The McCaskills" by Lewis Lawyer

- CAMELLIA JAPONICA JUNE MCCASKILL

73
74
75
79
81

INTRODUCTION

I first met June McCaskill in February of 1953, in her first year after
graduating from Mills College. The occasion was the annual dinner of the
California Botanical Society in Berkeley, and at the time I was on the lookout
for a prospective assistant in the Botany Department herbarium at the
University of California, Davis. Two faculty members at Mills (Professor
Howard McMinn and Dr. Lucile Mason) had recommended her very highly, and my
personal impression, after a lengthy chat that evening, was equally favorable.
She was hired in due course; her appointment began that summer. Now, thirty-
six years later, June is still on the job, still going strong, and a
professional of considerable eminence.

From the outset, she adapted to the position completely, taking on
without complaint any task connected with the job- -doing what had to be done.
In the early years her routine duties consisted mainly of making plant
identifications, overseeing the mounting of specimens, fumigating and filing
specimens, and on occasion processing loans to other institutions.

Her most important single function- -identify ing plants as a public
service for farmers, farm advisors, and the general public --usually involved
fresh or pressed and dried specimens. On occasion, however, the "specimens"
she received could present special challenges: the envelope containing a
specimen so thoroughly fragmented and pulverized as to be recognizable only as
plant material, and not much else; or the sample of water weeds in a plastic
bag, half-decomposed and reeking to high heaven; or a portion of a bale of hay
suspected of containing plants toxic to a farmer's livestock.

Over the years, June has gained extensive knowledge of California
plants, especially the weed flora, and the relevant botanical literature.
This, coupled with her meticulously careful and thorough analyses, has led to
an enviable reputation for accuracy and dependability in her plant
identifications. Thus, her assistance in such matters has come to be highly
valued throughout the state by farm advisors, veterinarians, doctors at poison
control centers and other professionals.

Beyond the routine duties of a herbarium worker, June's activities in
the Botany Department, and on the campus in general, have multiplied and
become far more varied with the passing years. With students, faculty
members, and others, she has always been extremely helpful in assisting with
problems in her areas of expertise. This has included editorial assistance on
manuscripts, and on occasion has led to co-authorship of publications.

June's function as an instructor on an informal basis --although not
widely appreciated in the department --has become increasingly important in
recent years. Part-time student assistants, working on an hourly basis, have
always been the main source of additional help in the herbarium. June has
been very good in training them and supervising their efforts. This has led
to her developing an informal, but comprehensive, course in herbarium practice
and procedure. Students interested in gaining such hands-on training work

ii

with her as interns for university credit. June is remarkably helpful,
patient, and generous of her time, and takes a personal interest in these
kids. Many lasting friendships have developed from such associations.

Although quiet and unassuming, but certainly no shrinking violet, June
has always been willing to try new activities as a volunteer. Early on, she
began conducting tours of the herbarium (on request) for groups of visiting
students, usually classes from elementary or middle schools. Other activities
have included regular participation in Picnic Day projects, giving talks on
"Weed Day" (an annual gathering of Cooperative Extension specialists in weed
control), and numerous volunteer activities with the Friends of the Davis
Arboretum. In addition to serving as perennial membership chairman of the
Friends , she has organized and conducted a number of tours in recent years .
The most ambitious of these (to Hawaii, and to the mid-Atlantic states on the
East Coast) have been well attended, and comments from participants have been
uniformly positive- -of ten enthusiastic. Several have remarked on her ability
to improvise in unexpected circumstances, or to coolly work out solutions to
occasional mixups.

Unquestionably, these tours have honed her skills in dealing with people
of varied background and personality.

This adaptability on June's part, which I have long noted, had its
supreme test last year. In August of 1988, the A.I.B.S. (American Institute
of Biological Sciences, an umbrella group for most biological societies in the
United States) held its annual week- long meeting on the Davis campus for the
first time. With hundreds of botanists swarming over the campus, the
herbarium became the focal point for the plant taxonomists in attendance.
Every day the herbarium was jammed with people visiting, chatting, and even
trying to use the library and herbarium. June played her role to the hilt as
general manager- -greeting visitors, introducing people, taking phone calls,
recording messages, and generally making herself useful. On the busiest days,
the near-chaotic conditions would have driven many people to distraction. Not
June! I had never before seen her in action under such conditions, and her
cheerful, helpful attitude, friendliness, and utter unflappibility were a
source of amazement to me!

Activities and experiences such as those I've described have surely
enhanced her growth, both personally and professionally, whether she has
viewed them in this light or not. Although she has reached an age where
retirement is not far off, I have the distinct impression that, far from
looking forward to retirement, June is looking for the next opportunity for
adventure- -professional job-related or otherwise.

John Tucker
Professor Emeritus

October 6, 1989
University of California
Davis, CA 95616

iii
Interview History

The Women in Botany project was undertaken by the Regional Oral History
Office in 1985 to present in their own words the stories of a remarkable group
of women scientists. Volume I of the series included the interviews of
Annetta Carter, Mary DeDecker, and Elizabeth McClintock describing the
highlights of their careers as herbarium curators, collectors of native and
ornamental plants, and conservationists of flora and habitat.

Shortly after completion of volume I in 1987, Annetta Carter, who has
been a valued advisor to the project from the beginning, suggested as our next
memoirist June McCaskill, manager of the University of California, Davis,
herbarium for thirty-five years. Terence Murphy, head of the Department of
Botany at Davis, enthusiastically supported this suggestion and helped ROHO
raise funds to document June's work at the herbarium and her extensive public
service activities.

June came to Berkeley for three interviews in January, April, and August
1988. Despite her innate modesty and a certain discomfort in speaking about
herself and her many accomplishments, what has emerged from the interview
sessions is a picture of a dedicated woman botanist whose extensive knowledge
and unstinting service have made her an invaluable asset to the UC Davis
herbarium.

The oral history documents her early years helping out in her family's
nursery, McCaskill Gardens, in Pasadena, California, where she was immersed in
a life of plants and plant people. (An article about her father and brother,
Vern and Jack McCaskill, is included in the appendix to this volume.) She
next describes her education at Mills College, her work there with botany
professor Howard McMinn, and her appointment as herbarium assistant at UC
Davis in 1953.

Her description of her career in Davis as "chief cook and bottle washer"
in the herbarium gives a picture of her varied curatorial functions , from
maintaining collections to training student assistants, and illustrates her
public service role, from weed control to poison control to crime control.
The interview concludes with a look at June's contributions to the University
Research Expeditions Program and to the Friend of the Davis Arboretum, where
she has organized and led arboretum trips far and wide.

June edited the interview transcripts with her characteristic care but
made no substantive changes. The tapes of the interview are available in The
Bancroft Library.

Ann Lage
Interviewer -Editor

October 31, 1989
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library

iv

University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)

Your full name
Date of birth

Father's full name
Occupation (\1 U

Mother's full name
Occupation K^H.

Your spouse

Your children

Where did you grow up?
Present community
Education

Occupation (s)

Areas of expertise

Other interests or activities

Organizations in which you are active

I FAMILY ROOTS IN BOTANICAL PURSUITS
[Interview 1: January 25. 1988]**

Origins of McCaskill Gardens, 1930s

Lage: June, we're going to start with your background and,

particularly, elements in your background that sort of pointed
you in the direction of a career in botany. I know, for
starters, that your family was in the nursery business. So
should we start with your parents, something about your parents?

McCaskill: That would be fine. My dad and mother [Vern Otho McCaskill and
Billie Lee Nowlin McCaskill] met in Missouri and eloped to
California when they were very young. People said it would
never last, but it did. They were married for sixty-six years,
and that was ended by my mother's death.

But at any rate, off they came to California on a honeymoon
and to visit relatives that had preceded them out here. They
fell in love with it but had to go home to Missouri. After
three hard winters in Missouri, and after saving up some money,
enough to get a car, they came again to stay.

Lage:

About when was this?

McCaskill: That was in 1924. They brought my sister with them; she had
been born in Missouri in '21.

Lage: That was an interesting time in southern California. I'm sure.

A lot of people were coming out from the Midwest in the twenties.

ffThis symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 73.

McCaskill: Oh yes. yes. The land of milk and honey is the phrase I

think of. It was beautiful. I learned that firsthand from the
folks and from reading. From the mountains to the sea there
were just fields of California poppies and native oaks and not
much civilization cluttering up the landscape.

Lage: No smog.

McCaskill: No smog whatsoever.
Lage: Where did they settle?

McCaskill: They settled in Pasadena. Dad had acquired a love of plants from
his mother. And although he had no experience in nursery work,
he was able to get a job at Coolidge Rare Plant Gardens, which
was very well known for years. It is gone now, and there's a
church on the property. But Dad worked there in the twenties and
so did my mother. It seems that my mother excelled in
making cuttings. Also she was a very charming woman, probably
the most charming woman I have ever known. She just delighted
them all. Dad said the Coolidges treated them more as their
own children than employees.

Dad's job was to inventory the plants for Mr. Coolidge.
His nursery was called a rare plant garden so he had some of
everything, but he had only one camellia. Dad noticed, and it
was a beautiful 'Pink Perfection.' That got him hooked on the
idea of raising camellias. And he told me that on Sundays
sometimes he and Mom would drive around town and see camellia
bushes and occasionally work up their nerve to ask if they could
take a cutting or two and propagate it for themselves.

Now the years are ticking by, and they have built a house in
1932. My family is still living there, my dad and brother at
this point.

Lage: At the house they built in 1932?

McCaskill: Yes, in east Pasadena. Just as far east as you can get. It's on
the street that separates Pasadena and Arcadia. And that's
where, in the early thirties, the folks built their nursery on
the property beside our home.

Dad had continued on at Coolidges1 part time while my mother
was out at the new place, so they were trying to do two things
at once. Finally, he was able to break away from Coolidge's and
open the gates of a very small nursery onto which he added
later.

Lage: Right in the middle of the depression?

McCaskill: Yes. yes! He said the house cost six thousand dollars to build.
It's a very lovely two story English semi-Tudor style. They
have. I guess, nearly an acre. So they worked extremely hard.
I admire them tremendously for all they've done.

Lage: You grew up surrounded by this nursery?

McCaskill: Yes. I have fun telling people that I was brought up in a

nursery. It's true. Not the traditional one where you have
little children, but a plant nursery stocked with camellias and
azaleas primarily.

Lage: It was a specialty nursery.

McCaskill: Yes, it was, because Dad had discovered camellias and wanted to
promote their popularity. I guess you don't see too many of
those in Missouri except, of course, in greenhouses.

One thing that's rather interesting is that camellias sold
like hotcakes in the forties. I got to thinking about
popularity trends in plants. In the sixties the houseplant
was the number one item. Sometimes it's orchids. Many things
do come and go in cycles.

Lage: I always think of a camellia as being kind of a standard now.

McCaskill: They are now, yes. I have read a bit of history on that. They
had been popular in southern California perhaps before the turn
of the century, but then they had faded away, somehow. They
started coming on strong again in the thirties and have remained
a popular item.

Lage: What was the nursery's name?

McCaskill: They named it McCaskill Gardens. [See Appendix B]

Growing Up in a Nursery — A Family Enterprise

Lage: What was it like to grow up in the nursery surrounded by those

plants? Did you actually work alongside your parents?

McCaskill: Yes. it was a way of life for us. The lathhouse was beside the
house, out the back door and through the back yard. There was
a little bell hanging in the aisle for the customer to ring for
assistance — it's still there. That bell became a familiar part
of our lives, often interrupting lunch. After growing up with
the plant business, it was natural for us to follow in the
folks' footsteps.

Lage: You had brothers and sisters?

McCa skill: Yes, I had a sister, my older sister who was born and brought

with our parents from the Midwest. And then brother Jack and I
were born in Pasadena, Jack in '29, and I the following year.

Actually some of my very happiest memories are of gardening
on weekends with the folks. The whole family rallied and got out
there and got the landscaping around our home shipshape. They
were many pleasurable hours.

Then when Jack and I got a little older and a little more
enterprising, we went to work for my dad for thirty-five cents
an hour. I think we worked up to that. It was a fair wage for
kids at that period of time. And, of course, the fringe
benefits were immeasurable — free lunch, and housing and all that
sort of thing. We had a great time.

I, for the most part, transplanted azaleas from the pots
they were in to larger pots and did some weeding and things
of that nature. Also, my brother and I had our own vegetable
garden and I think about that with smiles. He and I were
talking about it only yesterday and remembering the hundreds of
radishes we couldn't even give aw ay I

Lage: You said your brother also went on to a career having to do with

plants. What did he go on to do?

McCa skill: He worked for my dad for some years. That was interrupted by

service in the U.S. Navy. And then he came back and for a period
of time worked at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San
Marino, just south of Pasadena. Next he took a job at the Los
Angeles State and County Arboretum in Arcadia. It's called the
Arcadia Arboretum but the funding is from two sources; that's
why it has that long official name. And Jack is working there
still in the plant records office.

That's an interesting thing too. Now that I think about
it. Jack and I played on the Lucky Baldwin Estate, which is now
where the arboretum is located. Jack continues to pursue his
interest in the history of Baldwin and his times.

Lage: Is the McCaskill nursery still in operation?

McCaskill: Yes, yes. Dad, at age eighty-six, still opens the gates every
day except Christmas Day and continues to wait on customers.

Lage: My goodness, that's a long history there.

McCaskill: And that's. I'm sure, what keeps him going.

Lage: And it sounds as if your mother was very actively involved.

McCa skill: Oh yes, tremendously! She had learned the plant business at the
Coolidges1 and then helped Dad establish their own nursery. Yes,
she was an enormous help to him. They worked together side by
side, selling to customers. She was especially good at that, and
they all loved her. I'm sure many people came just to see her.

Lage: She sounds wonderful 1

Me Ca skill: Oh. she was! Just a marvel I And so they continued to work

together their whole lives. Well, as the years progressed and
her illnesses came — she had strokes and was eventually taken by
a major one, but she continued to help as long as she could.
As a hobby she got involved in flower arranging. So Dad
started carrying a line of materials good for her flower
arranging friends — such as ornamental grasses and some of the
native iris. That's part of the native iris story, too. having
to do with flower arranging.

Lage: Tell me about the native iris story.

McCaskill: Well. Dad, as you know well by now, was into camellia

hybridizing and was busy with that. Meanwhile, my brother
noticed that Mother had around the garden a few plants of
native iris around the garden that some friends had given her.
Friends were always bringing her slips and rhizomes and whatnot.
Mother was using these in her flower arranging classes. And my
sister was in the class also and had a few native iris in her
garden, and Jack was taken with those.

He liked them a good deal; he could see the graceful beauty
of them. So he started collecting seeds and rhizomes of the
native iris up and down the coast from about Mendocino County
down to south of Monterey County. He brought them home, and
Dad, being so busy with his camellia projects — incidentally, he
wouldn't want me to brag, but he's introduced over two
hundred cultivars into the nursery trade. Well, when Jack
discovered iris, Father really was not terribly impressed at
first. But he was happy to help Jack out, and they raised the
seeds and tried to keep the plants going. They raised the seeds
in cans so that they could sell the ones they didn't want to
keep for stock.

Well, they weren't very good. So a friend and a
horticulturalist named Peg Dabagh saw that they wanted to
get going on the native iris and talked to Dr. Lee Lenz at
Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. Dr. Lenz had already given
some of his best selections to other commercial people who just
sold them and didn't create stock from which you could get more
plants. And Dr. Lenz had become cautious about this, but Peg

McCaskill: convinced him that the McCaskills were serious plant lovers, so
he invited my brother out to pick seeds from some of his
best stock plants. From there they vent on making crosses
back and forth and developed some of their own cultivars. many
of them very beautiful.

Lage: What did you call them?

McCaskill: Cultivars. It's a word that we should really use instead of

varieties, where man is involved. In the wild you can speak of
genus, species, and varieties, but where man has intervened the
name is cultivar. Earlier I mentioned a camellia. 'Pink
Perfection1; it would be written in single quotes.

Lage: So a cultivar is just a variety that's man-bred or developed?

McCaskill: Yes.

Lage: I see there was cooperation between the professional

horticulturists and the nurserymen, or at least in this
instance.

McCaskill: Yes, there was. That reminds me that we went with Dad to the
Huntington Gardens often. He donated hundreds of camellia
plants, and one of their big sections that remains at the garden
today is the camellia garden. Many of the plants that he
donated are huge trees by now.

Dad, and Mom when she could get away, took us to many
wonderful gardens. I have memories of, of course, the
Huntington and also private gardens. We were so lucky to be in
an area where public botanic gardens were accessible. And then
the private garden that I recall now is that of the Gamble family
of the Procter and Gamble soap people. Cecil Gamble and his
wife Louise would come to the garden in a chauffered car and
select plants. Then Mr. Gamble would ask Dad, "Would you come
and plant them for me, or show my gardener where they should be
located so they will grow well?" The Gamble house is wonderful.
It was built in the California bungalow style by the famed
Greene and Greene architects.

We're getting side tracked.

Lage: Well, yes, but I think this is important because it certainly

shows where you developed your interests.

McCaskill: Yes, it was just part of our lives.

Lage: Did your father do a lot of mail order on his camellias?

McCaskill: No. he didn't. Dad was not a — I don't want to say not a

businessman, but let's face it, he was a plant lover. His life
was out in that nursery in the soil. He wasn't into trying
to develop the nursery and hire people and go as the Armstrongs,
Rosedales. and Deigaards did. They have wonderful nurseries and
multi-million dollar operations, but Dad scarcely hired anyone,
remember that when business was extra good in the forties, he
had to hire a young fellow to help. His name was Bob linger, and
Bob became part of the family. He was so good to us kids. He
would take us out to the Lucky Baldwin property and build little
boats for us to sail on the lake. That's the lake in the T.V.
program "Fantasy Island," incidentally. Many movies were
filmed out there, both before and after it became the Arcadia
Arboretum. It was only a mile or so from our house, so we'd
just walk or bike out there to play and explore around.

Pasadena Schooling and On to Mills

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:

Sounds very idyllic. Tell me about your school in Pasadena,
mentioned it was an unusual system.

You

Yes. I should have done my homework on this one. It was an
unusual school system called the "six-four-four plan." I
started at Willard Grammar School. One day someone came in and
said, "Well, we're going to have some of you go over to Grant
Elementary School." It turns out it was a progressive school;
that was an interesting story in itself. It was a progressive
school, not progressive by today's standards, because today
kids can do very many things that seemed a little avant garde at
the time, I guess. We learned about opera in first grade, and
we'd go to a music class and have it played and explained
to us. I remember the Ring, Wagner's Ring. We would chase
butterflies and make collections. We had our own little
radio station in the sixth grade. We hammered pewter plates
and built a covered wagon and adobe hogan for our social
studies.

It does sound something like some of the experiments in the
sixties.

McCaskill: We got to write our own report cards, too. I remember the
principal was Grace Ball. That was unusual, I suppose, to
have a woman principal. And, anyway, those years were a great
deal of fun. I went to Grant through the sixth grade, and then
I went to Wilson Junior High School for four years.

Lage:

A four-year junior high?

McCaskill: Yes. they called it Woodrov Wilson Junior High; after you

graduated there from the tenth grade, the next step was to go to
Pasadena City College, which was four years: eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen. So I went there for year eleven and took
botany from a woman named Margaret Stason. She influenced my
life. Prior to that I thought I was majoring in English with a
wonderful woman named Miss Dickson, but I think the both of us
could see my talent wasn't great. And I was sliding back into
plants. 1 was learning about them for the first time, learning
about their internal structure and functions, so 1 think I owe a
lot to Miss Stason for furthering my interest.

Lage: Did you have a close relationship with her, or just teacher-
student?

McCaskill: No. I seldom saw her out of the classroom setting. It seems to
me she gave both the lectures and the labs. I had a friend
there taking the class with me. She and her sister and I had
long been friends growing up in the Pasadena area and attending
church camp together. The two of them went off to Mills for
college.

Oh, back when my brother and 1 were growing the veggie
garden and all that, my older sister had gone off to Stanford.

Lage: And what was her name?

McCaskill: Bettylee. Her Stanford sorority sisters called her Letty B.
instead of Bettylee. Now she's Letty to everyone.

At any rate, I was thinking of trying for Stanford, and then
•y friends had gone to Mills, and Miss Stason had shown me
books by a Professor Howard McMinn, who was at Mills.

Lage: So there was active discussion about career plans or majors at
the city college level?

McCaskill: Yes, my counselor was helpful and enthusiastic about biology.
As was, of course, the head of the Biology Department, at that
time a woman named Emma B. Mundy.

Lage: And you had a sense that you wanted to get into botany?

McCaskill: Yes. I felt that I was headed that way. To be honest with you.
I wasn't as thinking as most people that age are today. I
don't believe. I was going to college a lot because my brother
and sister had, and that was the next step in life*

Lage: It was expected, I'm sure. Was there any thought of coning back
and working in the nursery? Did your parents encourage that?

McCaskill: No, no! They were wonderful. They didn't push us into
anything.

One other thing. This hardly fits in. but for instance,
marriage. My brother and I never married. We did some dating,
but. ... My sister did marry and, in fact, had two good,
wonderful marriages. Her first husband died too early of
cancer. But now she's happily remarried to Earle Sample, and
it's one of the greatest things that's happened to our family.
At any rate, I guess we were saying that my parents didn't try
to overdirect us. They made suggestions, but it was up to us.
No, I had no thoughts of going back to the nursery. I did
work a summer at Caltech, and we'll talk about that later,
perhaps.

So off I went to Mills in nineteen forty-nine, fall of
forty-nine. I was there my sophomore, junior, senior years, and
then I stayed on two more years to work with Professor McMinn
and Dr. Lucile Mason.

Lage: She was connected with Mills, too?

McCaskill: Yes, she was.

Lage: Were those two years graduate years for you?

McCaskill: No, I was not enrolled for a graduate degree. Professor McMinn

had asked me to stay on and help him. I was his girl Friday, to a
degree. I helped with the herbarium and the greenhouses; I
helped Mrs. Mason teach the nurses — there was a program between
Mills and the Merritt College nursing program. So nurses came
over to Mills, and I would help Lucile Mason in teaching
bacteriology and biology. I helped set up the labs. I remember
making a lot of media in petri plates and transferring cultures,
things of that nature.

Meanwhile, I'm doing many things for Professor McMinn.
And while I was there. I took classes. Then Professor McMinn one
evening took me to a California Botanical Society meeting. I
guess I actually went to several of those meetings with him.
They were held at that time in the College Women's Club in
Berkeley.

One time he introduced me to Dr. John Tucker, who was to
then become my boss for thirty-some years at UC Davis.

10

Southern California Horticulturists; Charlotte Hoak.
Kate Sessions, Jack Hahn

Lage: Before we talk more about Mills and Professor McMinn, tell

me about people that you met through your family nursery
who have some standing in the botanical and horticultural
worlds.

McCaskill: Yes. I was thinking of starting with the women. It's

interesting how many women there were at the time. They were
actually ahead of the times. One that comes to mind is
Charlee Hoak. and, of course, we remember funny things, so I'll
have to tell you a story.

Charlotte was a well respected plants woman who knew her
business. She wrote articles for garden magazines and for
newspapers. She would come to our nursery quite often. The
funny story is that one day she was examining the camellias and
chatting with my dad as she walked up and down the driveway. As
she was looking at them, something came loose — I want to say
underpinnings because that word tickles me — and. without batting
an eye, she took her walking stick, flicked them up, put them into
the bag she had over her arm and went right on with the
conversation. My dad said she didn't even miss a beat, didn't
miss a word in the conversation.

Lage: Was she an imposing woman?

McCaskill: She was to my small eyes. She was determined; she spoke

positively. There was not too much arguing with her, I wouldn't
imagine. Oh. and incidentally, she's the one with whom my brother
travelled up the north coast, to Mendocino County; she had been
born and raised up there.

Charlotte, in her later years, turned to us more and more.
My mother, who was so kind and patient with everyone, talked to
Charlotte almost daily. It got to be a bit much, but my mother
didn't have the heart, really, to discourage her.

Lage: Was Charlotte's main role as a writer?

McCaskill: Yes, a writer and lecturer, I would say.

Lage: Was she based in California?

McCaskill: She lived. I think it was. in south Pasadena.

Lage: Did she write for California publications?

11

McCaskill: Yes, for California publications. It was a woman named Elvenia
Slosson who saw to it that garden clubs of the state united
together under the title of California Gardens, Inc. California
Gardens then published a magazine called Golden Gardens, and
Miss Hoak was its first editor.

If

Lage: Okay. Did you know Elvenia Slosson?

McCaskill: No. I didn't. Another well-known gal was Kate Sessions. Miss
Sessions died round about 1940, but she would come into the
nursery in the thirties. She was actually best known for
landscaping Balboa Park, and was a writer and a lecturer, also.
I believe she spent most of her life in San Diego. You can still
see evidence of her life there — beautiful old trees all over the
city and in Balboa Park, most especially.

Lage: So this is quite an accomplishment, I would think, as a woman.

McCaskill: Yes, it was! She had a nursery, now that I come to think of it.
She owned a nursery on her own — that was quite an undertaking.
At any rate. Dad reminisces about her coming into the nursery
with her long skirts. She always wore flowing long skirts, and he
said she would sweep the aisles as she went down through our
nursery selecting her camellias. Dad also recalls that she
would never let my mother wait on her. Though a woman pioneer
in the field, she couldn't quite trust the competency of other
females in the business.

Lage: That's so ironic. It seems as if you had people coming from all

over to get camellias.

McCaskill: Yes. we did. I think — as life goes on — we remember the happy

things more and more, thank goodness. I remember Jack Hahn. He
was a landscape architect of note. His home up in Sierra
Madre was small, but his small garden was just a jewel. We'd
go up there very often. I remember my mother in particular
would like to go there to see what wonderful things he'd done
around pools, in hanging baskets, and what not. Then he would
come down to our nursery a lot. and the fun thing about him was
his wooden leg. In those days they were wooden, and there
were holes in them. He would delight in pulling his pants legs
up and show us kids what he had stuck around in some of these
holes. He had, you know, diamond rings and funny things
he would pull out to amuse us with.

And then he went on to landscape the UC Irvine campus,
dead now, too. All these people are gone.

He's

12

Lage: Any other people you want to mention that you knew from the

nursery?

McCa skill: I remember movie stars — the only names I can come up with today
are Marie Dressier and Minna Gombel. Miss Gombel was in The
Hunchback of Notre Dame. They would come out with their
chauffeurs and gardeners to select plants for their estates. So
that was fun.

The Pasadena Environment

Lage: I always think of Pasadena as being a wealthy community.

McCaskill: Yes, it was. Definitely.

Lage: Was that the kind of clientele you had, or was it a cross

section?

McCaskill: Yes, well, we had a cross section, definitely a cross section.
Pasadena was blessed with wonderful weather, hence beautiful
flowers. It was easy to raise them there. People from all
walks of life came to see them.

Lage: Any problem with the smog as the years went on? Did your father

have problems?

McCaskill: Yes, but. I think, more than the smog, it was the water.

It was a water problem that Pasadena had, and not Arcadia. I
remember it had to do with the Colorado River water.

Lage: The quality of the water?

McCaskill: Yes. There were unsuitable minerals in it, and I remember for
some of my dad's choice things he would take them over to my
sister's and her husband's garden in Arcadia and try to revive
them with her water by leaving them there awhile. Their water
was well water.

Lage: So he seemed to figure out what the problem was — he narrowed it

down?

McCaskill: Yes. I think that the water was his biggest problem, and
another was the camellia blight that affected the camellia
petals. It was finally figured what the fungus was and then
from there they could figure a control. It now can be sprayed
with a fungicide.

13

Lage: Did he draw on peoples' expertise for some of these problems,

like the blight? Would the university Cooperative Extension
assist him at all?

McCaskill: No, I don't believe he contacted the university system, but one
person he checked with a lot was Dr. James Bonner at Caltech.
Bonner was a very well-known plant physiologist, and his hobby
was camellias. He came to the meetings of the Camellia Society
that we all attended so dad would share his problems with him
and get his thoughts on them. I would say.

The Southern California Camellia Society

Lage: You mentioned the Camellia Society, but I think the story you

told me about its founding didn't get on the tape, so why don't
we talk about that now?

McCaskill: That would be the Southern California Camellia Society. It is
still in existence, meeting at the Arcadia Arboretum. Dad
remembers so well, he and Mom were on the back porch of our
house one day, he had just opened the mail to find there was a
meeting of the Camellia Society in the South, in the Deep South
where they grow so beautifully, and where camellia societies
abound. Another camellia person was there at the time, and my
dad said, "Well, why couldn't we have a camellia society here?"
Mr. Robert Long said, "Well, we could." So they phoned people
they thought would be interested, all camellia enthusiasts.
There were literally dozens of them in the Pasadena area and
in Temple City, especially.

Lage: Dozens of other camellia nurseries?

McCaskill: Of camellia growers. They might have had general nurseries.

but camellias were a big favorite. So they felt they could get an
organization going and had an organizational meeting in
Pasadena. Their first regular meeting was held in the main
library of Pasadena on Walnut Street, in 19AO. Jack and I went.
I guess I was ten, Jack was eleven. We were regular attendees.
We helped the folks take their cut blossoms to the meetings, and
then we always assisted with their annual camellia shows, where
they put in large displays. We would help them put in their
exhibits, stand talking to people and helping with whatever
needed doing.

Lage: It sounds like great preparation for your job at the herbarium.

II EDUCATION AND WORK AT MILLS COLLEGE. 1949-1953

Professor Howard McMinn; Lasting Contributions

Lage: We skimmed quickly, very quickly, over Mills College and your

education there and experience. You had five years all
together.

McCaskill: Yes.

Lage:

Arriving in '49 at Mills?

McCaskill: Yes. And graduating in June of fifty-one.
Lage: What was Mills like during these postwar years?

McCaskill: Wonderful. I loved it. I would go there all over again. People
say. "a girls' school?" Well, I know, I can understand, but we
had Berkeley and Stanford nearby, and there were a lot of exchange
activities. We didn't feel isolated. It was a beautiful campus.
I wasn't totally aware of that at the time, but when I go back
now I think. "^Dh. my word!" I must have been half asleep when I
was there in terms of realizing its physical beauty.

Professor McMinn and his wife. Helen, lived up in Faculty
Village, as it was called, as did many of the professors, and
they were so gracious, in that they invited us up to their home
for afternoon teas or dinners.

Lage: Was this because you were a botany major? Was that your major?

McCaskill: I was a botany major, yes. And Professor McMinn would take us
on field trips, also, around the campus and the hills
surrounding the campus. We didn't often go on any farther afield
than the Bay Area. Things were limited at that time in terms
of transportation. We did manage one excursion to Yosemite.
however. And I remember going on the beaches over in San
Francisco out past Fleishhacker Zoo.

15

Lage: The Ocean Beach area?

McCaskill: Yes. He would show us the coastal strand plants; we'd

collect some. His main interest, however, was native shrubs.
He wrote a book on the native shrubs of California which I still
use in the herbarium almost daily. He wrote another book on
ornamental vines and shrubs of California, and a third titled
Pacific Coast Trees. They were all written in the 1930s and
1940s, and I have them on my shelves in the herbarium right
where my special books are that I use to identify plants that
come in. And if anybody comes in and says. "I want a shrub
identified." I can use his book along with what is currently the
bible, by Philip Munz, A California Flora. I've used them side
by side, and then you have to update the taxonomy or the names.
of course. And if someone askes me, "Well. I'd like to learn
how to use keys. This just looks like a bunch of gobbledegook
to me; what am I going to do?". I'll often show them McMinn's
keys. He had a way of simplifying them. You could get a long
way to the answer in his keys because you could use them with
ease; the language was not overdone.

Lage: So he knew how to get to the person who was not the expert.

McCaskill: Yes. He got to the layman as well as to the professional
botanists.

Lage: He had quite a reputation as a professional.

McCaskill: Yes. he did. yes. I would say he was one of the foremost
pioneers in introducing native plants into the California
landscape. In the 1930s he was introducing Ceanothus.
Arctostaphylos. or manzanita, and he did a good deal of
hybridizing of the Diplacus, now lumped into Mimulus by some
plant taxonomists, but either way, "bush monkey flowers." And
there were gardens of his crosses and plant introductions. His
native plants surrounded the Life Science Building at Mills, and
much of that is still intact. They've had to add on wings and
transplant things.

Lage: Is it a formal botanical garden?

McCaskill: I wouldn't say formal, but rather plantings in the area in and
around the biological science buildings. When I was there the
core of it was the Mclnnes Memorial Garden, Semi-formal
maybe. There was a little greenhouse where he taught us
propagation. He collected seeds and plants extensively in South
Africa and brought them to his gardens at Mills and propagated
them, and some of those have been introduced into the nursery
trade. Many South African daisies, for example.

Lage: I interviewed a man named A. E. Wieslander.

16

McCaskill : Oh, I know his name.

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:
McCaskill:

He worked for the Forest Service doing surveys of California
vegetation, but he also had a native plant garden which
specialized in manzanita in Oakland.

Yes, now I recall the soil-vegetation surveys and mapping,
herbarium specimens resulted from this survey work.

He talked about Howard McMinn.

Many

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:

McMinn published another book titled Ceanothus with the
director of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden at the time. He
was well known; he's gone now, too. But McMinn wrote the half
of the book on the taxonomy of the genus and Maunsell Van
Rensselaer did more on the cultivation, the horticultural end.

Was there a close tie always between the botanical people and
the horticulturalists? It sounds so at Mills.

Yes, there definitely was at Mills. McMinn hob-nobbed with
many of the horticulturalists, and they came to him. He was
active in the Hens' Garden Club in Oakland and religiously
attended their meetings and helped with the annual Oakland
Flower Show.

Did he sort of bring you along, did you feel? Was he fostering
your interest in a career in botany, or was that already
predetermined in your own mind?

McCaskill : Well, he certainly added several more sparks to my interest.
Lage: Did he ever encourage you to go on and get a master's?

McCaskill : He did think that I should go for a master's, which somehow I
never did. I got into my job at Davis and stayed there. Once
in a while I'd think, "Now, I must stop this," or "I really should
take some more classes and do two things at once," which would
have been possible. In some ways I'm sorry that I didn't. But
Professor McMinn certainly encouraged us all along the way.

Lage: Was it a very large botany department?

McCaskill: No. You know, we talked about Mills, and I said I would go there
again. And would I recommend that someone majoring in botany go
there now? Well, you asked about the size of the department.
Professor McMinn was the department chair. We had Cadet Hand who
recently retired from Bodega Bay Marine Station; he was there
teaching zoology. We had a woman, Lois Eubank, teaching
bacteriology. The whole group of biologists was probably five
people, and McMinn was the botanist. Now they have a

17

Dr. Bruce Pavlik who got his degree at Davis. He keeps in
touch. He's very much enjoying his job there and taking the
students on more field trips. They have them scheduled in the
summer — the Mills girls in conjunction with the Davis botany
students so that they do get more exposure to field work.

Lage: Sounds like a nice environment.

McCaskill: Yes, it was grand. I thoroughly enjoyed my years there. My

closest friends, I would say, I met there. Some of my high school
friends I still see, but you make stronger ties in college, I
believe.

Lage: You mentioned Lucile Mason, and you had told me on the phone that

you got to know her and Herbert Mason well. Do you want to say
some things about that?

McCaskill: Yes. I don't know if it was after I accepted the job or was

thinking of taking the job at Davis, Lucile had me come over to
the Berkeley campus to the herbarium. That must be when I first
met Annetta Carter and Rimo Bacigalupi. Lucile had me come
to learn more herbarium techniques, and I would watch and
observe and then work along with the mounters for a few days.
Lucile and Herbert would take me up to their home for lunch and
dinner. Another little thing I remember vividly was their cat,
Figaro. And they had a young son named David whom I got to know
better when he came and got a Ph.D. at Davis in limnology. Now
Mrs. Mason is gone, but Herbert lives with his son, David, up in
Bellingham, Washington. Herbert has very much slowed down, but
his son said that he is able to enjoy the garden at their home
and visits from old friends.

Lage: He must be quite elderly.

McCaskill: He must, yes — in his early 90s.

Lage: Was Annetta managing the Berkeley herbarium at that time?

McCaskill: Dr. Herbert Mason was the director while Annetta would have been
what I would call the head curator. Also there at the same time
was Dr. Helen Sharsmith, a noted botanist who later wrote the
book Spring Wild flowers j>f the San Francisco Bay Region.

Lage: Did Mills have a herbarium?

McCaskill: A very small one. Mr. McMinn had one that he kept as a teaching
herbarium. He didn't emphasize that aspect of it, so I hadn't
learned all about running one. I don't believe we actually
prepared any specimens there. We collected and studied them, for
certain.

Lage: You didn't have to do the mounting?

18

McCaskill: No. I might have helped him try to reorganize the collection at
one time. However, it was not a known herbarium. There are many
small ones all over the state, of course, in institutions of
higher education, but many of them don't do what formal
herbaria do; they don't send out loans or have an exchange
program going. And that was the situation at Mills. However,
while Dr. Baki Kasapligil was the botany professor at Mills he
added a worldwide collection of Quercus and Corylus.
Although our times at Mills didn't overlap, we've become good
friends, incidentally.

Interest in Allergenic Plants

Lage:

Is there anything else you think we should cover about
Mills?

McCaskill: Well, I think I just started to touch a point about the plants

that cause hay fever. Professor McMinn had personal interest in
that, and he published a book in the late 1950s, I believe it
was. Actually, it was a soft covered, perhaps spiral bound
book, Allergenic Pollen Survey of the San Francisco Bay Area.
I still need to figure out why he called it that, in that he had
the Bay Area but also many other areas of central and northern
California. He had done pollen surveys all over these areas.
We learned a good bit of that in class, since it was one of the
things he was most anxious to share with us. We would put
slides atop buildings, microscope slides with some adhesive to
hold the pollen grains which lighted on them. Then we'd
take them back to the lab from all over the Bay Area, count
them, and calculate which were the biggest offenders amongst
the trees, weeds, and grasses.

Lage: You mean you could identify the trees from the pollen?

McCaskill: Yes. each has its own distinctive pollen. We would learn to
recognize one from another.

Lage:

And did he publish in that field also?

McCaskill: He did publish articles and that one book a few years after we
left. I think perhaps we were contributing a bit to his
field research. I hope so.

Lage: That's an interesting side line, really, a long way fr<

shrubs of California.

McCaskill: And then, years later, far beyond Mills and Professor

the

19

Lage:

McMinn's life, I got a phone call from Hoi lister Stier
Laboratories one day. It's a pharmaceutical lab, and they said,
*Ve have some doctors in the Bay Area who are allergy
specialists, and they would like to learn something of plants
that cause hay fever. Could you come and perhaps take them on a
walk someplace and help them learn the basic plant
identification? Point out some of the trees that were causing
the trouble — and weeds and so forth." And I said, "Surely, I'd
be happy to do that." And then I thought, what better place
than Mills because of the great variety of plants, including the
grand old trees — and you can park there. The representative
from Hollister Stier brought a lunch. We would walk over hill
and dale at Mills. Yes, there are hills; and a lake. We
would walk up and down and around, and I would stop and point
out the plants that are known to be, oh, say. the twenty worst
trees in terms of hay fever. Then we would go another time of
year when the grasses and weeds were at their height. The trees
would be blooming in the spring and then, of course, the weeds
are worse in the summer and fall, and the grasses overlap. So
we had some delightful sessions there. In the middle of the day
we'd sit down on the lawn somewhere, and the representative from
the company had quite a spread, complete with cold cuts, wine,
and cheese.

Sounds wonderful! When do we break for lunch? [laughter]

McCaskill: And, of course, it was at that time that I saw Mills through
different eyes.

Lage: Going back and seeing the what a beautiful spot it was?

McCaskill: Yes.

Lage: When did you do this?

McCaskill: That would be for a few years in the nineteen seventies. So
twenty years after graduation; twenty, twenty-five.

Lage:

Sounds like a nice perspective.

Mills as a Women's College

Lage: In general, at Mills, just thinking of it as a women's college,

did you have a sense of what they were preparing the women for?
It was pre- worn en's liberation time, of course.

McCaskill: Yes. I guess to a degree I did. Actually, at that time

20

interestingly enough, the president was a man. Dr. Lynn White,
Jr., a historian who had taught at Stanford. He felt, as did
many people before him — President Aurelia Henry Reinhardt and
Dean Hettie Belle included — strongly about women's education.
This philosophy Lynn White carried over into his book. Educating
Our Daughters. The president now is Dr. Mary Metz. and she s
very highly regarded.

Lage: Did they think women should be educated to be generally

liberal and broad-minded people, or were they thinking of
careers?

McCaskill: True, it was considered a liberal arts college with emphasis on
music and the arts. However, it was also strong in curricula
preparing students for careers in education, the humanities, and
community service. I never did finish the sentence, "Would I
send a daughter there to be a botany major," — only if the staff
has increased considerably — then it would be good to go there as
an undergrad and then be certain to go on for a master's
elsewhere for the more rigorous type of botanical training.

When I was there we did have a few graduate students,
including men. There was some off-campus living, and there were
men that were getting their master's in arts and music. Dave
Brubeck was one of them.

If

Lage: Among your friends at Mills, were any of them preparing for

professions or planning to go to graduate school, or were they
thinking how quickly they could get married after college, which
seemed to be more common then than now?

McCaskill: Actually, of my friends in the botany field, neither one went on
in botany. One owns a travel bureau in L.A. and the other is at
the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in the conference center. They do
remember those days and enjoyed them, but did not find that
that's what they wanted to do.

Lage:

McCaskill: Right.

They got the broad, liberal education that Mills is well known
for.

21

III DAVIS: THE TOWN. CAMPUS AND HERBARIUM IN THE 1950S
[Interview 2: April 11. 1988]«

A Small-Town Atmosphere

Lage: Last time we talked about your youth and education and how you

met John Tucker at the California Botanical Society and were
offered the job as curator in Davis. We're going to start out
today with the beginnings of your job, what your expectations
were, and what it was like to move to a new town.

McCaskill: Yes. we did talk about when I had met Dr. John Tucker.

Actually. I wasn't hired on the spot. I was required, of
course, to go to Davis for an interview. I was interviewed by
the then- chairman, Dr. Vernon Cheadle, and Dr. John Tucker. I
was shown the facility and around the campus a bit. John even
took me around town to see some of the major sites, such as the
ice cream parlorl It was in a small town.

Lage: Was this '53?

McCaskill: In the summer of 1953. I arrived on the Fourth of July to start
the job. I remember seeing the Fourth of July kiddie parade.
I was used to seeing the Pasadena Rose Parade, and this was
just precious, really, so different. They had rolled out the
fire trucks and the children on tricycles, little ones walking
along, anything they could find that moved. The town was
eight thousand people, and it was like a new world to me. It was
so small.

It turned out to be wonderful, but at first I was
apprehensive. I'll have to admit. The secretary in the
department let me stay at her house while she was on vacation
while I searched for myself someplace to live. I ended up in a
rooming house with two other gals that worked in the department,
and we had more fun! It was funny.

Lage: It sounds like a very friendly atmosphere.

22

McCaskill: It was. The town grew and I grew to realize you didn't have to
live in a big town. It's far better to live where people arc so
friendly, so caring. It's a beautiful town in which to raise
children, I might add. Not that I have ever had any, but I can
see if I did, I'd like them there and in that school system.

Herbarium Headquarters and Directors

Lage: But you did have a little sense of "What am I getting myself

into?", it sounds like.

McCaskill: Yes, the first day at work, the first few weeks, it took some
getting used to. It was hotter than "the hinges of hell,"
as Grandad Alex used to say.

Lage:
McCaskill;

Lage:
McCaskill;

Lage:
McCe skill j

You were arriving in the middle of summer.

We were in a temporary building, it was called TB 4, Room 9, as
I recall. I sat up on a high stool, and there were metal-top
tables. The tables some days were so hot you couldn't put your
arms down on them. So we would get a thermometer and keep it in
there and read it often just to torture ourselves. [laughter]

When did that change?
building?

When did you get out of the temporary

We got into our new building in 1960. Previously the department
had been in three different buildings. The main botany building
was meant to be a garage. It was built so that both ends of the
building could be knocked out when bigger and better class rooms
were built elsewhere. Then it would be used for cars, but that
never happened. Meanwhile the campus garage was built farther
out on campus, and this remained the botany and teaching
buildings until it was knocked over. Now the existing library
is on top of our three old buildings.

I mentioned the first one was the garage, the second one
was a huge old wooden- shingled building that we shared with the
viticulture department. The third one that I was in was a World
War II metal building, a long narrow building that was perhaps
barracks or perhaps a medical facility, I'm really not certain,
but it was temporary, in quotes! [laughter]

How many people were employed in the herbarium then?

Therewas me and a part-time student who did some aountingfor
us. The director at that time was Professor John Tucker, an oak
taxonomist. He remained my boss for thirty-two years. And we

23

McCaskill: like to think we grew up together. I respect him and am

extremely fond of him. He's still in town, a professor emeritus
at UCD. And, two years ago when John retired, Dr. Grady Webster
became my supervisor, and I'm fond of him too. They're two
entirely different personalities, but so grand to work for.
I've been lucky in that respect.

Lage: It's nice to have that continuity, also.

McCaskill: Yes, it's amazing, isn't it?

Lage: Were they professors at the same time?

McCaskill: There was some overlap, but John had come to Davis, I believe,
in 1948, and Grady came to us from Purdue in 1966.

Lage: What I meant was did they have professorial duties as well as

directing the herbarium?

McCaskill: Oh yes, yes. The directors of all herbaria in the UC system
are professors of plant taxonomy, systematics.

Lage: Now, how actively involved was, say, John Tucker, in the

management of the herbarium? Did he just set policy and let the
staff run things?

McCaskill: I would say that mostly he did set policy. We would talk

things over, but he definitely made the major decisions. And
then, of course, as I became accustomed to my job as the years
went by, there were more and more responsibilities that I took
over.

Lage: Was there ever a time you can recall where you had different

ideas or clashing opinions about how something should be done?

McCaskill: No, no, not really. They're just, as I said, so grand to work
with and we'd just work things out.

Chief Cook and Bottle Washer

Lage: I noticed your notes there on your initial expectations for the

job. I think that's a very interesting way of looking at it, now
that you're looking back from so many years of working there, to
try to call back what your expectations were when you started.

McCaskill: Yes. well, when I went there for the interview, I was shown the
facilities and I pretty much knew what to expect. It was a
small herbarium. It had old wooden cabinets. John Tucker, in

24

McCaskill:

Lage :
McCaskill:

addition to all his teaching duties, was trying to run this
herbarium and answer miscellaneous requests and people wanting
plants identified. He was trying to handle the whole thing.

And he didn't have anybody in the position that you took?

No. and he didn't have time for all those things, so I began to
look into the cabinets and realize that it did need a lot of
tender loving care, and so we started in. At that time there
were fourteen thousand sheets, more or less, individual
specimens. Today we have over a hundred thousand more. That's
not really an impressive number compared to some herbaria, but
in our situation, it's significant, I think, because I'm still
the only full-time employee.

Lage:

I would think your job has dramatically increased 1
more student help than you had at that time?

Do you have

McCaskill: We do. We have work-learn interns, and we have work-study
students, but I remain the chief cook and bottle washer,
[laughter] I'm the receptionist, the office girl, the
librarian, the curator, and the students come to me with their
problems.

Lage: [laughter] The campus mother superior.

McCaskill: [laughter] Yes, thank you. I couldn't think what to call it!

Lage: Then you have the public service aspect. You have mentioned an

incident that occurred shortly after you arrived in Davis that
sort of indicated what you were getting yourself into in that
area.

McCaskill: Oh yesl I think it was the first month I was there. Then the
boxes were starting to come in — they're coming in faster and
more furiously now. I receive things through the door and
through the mail. Well, through the mail, all those years ago.
came a box and a letter. The letter said that they would like
this growth identified and that it was the shape and size of a
basketball. It's good they mentioned that because when I
opened it I couldn't see the shape or size. There were bits and
pieces of a fungal growth called a puff ball remaining. What
was so amazing were the plump maggots that were alive and well
and running around. They had consumed the thing. [laughter]
So that sort of set the stage for my years as a public service
identifier of all things weird and wonderful.

Lage: And you seem so calm. I don't know how you do it.

25

History of Herbaria at Davis

Lage: You also mentioned earlier, off the tape, that you weren't the

only herbarium on the Davis campus. Let's clarify that.

McCask.il 1: True. There was an older herbarium, just a few years older than
ours. Ours was started in 1922, officially, and just a few
years prior to that the agronomy department herbarium came into
existence in Davis. It had been brought up from UC Berkeley.
Here at Berkeley, it had been Professor P.B. Kennedy's
herbarium, taken to Davis, and, until just two years ago, it was
in the agronomy department housed in Hunt Hall, and with a
curator named Beecher Crampton.

Beecher retired two years ago. It was felt that the space
was needed for other things, and the herbarium was moved out into
the hall and out into the agronomy field headquarters. Grady
and I realized the value of it. It is an extremely valuable
collection of not only grasses and range plants, but also a
marvelous collection of plants from the Central Valley. The
Central Valley has so changed now, you know, with 1-5 and other
major highways, housing developments, et cetera. The flora is
being destroyed, and Beecher has documented much of that.

He has type specimens — in other words, the first copy of
new species; species that he found when he was collecting, found
and named, and henceforth are called type specimens. We
realized that this collection must be saved, and it is now in
Robbins Hall, in our building. It was moved over by a van and
storage company — with me and my helpers packing fragile things
into boxes.

Lage: Was that a difficult change to make? Was the agronomy

department reluctant to give it up?

McCaskill: No. The chairman and the powers that be were wanting the space
for things they considered more important.

Lage: I see. They didn't have as much use for it as they may have at

one time?

McCaskill: That was part of their thinking, I suppose.

Lage: Was there any reason to have it separated at an earlier time?

McCaskill: Well, it's, I think, more circumstances. First, it cane to
agronomy; it belonged there. It was used for teaching the
agronomy students. The botany department was starting a
herbarium for the same reason, to be used for research and
students.

26

McCaskill: Perhaps this is a good time to tell you how our herbarium

started.

Lage: Yes.

McCaskill: Much like every herbarium in a teaching institution, you first
start collecting specimens because you want to show them to the
students. And Dr. Katherine Esau, in her plant anatomy lab — it
was a tiny little room — managed to get in one herbarium
case. She, herself, would go up Putah Creek, up the canyon and
collect things, bring them back, and show her students. Then
you start adding to it. John Tucker came, I was hired. I'm
skipping some people that were involved with it before John
Tucker. Then you realize that you need other plants of western
North America. It starts growing, with bigger areas being
represented.

Lage: Expanding the area that you're intending to collect in?

McCaskill: Not exactly. What happens is, you start exchanging duplicate
specimens with other herbaria in the United States, and
then in other countries. Now we exchange duplicate material
with close to ninety other herbaria on every continent.
In this manner you build up your own collection. It's much, I
tell people, like swapping postage stamps.

Lage:

It seems to have that quality.

McCaskill: Yes. And so you're able to build up and enrich your

collection. You can't possibly go to all these places and
collect them yourself.

Lage:

So now you have an international representation.

McCaskill: Yes.

Lage:

It's fascinating. It's something like a library, but the
swapping is unique, I think.

McCaskill: It is like a library, like a reference library. All these

specimens are housed in steel cabinets and are accessible. We
know how to find them. In our herbarium we have them
alphabetically arranged by family. We do have the lower forms
first, and then the monocotyledons and the dicotyledons. Our
feeling is, since we are just on one floor, the alphabetical
way will enable people to find things quickly.

In the major herbaria, things are arranged pbylogenetically
with like plants near their relatives so that a researcher can
come and find a plant family and its relatives without going up
and down between floors.

27

IV DUTIES OF A HERBARIUM CURATOR

Curatorial Functions; Exchanges. Loans, Mounting. Cataloging

McCaskill: There are many more curatorial duties I have, of course, and we
could talk more about that if you want.

Lage: Yes, I would like you to. Let's cover the ones that aren't

related to public service first.

McCaskill: Well then, curatorial duties consist of handling exchanges, we

talked about that. Loans — we have loans coming in and going out
almost every day. You come into our herbarium and it looks a
tad like a box factory. That's partly because we're not funded
well enough to have steel cases for everything, so we have many
things in these temporary Merrill boxes. A Dr. E.D. Merrill,
visiting on the Berkeley campus from Harvard, thought of having
special cardboard boxes made for temporary storage, and his name
has been attached to them ever since.

We do borrow specimens for our faculty's research, faculty
and staff, and for graduate students. For example, one of
Grady Webster's graduate students would be studying something
in the Euphorbiaceae. Grady's special family, and we would
borrow for that student specimens from other herbaria around the
world. We'll generally borrow several hundred of them. I think
the largest number of specimens ever borrowed for one student
was four thousand sheets.

Lage: All from one herbarium?

McCaskill: No, from several — both domestic and foreign. Maybe we should
have a typical day. In comes a loan, and several days
beforehand has come the forms that go with the loan telling
us how many specimens are coming and what they are. and then the
package will arrive. We unpack them, count then very carefully,
fumigate them and file them away. When you borrow from other
herbaria it's extremely important to treat their specimens

28

McCaskill : carefully. They've given us the courtesy of loaning us their
plants, and we must fumigate them, keep the bugs out of them,
keep them in steel cabinets and count them several times to make
sure that the count matches the number on the invoice because
when you return them, you don't want to be one short.

Lage: And the fumigation, is that something you have to do regularly,

on a regular basis, or just the one time when they come in?

McCaskill: When they come in, and if they've been out on the table tops too
long. That would be the main thing with the loans. We could
talk about fumigation for other materials, but for the loans
that would be it.

Lage: You were going to give a typical day. Should we go on with

that? We've got a loan and fumigated it.

McCaskill: Okay. Work-study students have come in. By then, perhaps, one
or two undergraduate students who earn money by mounting the
plants, this brings up the subject of herbarium lingo. I think
every profession has its own special jargon, and when we say
mounting, that means pasting the plants down onto herbarium
sheets, special paper that's supplied for that purpose.

Lage: These would be newly gathered plants?

McCaskill: Yes, they could be, but not necessarily newly gathered. They
could have been gathered just a short time ago, but they could
have been sitting in the herbarium for quite some time waiting.
We have such a backlog that they could have been sitting there
two years or more waiting to be mounted.

The mounter would paste them onto the herbarium paper, put
straps on them, and put an accession number on every sheet. We
keep records of the accession so that we know how many
specimens are in the herbarium, and, more than that, it's
important that every museum catalog their holdings because when
you loan them, for example, you can record who has borrowed
what.

Public Information and Reference Service

McCaskill: Meanwhile the telephone is ringing and we have requests for. .
"Could you tell me. are the plants blooming on the desert yet?1
It's springtime, you know, and they're wondering what would be
the hot spots where they could go on a trip and see a good
display of wildflowers.

29

Lage: Do you keep up with that kind of information so you are a

good place to call for that?

McCaskill : We try to. We try to keep up on things like this. We have
notices out on our door of field trips and plant displays,
seminars in our own department, on campus, et cetera.

Lage: If I wanted to go to Anza Borrego, could you tell me a good time

of year to go?

McCaskill: Well. I could do that or suggest someone that you could phone.

We do a lot of networking. We get calls about. 'What would be a
good wildf lower book I could use? I don't know a thing about
identifying them, but I'd like to try to learn and could you
suggest some reference material?"

Lage: So a lot of this is general public questions?

McCaskill: General public questions, yes.

Lage: Does the University fund you for this kind of thing? Do you

have a position in the herbarium that the University might fund
as a public service?

McCaskill: No, that's just a part of my duties.

Lage: It's just your duties in the botany department? They accept the

tab on that?

McCaskill: Yes. We consider it extremely important. I remember when I

first arrived on the job. John Tucker reminded me that we're a
land grant college, and we are serving the public. If it
weren't for the taxpayers we wouldn't be there at all. He
urged me to. whenever possible, drop other duties and do the
public service work first.

Lage: That's very interesting. Has that been a continued thrust?

McCaskill: Yes. We've continued with that policy.

Lage: People know about it. and that's why they call so much.

McCaskill: Oh yesl They definitely do, the word has spread far and wide.
What's fun is we're still thought of as the aggie [agricultural]
campus. In 1953, just near the time when I arrived, it was
changed from a strictly aggie campus to a general campus. The
vet school was new. We now have a law school, • »ed school,
everything that a major campus would have. None the less, we're
thought of as the aggie campus, and people are very aware of the
fact that weed control research goes on in our department. We
have many plant physiologists researching weed control. The

30

McCaskill: Cooperative Extension people in all the counties contact our
Cooperative Extension men housed in our building. The public
should first send their problems to their local farm advisor;
and the farm advisors in this state are excellent, 1 must
add. For thirty-five years I have been corresponding with
them, talking by phone, seeing them at meetings, and I respect
them highly. They willingly serve people in their county, but if
they need some new information or have problems identifying the
weeds, then they will turn to us.

Lage: So they come to you as a reference place?

McCaskill: Exactly.

Lage: And I know you're going to have some examples for us on some of

the kinds of requests you get. But let's go on in a more
general vein, and then we'll come back to some specifics.

What about assisting students and professors; how do they
use the herbarium?

McCaskill: The herbarium is used for research and for educational things
such as loaning them to faculty that are going to show them in
their courses.

Lage: So they can go out of the herbarium to the campus?

McCaskill: Yes. We not only send them out on loan via the mail, but
we loan them to people who are giving seminars, teaching
classes. We ask, of course, that they be extremely careful. We
put them in plastic folders. If a person has a legitimate
request, we're happy to do this. We don't like to have a closed
door policy, as a few herbaria do have, I've been told. We
feel that it's there to be used and is of little value if never
seen.

Enemies of Specimens: Light. Insects, and People

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:

Have you been disappointed in very many cases?
cases when things get stolen or damaged?

Do you have

No, we haven't. We've been very lucky that way. We learned
early on that the enemies of the specimens are the light, the
insects, and people. But we do our best to keep on top of all
of this. We've had minimal damage by people.

That's good. And the bugs you take care of with fumigation.
Now what about light?

31

McCaskill: Light fades them so rapidly, and that's why they must be housed
in cabinets away from light sources. We had wooden cabinets
when I was first there, but the wood keeps the light out, but
not the insects.

Lage: What about these Merrill boxes?

McCaskill: The Merrill boxes you were just asking about, they're meant to
be for temporary storage, but, when there's funding problems,
the "temporary" can go on for decades. Our goal is to get all
specimens housed in air-tight steel cases.

II

Lage: Then you fumigate regularly?

McCaskill: Yes. we try to keep on top of this. That's difficult when
you're dealing with that many specimens.

Lage: What do you fumigate with?

McCaskill: When I first arrived on the job there was an old air-tight ice
chest. We used carbon disulfide in a little metal container.
Without really thinking of what it was doing to our health, I
suppose, we would pour it into this little container, put it in
on top of the specimens — balance it on a pile of specimens in this
box — and then leave it there for forty-eight hours, and it would
do the trick. Then the Environmental Health and Safety people
came along down the road a few years and said, "You can't do this.1

Lage: Do you remember when that concern came up?

McCaskill : It was in the 1960s. People were more aware of their

environment, as you well know, in the sixties. On our campus we
have an Environmental Health and Safety facility, and their job
is to look out for the health and safety of the people and the
animals on campus.

Lage: So they do inspections?

McCaskill: They do inspections, and once decreed that we must not use this
any longer. Meanwhile, we'd had moth flakes hanging in cloth
bags on every cabinet door, and we were also told that we could no
longer do that. So they suggested that we use pieces of vapona
or Shell No-Pest strips.

Lage: I always thought those were terrible for you.

McCaskill: You're right 1 You've hit it right on the dotl John Tucker
and I went to a statewide herbarium meeting, and the whole
subject of fumigation came up. We learned the problems with

32

McCaskill : the no-pest strips. It was so horrifying to hear what it would
do to a human being that when we came back we simply stopped
using them. The bugs soon moved in, and our problems
accelerated.

Then we started putting the specimens in a heat box. But
in this heat box you could put only so many, and our room is
built so that you can't fumigate the entire room at once.
Anything that you use will go drifting through the ceiling down
to the next room and throughout the entire building.

Lage: So it wasn't just you that fumes from fumigation were affecting.

McCaskill: Exactly, yes! People were complaining, and rightly so. When we
had too many moth flakes their odor was a bit much. People.
I'm sure, were affected. I imagine that all of us that have
been there so many years are affected to a degree, I don't know.
I personally haven't had problems that I'm aware of.

The current and best thing to do is use a freezer to freeze
the specimens. We put them in a freezer at zero degrees, and
thereby kill the insects and any of their larvae or eggs that
might have been laid. It's also better than heat because the
specimens don't get too crisp and break apart.

Lage: So when you say fumigate now, you're really referring just to

freezing?

McCaskill: Yes. true.

Retrieving Specimens

Lage: What kind of cataloging is used? I'm calling it cataloging

because my model is a library. How do you find the specimens?

McCaskill: People have actually asked us. "Where's the card file? Do you
have a card file, or is all of this in a computer, your one
hundred and fourteen thousand plants?"

Lage: I was going to ask you that.

McCaskill: Now with the Crampton Collection added, it would be closer to
one hundred and forty-five thousand. But, no. there is no
catalog because each specimen acts as its own card. But we have
them arranged so that anyone can retrieve them by knowing what
family they are in and whether or not it's a monocotyledon or
dicotyledon. But this is easily explained to anyone that doesn't
know when they first arrive.

33

Lage: Some of these families are huge; now. how would you go about

it if you want one particular species in the family?

McCaskill: I see. We have reference books on hand. You can look up in our
reference books what family you're looking for. For example, if
you came in and you knew the genus of a plant but you didn't
know what family, you could look it up. The families
are arranged alphabetically in the cabinets. Within the
families, they are further refined to being alphabetical by
genus and then going on down to species and subspecies level
alphabetically.

Lage: So it works like a catalog.

McCaskill: It is. It's serving as its own catalog. Few herbaria could

afford the luxury of keeping a card file. Now, with computers it
would be much faster, indeed a wonderful thing to have. Some
herbaria with larger staffs are doing that. For example, the
New York Botanic Garden has great interest in eth no-botanical
data, and so they have put into their computers information
gleaned from the specimen labels. So you could, by punching
some buttons, find out what Indians in what areas of the world
use what plants for medicinal purposes and in what period of
time.

Lage: And, for making loans, and knowing what specimens are in which

herbaria across the country, wouldn't a computer system be
good?

McCaskill: It would, indeed, and some year all of the herbaria of the world
will be hooked up to one another. There's a real effort to do
that in the United States right now. We have not purchased a
computer yet. We're hoping to get one soon. The herbaria that
do have them are networking with each other so that they know who
has what plant material.

One way that we figure things out is with an international
book called Index Herba riorum. What it is is a reference
book that tells you all about the herbaria of the world. You can
look them up; they're alphabetically by cities. So you can look
up Davis, see what the holdings are there. It gives the number
of specimens, the staff members, the specializations, whether or
not you produce a periodical, whether or not you're willing to
loan your specimens, things of this nature.

Lage: It's accessible, it sounds,

while without a computer.

You've been managing for quite a

McCaskill: It's truel There was a time when we managed without a photo
copy machine I [laughter]

34

Lage: I've seen photocopies of the plants actually go out. instead of

the specimen itself.

McCaskill: Yes, it can be done if the plant is not too bulky. This is not a
wise thing to do. really, in that each specimen is a museum
piece. I tell the students that, and they look at me
quizzically and ask, "Really. June. A museum piece?" But they
truly are. They last for decades. Actually, for centuries.
You can turn them upside down if they're well attached. It's
quite all right to slip in a corner of the sheet and photocopy
the label. Sometimes the other institution is just wanting the
label copied so that they can tell where a certain species has
been collected and when.

35

V FROM SOUP TO NUTS: PUBLIC SERVICE

Service to Cooperative Extension Farm Advisors in Weed Control

Lage:

Me Ca skill:

Lage:

Me Ca skill:

Lage:

Me Ca skill:

Let's talk about the different groups that you serve; some we've
mentioned already. We've mentioned the farm advisors, for
instance. Maybe in talking about each group, you can tell me a
typical request that you might get.

Okay. fine. The farm advisors are. by far. the largest group of
people that we have served regularly through the years, and they
are, as you know, in every county in the state.

And they're employees of the university, aren't they?

Yes, it is the University of California Cooperative Extension
Service system. The farm advisors out there in the county
offices will send us weeds when they're stumped, and they'll
send them most often in plastic bags; sometimes seedlings,
sometimes the entire plant, sometimes bits and pieces of plants
because they are unable to do otherwise — that's all that's
available.

We receive the largest amounts from agricultural counties,
understandably; from the Central Valley, a good many come from
Fresno County, Kern County with the cotton, from all the
counties, with field crops, orchards and vineyards.

Why are they concerned about identifying a certain weed?
would be the problem they're confronting?

What

Well, it's often a matter of what herbicides can be used on what
weeds. We're out of the day of the hoe. There was • time when
that's about all you could do. We now have herbicides, and they
are selective, so you have to know which herbicide to put on
what plant. I have been fortunate enough during my career
to see research in weed control become an acceptable science —
weed science.

36

Lage: During this time period?

Me Ca skill: Yes. We also serve the campus community; that would be. of

course, anyone that wants to come in and ask, "What is this?"
Often times it's, "Is it edible? Can I kill it? How can I kill
it?" When control measures are wanted I send them to the
Cooperative Extension people in the other part of our building.
We have a neat sign on our door that says, "You press 'em, we
guess "em." So they bring them in, I name them, and someone
else kills them. [laughter]

Lage: You don't have the responsibility for finding a herbicide.

McCaskill: Right. And we do work together with the extension people. We
have a good thing going there. They have a grand staff — it
always has been — and we work together well.

Lage: What about plants that are poisonous to animals?

McCaskill : Yes, the farm advisors, of course, have people asking them

questions about toxic plants because they may have had livestock
losses.

Lage: Is that common that livestock are lost to toxic plants?

McCaskill: Yes, very. Yes, it is. The figure's not on the tip of my

tongue, but I believe it's close to twenty-million dollars worth
of animals lost per year in California due to toxic weeds. So
we have the situation where someone comes in directly, or a
veterinarian will turn to his local farm advisors and ask for
plant identification, and they in turn will turn to us. We have
an extensive toxic plants file that students put together, a
reference collection of articles that can be accessed by
computer.

Lage: Then that's become kind of a specialty with you. as I

understand, the weed study.

McCaskill: Yes, the weed study, for sure. We are the herbarium with the
largest collection of weeds. We have more plant science
departments than any other campus, and we have Cooperative
Extension people in every one of those plant science
departments. So we are turned to more often than any other UC
campus. And yes, weeds are one of our specialties.

Lage: And have you. yourself, done some publishing in the weed area?

McCaskill : I've been co-author of the Growers' Weed Identification

Handbook since it began in 1962. A farm advisor named Bill
Fischer in Fresno County started this with the help of another
extension person named Art Lange. Early on they asked me if I

37

McCaskill: would do the taxonomy, check the names, be sure that they were
correct and up to date. I soon found myself involved in the
editing of it. also, and more heavily as the years went by.
I've remained a co-author in this endeavor.

It's published by Agricultural Publications of UC. It is a
loose-leaf book that serves the grower. We have one sheet per
weed. There will be pictures of the seedling stage and the
mature plant stage complete with flowers and fruit. On the
back side will be a description of where this weed occurs,
whether it's annual or perennial, what crops it's in. the
problems it causes, how it looks in all the stages of growth,
whether or not it's toxic, and other common names it's called
by. More recently, we're adding a new paragraph to each
one of them on more of the biology of the plant. This will make
them much more valuable to the grower.

Lage: Why does a grower need to know the biology?

McCaskill: It often figures into control measures used. First of all, you
need to know if it's annual or perennial, what its growing
season is, and what time would be a good time to apply the
herbicide, use cultural methods of control, or a combination of
both.

Lage: Have they come up with any kind of biological means of

controlling weeds, or is the focus pretty much on herbicides? I
mean, I know they have biological pest controls, but is there
any biological weed control?

McCaskill: Oh. there is, yes. I think of the genus Hypericum. There are
beetles that will attack Hypericum perforatum, St. Johnswort.
It is known that certain insect species will attack and keep
down the population of certain weeds.

Lage: Is that a new direction?

McCaskill: Not really new. This has been going on for probably forty
years. The work with the Hypericum beetles was the first
success story of the USDA's Biological Control of Weeds Lab in
Albany. This weed was introduced into the western U.S. from
Europe, and rapidly infested rangeland. It arrived without its
natural enemies, so the USDA people imported them from Europe
in the 1940s. One species of beetle attacks the leaves,
another the stem. A second success of these researchers was
the control of Tansy Ragwort, a toxic weed in coastal
California.

37a

THE "AWARD OF EXCELLENCE"

In 1985, after two years of consideration by the California Weed Conference Steering Committee and the Board
of Directors, an "Award of Excellence* was established to encourage younger members by recognizing their
achievements in weed control. Criteria were established and nominations were to be made each year to the
Awards Committee appointed by the Board fo Directors. Awards were to include four categories: Education,
Research, Public Service and Production.

In 1985 Three were chosen:

June McCaskill Public Service

jack Schlesselman Research and Production

Tom Yutani Education and Public Service

Information regarding these individuals follows...

B.JUNEMcCASKILL

June McCaskill received the Award of Excellence "In Recognition of Outstanding Contributions in Public
Service". The Award was announced at the 37th Annual California Weed Conference held at Anaheim in 1985.

Says McCaskill "I was raised along with plants in the family's camelia nursery In Pasadena, so love of plants
- even weeds - came naturally." She attended Mills College in Oakland, California, graduating with a
bachelor's degree in Botany in 1951. Two more years were spent on the Mills campus assisting with the teaching
of nurses from Merritt College.

June next joined the staff of the University of California at Davis where she is in her 33rd year with the
Botany Department Herbarium. In this science resource facility she directs the processing and maintenance of a
world-wide collection of over 100,000 pressed plant specimens made available for reference and research. Along
with a myriad of curatorial duties, one of her major responsibilities is public service. In this capacity she
identifies plants and provides miscellaneous information regarding them to farm advisors, ranchers,
environmentalists, veterinarians, doctors and the general public. This work ranks high in her priorities,
particularly when livestock losses or human lives are involved.

McCaskill is a familiar face at Weed Day and at county meetings. She has authored weed articles through
the years and co-authors the Growers Weed Identification Handbook.

Drawn to her plants in her leisure time as well, June visits botanic gardens in her travels and is an ardent
supporter of them. She holds memberships in arboreta and botanical societies, and currently serves as
Membership Chair of the Friends of the Davis Arboretum.

38

Identifying Rare and Endangered Plants

Lage: You've also mentioned serving environmentalists, so let's move

on to that.

McCaskill: Yes, well, when I think of the environmentalists, I of course
think of the rare and endangered plant program that's going on
in this state, but not yet in every state in the U.S.,
unfortunately. Calif orniawas one of the early ones to start
this program — it was begun by the California Native Plant
Society in 1968. At the data base [California Natural
Diversity Data Base] in Sacramento, all 700 state listed rare
and endangered plants are monitored. They have very
sophisticated computer systems, and, with the help of the staff
and their resources there, much information can be gained. For
example, you could ask in what areas does a certain plant occur,
how endangered is it, how threatened is it.

Also. I imagine you've heard of the environmental impact
reports that have to be made, are actually required by law.
People working on these reports will come to me with samples of
plants collected from areas under consideration for development.
They need to know what they are so they can plug them into their
report. And oftentimes they want to check herbarium specimens.

Lage: I see. They want to know if they are endangered?

McCaskill: Yes. it's imperative that rare and endangered species are

pinpointed when the reports are made, because these reports
provide the basis for land-use decisions.

Lage: And then, do you have access to these files in Sacramento, or do

you tell them where to go?

McCaskill: Both. I can use the services of the data base myself, of
course, but mostly it's a matter of referral.

Lage: Part of your job is as a directory service.

McCaskill: It is, indeed. Oh yes. In fact, I often direct people to

the other plant science departments on our campus. For example,
they'll bring me in a piece of something that I know is in the
gourd family, but. heavens, it's a very large and difficult
family, and there are people in the Vegetable Crops Department
who would know better than I and help them out.

Also we have the Pomology [the practice and science of
fruit growing] Department. So if someone arrives with an
exotic fruit I don't recognize I can refer them to Pomology.

39

McCaskill: Viticulture [cultivation of grapes] is another example. We have
Plant Pathology, Genetics. Environmental Horticulture. Agronomy
and Range Science, also.

In our herbarium, we have more requests for the
identification of weeds and native plants. We also have some
requests for ornamentals, they're called, or cultivated garden
plants. If I have a cultivated tree that I am unable to
identify or am not sure, I will send it to Environmental Hort
[horticulture] where we have Dr. Andrew Leiser, a wizard with
trees. That's his specialty, tree identification. And we
work with the arboretum also. There is a very talented staff
out there. Warren Roberts, in particular, is good with
all flora, native and otherwise. So we work back and forth.
We are indeed fortunate to have all this talent on the Davis
campus.

Lage:

McCaskill: I think there are ten; I'm sure I've forgotten some.

Yes, I was amazed when you just listed all the departments in
the plant area.

Assistance in Crime Control

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:

McCaskill:

Okay. Annetta Carter has sent me a clipping having to do with
some of your exploits in helping solve crimes. I think that
would be interesting to talk about. It's probably not a typical
request you get, though.

No, but there's a certain amount of that. You read the article
and of course, the newspaper wants to sell newspapers, so the
sensational things are what strike you first. But those are
really not what's foremost in our minds at all. But they're
interesting.

But it's still something that you do and, of course, they are
another group that you serve, the police.

True. I think the first one mentioned in the article is

when Juan Corona was the alleged murderer of farm workers up in

the Marysville area. That was in nineteen seventy-one. Some

investigators came into our department and wanted to see

Dr. Ernest Gifford, our plant oorphologist* and wanted to figure

out how old the grave sites were. There was freshly turned dirt

on some of them; there were seedlings coming up in some areas;

there were older weeds around the orchards. The idea was to

find out how long the grave sites had been there. Dr. Gifford

40

McCaskill: could help them in this regard by estimating the growth rates
of the plants. They also had to be identified, and
this is how I fit into the picture.

Lage: Did you find out if this was useful to them?

McCaskill: Actually. I did not hear from them again directly, but we
were told that it was useful.

More recently we had plants brought in to us, and we weren't
told the whole story; we were simply told there had been a
murder and asked what were these plants? I identified them all
and soon realized there was a pattern; they were all from along
stream sides. So that would figure into something — was the body
found at a stream side? Was the murder done there?

Lage: Did you relay that information to them?

McCaskill : We did. but we have not heard yet. I believe that trial hasn't
come up.

Lage: Have you ever been called to testify?

McCaskill: No. I have not, but faculty members in our department have in
regard to drug related plants. There was a case where two of
our professors. Ernest Gifford and John Tucker, prevented a
trial from coming about. A young man came to them in the
sixties and said. "I am being accused of growing marijuana in my
back yard. It's there, but I had no idea it was when I moved
into the house." He was trying to prove his innocence. It could
be done because the plants were in the ground in his garden,
and by checking root systems, girth of stems, etc., you could
figure their approximate age and that they were there before
this new occupant of the house was. and so he got off the hook—
the charges were dropped.

Lage: Did they go out and investigate it for him?

McCaskill: Yes, I'm sure they did.

Lage: That's a very interesting use of the university herbarium.

McCaskill: Yes, we've had interesting stories, other marijuana stories.

Lage: Give me another one.

McCaskill: It's an in-house sort of thing, but one day Dr. Gifford came

to John Tucker and me. We were busily working in the herbarium,
sending out exchange sets, and he asked. "June and John, would
you come with me? I want to show you something down in the
greenhouse." So we went down, and there were dozens of marijuana

41

McCaskill: plants all nicely potted up and sitting in rows. What's fun
about the whole story is that our head greenhouse man was
dutifully repotting them for a graduate student. The
graduate student had told him they were peony plants. They were
certainly not peonies, and the word got to our chair, eventually
to the chancellor, and it was a pretty serious situation
there. Ever since then, any time that there was a plant that
was believed to be marijuana, the greenhouse people would bring
it in to me, sometimes covered with wrapping paper — under cover
so to speak — stand there and grin at me and I'd say, "Okay,
Harold, you've got marijuana; I know, I can tell potted pot
before you even uncover it." [laughter]

Lage: So this happened more than once, growing the marijuana in the
greenhouse .

McCaskill: Tes.
II

Lage: You mentioned that sometimes you get neighbors who are trying
to —

McCaskill: Yes, sometimes people will get upset with what they consider

over-rowdy students, and if they see something suspicious such
as marijuana, they'll bring it in. More often than not it's not
marijuana at all. We've seen bear's-breech and house plants
that they believe resemble it.

We also see. I forgot to mention, opium plants. There was
a story there that's interesting. Dr. Tucker taught a poisonous
plants course required for veterinary students. In that course,
he wanted to show opium plants, and so we got them where we
could.

One day I was going down into the central part of Davis and
I saw a wonderful bed full of them out in front of a house. I
stopped and explained who I was and how beautiful I thought they
were, and I certainly didn't want to be greedy, but could she
spare just a few of the flowers for a good purpose. She said,
"Fine." She said that her father had sent her the seeds and
told her they would be beautiful plants, and did I have any idea
what they were? And I said, "Well, yes, they're opium poppies."
She looked startled and I said. "No, don't worry. I'm not here
for that reason at all." It was certainly up to her to grow
what she wanted. True, it's illegal, but I didn't ««an to upset
her. But the next time I drove by. the bed was gone.

Lage: They are beautiful plants?
McCaskill: They are very beautiful.

4la

San Jose Tribune. February 27, 1988

She knows her weeds

JC herbarium curator
ffers valuable expertise

y D»Ie Rodebaugh
miry New* Sufi Writer

Wben Sutler County officials
e trying to determine the or-
In which farm laborer Juan
orooa killed 25 field hand* in
71, they turned to June McCas-
D.

McCaskill is not in investiga-
r, and she's not a detective She
among the itate's foremost ex
its in weeds.

Amid the police and the pathol-
[ists, it was McCaskill's identifl-
tioc of weeds found near the
ctims' {raves that paved the
ay for authorities to figure out
>w old the burial sites were.
Although that's not her usual
of sleuthing, McCaskill, 57,
is been confronting questions
ist as puzzling during the 35
sari that she's been curator of
e herbarium at University of
alifornia, Davis.
She receives more than 1,000
iquesti a year to identify plants
and sometimes the answers
supplies could mean the dif-
rence between life and death.
Two months ago, she said, phy-
dan* at a Davis hospital eroer-
ncy room asked her to look at •
ant that a toddler had eaten,
hen she said it wa> a deadly
ghtsnade, doctors were able to
ve the baby's life.
But by far, the largest number
reqnests come from county
rm advisers, who call on
IcCaskill if a dairyman's cows
ait producing, an alfalfa grower
nds a nspidous-looking weed in
b field or a rancher's hone is
ot eating its feed.
| McCaskill's answers are inv
ortant because the animal's ail-
tent may be caused by some-
ling it ate. More than $27 mil-
on worth of horses, cattle and
jeep die each year from eating
oisonous weeds, she said.
McCaskill — who oversees a
lomain that includes what is pos-
libly the largest collection of
reeds and poisonous plants In
alifornia — also identifies
lants for conservationists inter-
rted in endangered species, con-
ultants preparing environmental
npact reports and backyard
ardeners. The "back-to-nature"
raze of the 1960s brought many

requests from people who wanted
to live off the land.

"Envelopes and boxes contain
ing plant specimens, even bales
of hay, come in almost every
day," she said.

McCaskill often recognizes a
plant on sight, but sometimes
she's stumped. Last week, she re
ceived unfamiliar specimens
from a Napa Valley grape grow
er and a San Diego nurseryman.

When that happens, she gets
out her microscope and reference
books or asks experts in the Da
vis botany department for help. If
it's a real toughie, she plants the
specimen and waits to see if it
bears flowers, a better means of
identification.

One plant that is instantly rec
ognizable is the opium poppy,
McCaskill said. Once, she said,
she discovered a number of them
in a neatly kept residential flow
er bed while looking for speci
mens for a poisonous plant class.
The owner graciously allowed
her to pick some, saying that she
didnt know what they were, but
that friends had sent her the

"1 told her what they were and
that it was illegal to grow them,
but that I didn't care what she
was doing. But the next time I
drove by there, they were all
gooe," McCaskill said.

The herbarium was named hi
honor of professor emeritus John
M. Tucker, who was its director
from 1947 until be retired in 1986.
It houses 150,000 dried and
pressed plants in metal filing
cabinets, which spill into the hall
on the second floor of Bobbins

An average of 3,000 specimens
are added each year, including
thobe the herbarium receives in
swaps with 90 institutions - 42
in foreign countries. About 2,000
specimens that McCaskill helped
a professor of nutrition collect in
Greece three years ago are
among plants awaiting catalog-

"fc.

UC-Davis herbarium is
small compared to those at the
University of California, Berke
ley and San Francisco's Golden
Gate Park, which have an ecu-
mated 1.5 million specimens

Mt «od«b.ufh - Itecwy Ntwt

LIVING CLUES — Plant expert June McCaskill was once
asked to study the weeds on the graves of the farm laborers
that had been killed by Juan Corona. Why? because this
would tell officials more about the order of the murders.

each. But it is the fifth-largest in
California and is noted for its
10,000 examples of more than 600
species of weeds.

Weeds were not the first love
of McCaskill, who virtually was
reared in the ornamental plant
nursery that her father still oper
ates in Pasadena. In fact, she did
n't choose botany as her major
until she'd been at Mills College
for more than a year.

1 was an English major, but
one day I said. This Just isn't me.'
So I changed to botany and felt so
comfortable,'' McCaskill said.

In 1953 at a meeting of a native

plant society, she met Profe
Tucker, who invited her to be
come curator of the herbarium.

Tin one of those rare people
who likes her job. I wake up ev
ery morning and think. This is
neat,' " McCaskill said.

In addition to enthusiasm.
McCaskill has a sense of humor
that's apparently as dry as the
pressed plants she collects. On
the door of the herbarium is a
sign in fractured Latin that says:
"Hortus Mortus u presum, ouige-
•um." Roughly translated: "Dead
plant*, you press 'em, we guess

Lage:

42

Are they like our California poppies?

McCaskill: No, not at all. They are tall, with much bigger flowers, and

they can be either single or double, double with more petals in
the center. They can be white or rose or red, and at the base
of each petal there will be a black spot. Also, their foliage is
very distinctive.

The "Magic" of Identification;
the Right Book

Experience, Aroma, and

McCaskill:

Lage:

McCaskill;

Once you asked me if I had a sixth sense, or how was I able
to identify these things. Actually, I have no magic at all.
Some people think I do. I'm flattered when I receive a petal,
for example. It's like when the entomologists receive one wing
off of an insect. You're really flattered because they think
you are a miracle worker, and I'm not at all. It's just that
when you've identified the same things for so many years, you
begin to look for little clues that aren't obvious. The plants
exhibit some features that people aren't aware of and aren't
written down in any of the books.

Would you tell me what some of these are?
first if you get an unusual plant?

What do you look at

This is an example that's given often. The mint family is very
distinctive. So if you see a square stem and there's an aroma —
there is almost always a pleasant aroma in the mint family.
That, combined with an irregularly shaped flower and the shape of
the stem, will get you into the right family, and that's
half the battle. You always ask the bearer of the unknown.
"Where did you get it?" This is the first question,

I remember Professor McMinn back at Mills, he always said,
"Be sure you get in the right literature" And I see people
make this mistake over and over again, people that have taken
plant taxonomy at Davis. They've used Munz's A California
Flora, and they are so in the habit of using it that they
pick it up when they are trying to identify a cultivated
plant. Of course, you're not going to find it in there unless
it's a cultivated plant that has escaped into the wild in
California.

Back to Professor McMinn; he drummed it in us that "Where
did it come from?" is the first question, and then go to the right
book. By seeing things through the years, so many plants. I
can generally jump into the right area without starting at the
beginning key.

A3

Lage: You said that some of the things aren't even written down that

you begin to notice, am I correct?

McCaskill: There are so many, many things. For example, you begin to
recognize the great diversity in leaf shapes within a plant
group. People will argue with you about this — they'll bring
in a plant and say. "That couldn't possibly be poison oak. It
looked more like periwinkle." But through seeing so much of
that through so many years, I know all the leaf forms that are
displayed.

Lage: It may not be just what you see in the guide of the

identification book.

McCaskill: True, yes. Another clue is aroma.
Lage: That isn't written down.

McCaskill: Well, it's a very hard thing to describe. Floras will use

the terms pleasant, or fetid, or just the term aromatic, but I'm
thinking of poison hemlock. It will say that the smell is
unpleasant. Actually, I suppose a lot more is written down than
I indicated, But since poison hemlock is one of the biggies in my
life — it's one of the most toxic plants, as is water hemlock — I
want to use it as an example.

It's in the carrot family and people will bring it in in
all stages of growth and I tell them there are three things to
watch for. You'll look for the red spots on the stem. You'll
look for the finely dissected foliage. If you would let a carrot
mature — usually they are snatched out of the ground in their
youth — it would have very delicate, beautiful foliage as does
poison hemlock, but the hemlock will have the measles. I call
them, on the stem, and it would smell funny. The best way to
describe it is "like a dead rodent." I've found that if you let
the plant dry up and you keep it in a paper bag, say, for some
time, and then open it up. the smell comes out loud and clear.
You've either got dead rodents or poison hemlockl

Lage: Did you use this description of the smell in your book

identifying weeds?

on

McCaskill: Well, the identifying characteristics, the spots, would have
been there. Yes, I think we did.

44

Service to Poison Control Centers; "Miss Nightshade"

Lage: Can you think of any other stories about the kinds of service

you're called on to perform, things that we might have missed?

McCaskill: Another very important one. we touched upon veterinarians and
livestock poisoning and fatalities, but we didn't talk about
human poisoning. We do get calls on that.

Lage: Is that a frequent thing?

McCaskill: Not nearly as frequent as calls concerning animals. But as you
know, and I hope more and more people become aware of, there
are regional poison centers in the major cities in California and
across the United States. Our nearest one is in Sacramento and
is associated with the UC Davis Medical Center. The poison
center, in its infancy, was calling us more often, of course.
They weren't fully staffed, and they were building up their
reference materials. They didn't have an awful lot to go on so
they would call us, and we would help them.

Other times we get calls directly from the doctors
themselves in a scenario something like this: you have the doctor
on the telephone, and you have a very concerned mother.
Understandably, she is nervous as can be. Her child has
swallowed some plant parts, and she usually doesn't know how
much, and so she rushes him in. The doctor usually would get
the child to throw up the material by giving him ipecac.
But you can't always do this in every case and it is important
that they know what plants they're dealing with, so they'll call
us.

I get calls at home, too. as does Dr. Kenneth Wells in our
department, our mycologist. He'll get calls about poisonous
mushrooms.

Lage: I bet that's not an uncommon problem.

McCaskill : Right, it's a very, very common problem. He gets many emergency
calls.

We're happy to help with this. The last time I was called
from a hospital it was on a weekend, and a young child had
swallowed bits of a garden weed. The mother had managed to
bring a sample of the plant to the emergency room.

Lage: And you take along a guidebook with you, or you just think you'll

recognize it?

45

McCaskill: I grabbed a book or two and hoped that I'd recognize it. and I
did. It was nightshade and the child had eaten berries, but
luckily he had eaten the ripe berries. The ripe berries of
nightshade are harmless. So the mother was relieved and planned
to go home and eradicate the nightshade.

Lage: Is that a common plant around the home areas in Davis?

McCaskill: No, it isn't. I was surprised she had that much. It's one of
the major weeds in tomato fields, however. It's plagued tomato
farmers for decades. We've done a lot of identifications for
growers. I'm getting sidetracked again, but tomato growers are
plagued with both dodder and nightshade. I bet you've seen
dodder. It looks like orange threads or strands of hairs that
have been thrown over the bush. And they're host-specific.
Certain species of dodders will grow only on certain
species of plants, and there are some that attack tomatoes.
Several species of nightshade are in tomato fields and reduce
the yield by being strong competitors with the tomato plants
themselves. An interesting thing is that they're what I call
cousins. The tomatoes and their enemies, the nightshades,
are both in the same family.

Lage: But they're not a parasite?

McCaskill: The dodder is and the nightshades are not. I've been asked

many times to give talks at weed workshops and meetings on the
nightshade problem, and they started calling me Miss Nightshade.
I remember that early on I was Miss Weed. [laughter]

Lage: I've heard you were Miss Weed, but I hadn't heard Miss

Nightshade. I don't know if that's something you'd want
to be stuck with.

McCaskill: Oh, it's fun, I love it!

Thirty-five Years of Student Assistants

Lage: You must have met so many people through your work.

McCaskill: Oh, I have! I've corresponded with literally hundreds of farm
advisors, and we've become pen-pals. Some of these men — I say
men because only in recent years have there been women farm
advisors; we're all happy to see that, of course. I see more and
• ore women at the weed meetings. But anyway, we've
corresponded, some of us, for years before we actually meet. I
have become good friends with many of these people too, as well
as with past students.

46

Lage: Any particular student you want to mention that may have gone to

glory in some field, or who was particularly important?

McCaskill: I always like to think they have all gone on to glory in some
way, in their own way. Mostly, I hope that they're out there
somewhere enjoying life. There are some, oh, I often think of
Charlie Lamoureux, who's a professor of botany at the University
of Hawaii. At the same time — back in the fifties — there was
Lai it Srivastava, who is a professor and dean at Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver. Again, in the fifties, there was
Engracia Arguelles Rasa, who is a professor and dean in the
Philippines. I keep in touch with many of them. What I enjoy
is visiting them when I travel about.

•

Lage: And you do travel a lot.

McCaskill: Quite a bit. yes. It's always the greatest pleasure to look

them up. I went to some meetings at the Missouri Botanic Garden
last fall and stayed with a gal named Pleasant, of all things.
Pleasant [Gill White] and her husband live in St. Louis, and I
stayed with her for several days when I was there. A thoroughly
enjoyable character. I had visited the Whites many years
earlier when they lived in England.

Just for my amazement and use, I made a list of the
students that I've had helping me, either for pay as work-study
or for units as interns, and it's getting close to two hundred
in thirty-five years. Some helped for all four years, and some
for just a few months, but it adds up. I wish I could tell all
about every one of them. They have brightened my life
tremendously, and many of them will never be forgotten.

Professor Katherine Esau

Lage: That's amazing. How about professors? Since this is a series

about women in botany, I was hoping you might talk a little bit
about Katherine Esau and any other woman botanists that
you have come into close contact with.

McCaskill: Yes. When I first arrived on the job there were so few women in
the entire department. There was a secretary. Now there's quite
a staff of office people, but there was a woman secretary,
a woman dish washer, Dr. Katherine Esau, and me. I hope I
haven't forgotten someone.

And at that time, Dr. Esau has reminded me. there were
only two women professors on campus. The other was in the English
Department. So Dr. Esau, I'm happy to say, I've become well

47

McCaskill : acquainted with and I respect her highly as does everyone. She
is an internationally known plant anatomist and was there on
the staff when I arrived. In addition to teaching plant anatomy,
she had to teach plant taxonomy — there was no one else to do it
early on — and that's what caused her to collect plants. These
early pressings of hers are still in our herbarium, of course.

Lage: Did she seem to suffer under any particular disadvantage for being
one of the two women on campus and the only one in the botany
department?

McCaskill: No. I don't think she did. She was so extremely talented and
well versed in her field that I don't believe she did. I just
want to tell you she's ninety years old now. and on April third
I was very fortunate to be one of the people to help celebrate
this occasion.

Lage: Oh. how nice. In Santa Barbara?

McCaskill: Yes. We were able to see her, to talk with her, to go to her

condominium, to hear of her latest activities, to see that she's
still as energetic and into her field as ever. She drives
herself from Santa Barbara to the Goleta campus. She still
researches with Dr. Vernon Cheadle and still publishes.
She learned the computer a few years back. She's an
inspiration to us all.

Lage: You mentioned to me on the phone that she seemed to have

mellowed some. I think this was before you went down to the
party.

McCaskill: Yes. When you say mellowed, that would give the feeling

that maybe she was not so mellow before. She had beautiful
carriage, for one thing, she stood so erectly, and always in her
white lab coat, her hair always so neat; everything about her
was perfection. She was a dedicated researcher. That was her
main interest. She was serious about it, and some people felt
she was unapproachable, but not true.

I mentioned Lalit, one of her students in plant anatomy.
One year Lalit needed to go up to Placerville to the Institute
of Forest Genetics and collect certain conifers for his studies,
and Dr. Esau was going to go too. There was a guest cottage for
visitors up there, and there was also another facility where I
had been. When great groups of young folks went up. we would just
throw our sleeping bags into this room, but Dr. Esau was asked
to use the guest cottage, and she asked me if I would go along.
It was interesting; she said that she would feel comfortable if
another woman went. I said. •'Great. I'll go along, and I'll
collect plants for the herbarium from the institute grounds. "

48

McCaskill: It was there — I hope she doesn't mind me telling this — but

it gave me great insight into her character. Being a cat lover.
this was special to me. She talked about the time she and her
family had to flee Russia at the end of World War L The
German army had occupied the Ukraine, but were not entirely
unwelcome as they saved them from occupation by the Bolsheviks.
When the war ended the Germans helped them escape to Berlin. So
she and her family were given very short warning. One day
they were advised to leave, and they left hurriedly with just
a few possessions in a wagon carrying the injured and other
refugees. She said she remembered looking back and seeing her
cat. her pet, sitting in the window. As she told me the story
that evening, a tear ran down her cheek.

I thought, "All right, you're okay in my book." She's
always been tops with me, but that confirmed it. She told me
not long ago that her heart still ached for that cat.

Assisting Weed Control Scientists Bill Harvey and
Alden Crafts

Lage: I want to follow up on something you said casually to me. You

mentioned that you made house calls, sometimes. Particularly in
weed identification. Do you want to tell me how that happened?

McCaskill: Sure, that would be fun. In the early days, occasionally, I've
made house calls locally when, for some reason or other, the
owner couldn't bring specimens to me. You could call the longer
trips house calls too, I suppose. When I arrived in Davis, the
entire extension service in our department was Bill Harvey,
quite a character. I'd so much like to tell you all the fun
times we had. But Bill spent much of his time driving around
the state helping farm advisors and their clients, of course,
the people in their counties. Sometimes when there was
suspected livestock poisoning, either sick animals or
fatalities. Bill would say, "Hey. June, got next Thursday? Come
along and we'll go check it out," and off we'd drive. We had
good times because he is so amusing, and because of his keen
humor, a much- sought-after speaker. I should add

Bill and I were reminiscing the other day about these
jaunts we used to make, and he brought up the subject of
Halogeton, a toxic member of the beet family. It had caused
livestock loses in the Great Basin area and the western U.S.
That was, oh, a few decades ago. Then it was found in Elko
County. Nevada and was making the headlines. Perhaps you
remember that thousands of sheep were dying because of this one
toxic weed. Because of the publicity it got, people started

49

McCaskill : imagining it everywhere. We remember being called over to

Marin County to see if it was over there, and it wasn't. We
didn't really think it should be, but you have to check all these
things out and make certain that they aren't going to become
noxious weeds in California. It was in Lessen County and has
been picked up in a couple of southern California counties
since that time, but it was eradicated and not allowed to become a
serious threat.

Lage: Does Extension send out alerts when something like this comes
up, to have farmers be looking for it so it can be eradicated?

McCaskill: I think the botanists over in the State Department of Food and
Agriculture in Sacramento do. Their job is to monitor the
spread of weeds throughout California, so they would be doing
just what you asked, but we don't, no.

Lage: Are there any other herbaria that have the specialty that yours
has. on weeds, in California?

McCaskill: Yes, the S.D.F.A. in Sacramento that I just mentioned maintains
a herbarium with emphasis totally on weeds of California.

Lage: Might you be called from southern California?

McCaskill: Occasionally we are. The thing is that the herbaria throughout
the UC system have talented folks on their staffs, so ordinarily
help can be found locally.

II

Lage: Do you get into at all California native weeds? I always hear

about how the landscape has changed so dramatically with all the
European weeds coming in.

McCaskill: Yes. I do identifications of the native plants. I'm there to
identify anything and everything as best I can, and a large
percentage of them are native plants. And yes, there are native
weeds, but very few compared to the ones introduced from other
countries.

Lage: You were going to tell me about the use of the airplane in some
of these trips.

McCaskill: Oh, that was just special to me because I love everything that
goes up. Not often, because it's expensive, but occasionally
I would get to go with the extension men or John Tucker on a
small plane to check out possible new species or potentially
dangerous species.

Lage:

So that wasn't uncommon to use the plane.

50

McCaskill : Not common either, but a nice treat when it did happen.

Lage:

Lage:

Could you report something about your exploration of the
country for weeds?

rice

McCaskill: Yes. I remember it was one of the things I did early on, I

would go with Bill Harvey on several expeditions, and oftentimes
we'd go up to the rice fields in Butte and Glenn Counties. On
this particular day that I remember best. John Tucker, the
director of the herbarium, went along too. Bill had found what
he was quite certain was a new species for California, a new
rice weed, so off we went to Biggs Rice Station in Butte County.

It sticks out in my mind not only because of the new
species, but because of the leeches. I was a city girl; Davis
was my first away-from-city experience, and then to do this; it
was a memorable thing. Not of great importance, but one of
those things I'll long remember.

Then Bill found other range extensions of weeds that we
would check out and publish small articles on. The weed at
Bigg's at that time was Monochoria. then later we found duck
salad up in that same rice country in Glenn County.

Duck salad?

McCaskill: Duck salad is the common name for Heteranthera limosa in the
Pickerel Weed family, in the same family with Monochoria,
incidentally.

Lage: Is that something the ducks like to eat?

McCaskill: I imagine so. It's a very pretty little thing, but it wreaks

havoc with the rice plants. The young plants compete with rice
early in the growing season and reduce crop yields.

Lage: You mentioned Alden Crafts.

McCaskill: Alden, I think, was the main person responsible for turning weed
control studies into an accepted science. His own research
centered around the translocation of herbicides in plants.
Alden was also our chairman of the Department of Botany for a
period of years.

Botany Department Chairmen

McCaskill: I've served under seven different chairmen, all of them good
people.

51

Lage: Do you want to just go over their names and what their specialty

was?

McCaskill: Surely, we can do that. When I arrived in nineteen fifty-three.

I was interviewed and hired by Dr. Vernon Cheadle; we've mentioned
that. Vernon is now in Santa Barbara. He went on to become
chancellor at UC Santa Barbara in nineteen sixty-two. Next was
Alden Crafts, who served. I think, until nineteen sixty-three.
Then we had Dr. Ernest Gifford, a plant morphologist. He served
two periods of time. In between Dr. Gifford's two sessions was
Dr. Ralph Stocking, a physiologist. Then Dr. Kenneth Wells; he
is a plant mycologist. Next we had Dr. Michael Barbour. a plant
ecologist. And presently Terry Murphy. Dr. Murphy is a
physiologist. So we've had them from many specialties in botany.

Lage: Yes. Would any of these people as chairman of the department

affect the course of the herbarium, or was that pretty much a
world of its own? Would they affect policy changes, or finances?

McCaskill: Not too much. Well, to a degree. I was always responsible to

the director of the herbarium; either to John Tucker or to Grady
Webster. But, of course, the chairman figured into the
budgetary decisions for all facilities.

Lage: Would they affect the area you collected in? Would having a

weed man as chairman of the department make you more eager to
collect weeds, or anything that simple?

McCaskill: No, I think not, no. They weren't all equally concerned with

the herbarium. However, their research interests didn't greatly
affect our collecting activities.

Lage: Any other points?

McCaskill: I've seen, I just want to say, everything from soup to nuts.

Almost literally, soup to nuts have come through my door. I was
just remembering we've had hay samples by the hundreds. People
will come in and plop down an entire bale of hay.

Lage: Wanting you to identify it?

McCaskill: Wanting me to identify what's inside. We'd bust it open and
clutter up the table with bits and pieces of the alfalfa or
the grass, depending on what kind it was. Then, in recent
years, you have cubes of hay; they bring those in, and that's
very hard because it's all smushed up and then compressed back
into cubes and you're lucky to find anything recognizable.
We're always looking for fiddleneck and common groundsel because
those are very often found in first-cut hay. These are deadly
poisonous, particularly to horses; many losses have occurred
due to liver poisoning caused by pyrrol izidine alkaloids.

52

McCaskill: We've had rumen from large animals, cattle. We've bad hair

balls from various sorts of animals, and we are able to identify
plants forming the hair balls. I've saved an assortment of
these little treasures as demonstrations to show people what we
do and can do.

Lage: That's a good way to wind it up. soup to nuts.

53

VI EXTRACURRICULAR BOTANICAL EXPERIENCES
[Interview 3: August 8. 1988] ##

A Summer Job at Cal tech's Phytotron, 1951

Lage: Today we are going to talk about your extracurricular activities
in botany. I thought we'd start with the earliest one, which was
the summer at Caltech.

McCaskill: Okay, fine. That was a memorable summer. I had a summer at

home in Pasadena between my studies at Mills College. I had been
associated with Caltech and was in the neighborhood. My father
had long known Dr. James Bonner in the Botany Department there.
He and Dad shared their interest in camellias.

I knocked on their doors and asked if there was a summer
job, and lo and behold there was. I was so lucky. At the time I
didn't fully realize this. I didn't know much at all about
plant physiology, but they needed some work done which involved
watering plants, pipetting some solutions —

Lage: — pipetting?

McCaskill: Yes. You draw liquid up in a glass tube. I did a lot of

pipetting solutions, checking the plants in the phytotron, which
we'll get to later, and cutting up oat seedlings that were part
of the research going on there.

Lage: This was 1951?

McCaskill: — 1951, and looking back on this I realize that I was there at a
very special time when there was all sorts of early work going
on in research of plant growth regulators. The phytotron had
just been built. In 1949 it had been completed, and it was
formally called the Earhart Plant Research Laboratory.

McCaskill: I was in the main biology building — the Kerckhoff labs — a good
part of the time, with Dr. Bonner and other plant
physiologists — James Liverman and Anton Lang — I worked forall
of them.

Across the street in the phytotron I worked with Dr. Fritz
Went. All these physiologists were involved with plant growth
regulators. It was also the time of early isolation of DNA
structure and its relationships to flowering.

Most of these men's research revolved around the flowering
of plants, and it was a time when they were doing research on
the effects of day length on plants and vernalization, which
would have to do with the cold temperatures required to make
plants flower.

This phytotron was a multi-million dollar building that was
very, very special because it was the first building in the
world that had controlled temperatures and could produce any
climates that you would want. They could simulate fog, rains,
winds, storms (don't know about snow), cold and warmth, of
course, and light/dark — it was revolutionary.

Lage: Did it have different sections —

McCaskill: Yes, there were wind rooms, rain rooms, gas rooms, among others.

Lage: — different climates going on at the same time?

McCaskill: Yes. All the climatic factors were simultaneously and
independently controlled.

Dr. Went, who had started his experiments in the phytotron
when it opened in 1949, was the first to use extensively
fluorescent mercury vapor tubes for the growing of plants. It
was known that plants could grow under artificial light, but it
had never been done on such a large scale.

So there were thirteen air-conditioned labs equipped with
these artificial lights. There were also six air-conditioned
greenhouses in the same building in which natural daylight was
the light source.

What was fascinating was the fact that we had to change our
clothes when we went in there. They were keeping it pest and
disease-free as far as they possibly could, so all plants that
went into the phytotron had to be fumigated. All the ioil. the
pots, containers had to be sterilized. Anything that went in
there had to be de-bugged, shall we say? That included the people.
When we went into the entrance of this building — when I reported
to work — we were then faced with the choice of two wash rooms.

55

Lage:

McCaskill:

McCaskill: I would go into the ladies' room and remove my outer clothing,
put on special clothes and shoes that I kept in a locker
there.

Then our lunches were closely monitored. You couldn't take
fresh lettuce and fruit and things because all of these could
contain contaminants.

Unfortunately for us, because of these strict regulations
they couldn't allow many visitors. They had to keep that down.
If a visitor did come and was allowed in. they had to be covered
with a long plastic coat and huge cloth boots over their own shoes.

Did they do any fumigating of people, like spraying with DDT?
[laughs] No, nothing like that. They weren't that severe.

I was just super lucky to be there at that time in history
and be there every day when some would-be visitors were not
allowed in at all. I was young, and I didn't fully understand
what I was into, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, enjoyed meeting Dr.
Went and his daughter who was there that summer, helping.

I was remembering that, although a renowned plant
physiologist. Dr. Went's first love was ecology. Of course, all
this tied in; the temperature's effect on plants, the effect of
the elements on plants, is definitely a part of the ecology.
Another thing he was interested in was belly plants. Belly
plants are the little tiny ones that grow on the desert, and you
have to get down flat on your you-know-what to see them,
[laughs] He since has gone to Nevada, and is still active as
far as I know, and there he would be. of course, in the heart of
his desert.

Lage: So they were focused on the whole plant, the organism, or were

they also doing cellular studies?

McCaskill: They focused on the whole plant to a degree, of course, but more
specifically they were concerned with the growth hormones, the
growth regulators, one of which was auxins. I remember sitting
with Dr. Lang in a dark room slicing up hundreds of little
coleoptiles. They are the first leaf on an oat seedling. He
was studying auxins, which is a type of plant growth regulator,
and these oat coleoptiles produced those auxins. So I was
helping him do the simpler parts of his research.

Lage: Do you know if significant research came out of this phytotron?

McCaskill: Oh yes, very definitely. Results of early research on plant

growth regulators came out of this facility. It's gone now. The
last remnants of the building were removed in the early 1980s.

56

Lage: So this is a different sort of work from the herbarium?

McCaskill: Oh yes, it was totally different for me. It was different from
my focus on taxonomy at Mills, and taxonomy, of course, is my
job now. But it was an interesting summer.

With the University Research Expeditions Program
in Greece. 1985

Lage: You were going to tell us about your involvement with the
UREP program. Please tell us what it is.

McCaskill: Before I do that I'd like to explain that I wasn't an avid
plant collector in the sense that many people before me
have been, and many of the young people are now. Early on at
Davis I had much more opportunity to get out in the field,
particularly with the Cooperative Extension people.

But as the years went on and my job grew but the staff
didn't, I became more involved with paperwork and other
things in the herbarium and didn't get out enough and go
on extensive field trips as much as I would have liked to.
However, in the summer of 1985 I was asked to be the botanist on
a UREP expedition.

UREP is the University Research Expedition Program. It is
connected with the University of California at Berkeley. In
addition to providing funding for research, it also provides
public involvement and understanding of the University's research
role. The project leader and an assistant would go with a
team of people, and the people that make up the team are from all
walks of life. Many are school teachers that have the summer to
explore something different. We had a lawyer, a neurologist —
people representing all walks of life, as I said before. They
want to go enough to contribute their own money and help pay for
the research of the leader — the senior researcher.

Lage: Are they also involved in actual research work, the people who
sign up on these trips?

McCaskill: Yes. they do whatever is required of them. They can look over
the listings put out by the UREP people and make a choice. In
this case, it was a trip led by a cultural geographer named Dr.
Louis Grivetti. He's from the Nutrition Department at UC Davis.
Our effort was a combined one: botanical-geographical-
nutritional. He asked me to come along and do the botanical
part of it.

57

McCaskill : He had hoped to make a study of cultural food habits in rural
Greece, and he wanted to interview older people on the issues
of their diet and nutrition. He especially was interested in the
role of edible wild plants that are used now and how they helped
sustain the diet of the Greek people during the famine in the
1940s during the Nazi occupation.

This was his focus as a nutritional and cultural
geographer. My job was, with the help of the team, to collect
edible and otherwise useful plants. As it turned out. we
collected on archaeological sites more than anywhere else.

Lou and I and our team of ten people (ten the first session
and ten the second) set out to interview these people and took a
translator with us. It was in the heat of the summer, and it
was fascinating. We would find the locals sitting in the shade,
often of outdoor cafes, talking up a blue storm just as people
do here after their morning's work is done.

Our translator would approach them, and they were very
interested in what we were doing. They would scurry off to their
homes and pull out of their storage areas and their garages bits
and pieces of dried plants and point to the area up in the hills
and valleys where they had collected them. There was thyme and
rosemary and the usual things — herbs that we would expect — but
it seems that it was the wrong time of year for us to really do
a thorough job.

Lage: You couldn't collect the things they talked about at this time
of year?

McCaskill: True. Bulbs wouldn't be growing and visible; they would be

dormant under the soil. Many plants would not be flowering — the
spring would have been far better for that project, but summer
was the time we were able to go.

Then we turned our efforts to collecting on the
archaeological sites. We started in Athens, went to the
Peloponnesus Peninsula, and collected all along the eastern part
of that peninsula starting at Troezen and down through the area
adjacent to the Saronic Gulf. It was 135 miles that we
canvassed — we didn't do as much walking as I thought we were going
to. We did a good deal, however, and it seemed like that some
days.

Lage: It seemed like 135 miles?

McCaskill: Yes, some times it seemed like we put them all in on the same
day. But we had back-up cars, of course, carrying the plant
presses. We travelled between Troezen and Athens. It was the
route of Theseus, the mythological character, that we were

58

McCaskill :

Lage:

McCaskill:

Lage:

McCaskil :

Lage:

walking in the footsteps of. So we passed through and collected
on the sites of Troezen. Epidaurus. Corinth, Isthmia, Eleusis,
and then back to Athens.

When we were on the Peloponnesus Peninsula we stayed in
Nauplia for a week, and this allowed us to have day trips to
Tiryns, Argos, Mycenae, and other major archaeological sites,
which were totally mind-boggling to me. It's an odd expression
but that's what they were; I was just overwhelmed.

What was the idea of collecting on these sites?
to get some idea of what grew in the past?

Were you trying

Yes. It was partially the study of the succession of plant
growth. That summer we collected many weed species. Most
of them were familiar to me because they were weeds that had
been introduced into California from Europe. So I was able to
recognize probably 80 percent of them, at least to the level of
genus. It would be a study of plant succession, what plants
were there after the digs.

What we were doing was putting together checklists of the
plants which existed on each site. Those will be sent back
to the Goulandris Natural History Museum in Kif issia, in the
northern part of Athens. We've had good relations with the
director and staff there, and we will be returning half of the
plant collection to them. We're very indebted to them; they
let us use their facilities and were supportive of our project.

Sounds like you made a good switch of direction when the
original one didn't work so well.

Yes. And Dr. Grivetti is over there now. His wife is Greek,
and they're on her native island of Chios. He has a couple of
his graduate students in Greece doing their research, and
he's meeting with them. Some of their research involves
interviewing people, but I think on a smaller scale than we
attempted.

Did you tape record the interviews?

McCaskill: No. I wish we had. We learned what to do next time.

Lage: How did the crew work out? I've always been curious about how
these UREP programs work out.

McCaskill: Ours did. They knew before we left that we would be on the road
at seven, we would close down operations at three, at least for
the crew, and they would have the rest of the afternoon for
swimming — there was often that opportunity — and doing whatever
they liked. Lou and I and the translator — Eleni Bey was her

59

McCaskill: name — spent much more of the day changing blotters in the

plant presses, recording collection site data, and doing all
these things that plant collectors must do in between expeditions.
And of course Lou had all the expenses record-keeping to tend
to. That was one huge responsibility for him.

Lage: Was it hard to train your crew on how to collect specimens?

McCaskill: No, it wasn't. They were all wanting to do this or they wouldn't
have signed up in the first place. It got kind of funny though.
Towards the end of a day collecting, they would say, "If I see
one more caper. . . ." Then they'd laugh. They didn't mean it at
all, but you do start noticing that — well, it figures you would
see the same weeds on several different sites. But they bravely
pressed onl

They certainly did a grand job. We figure that we
collected, pressed, and identified approximately 2,500
specimens. Most of them were herbaceous species.

Lage: Have you followed through with the project at all, or was that a

one-time thing for you?

McCaskill: I still work on it as I can between my other duties in the

herbarium, so we're still processing it. What Dr. Grivetti is
doing is making mineral analyses of the plants by first reducing
small amounts of each to ash. We collected enough material so
that he could do this after they're identified and a voucher
specimen of each is stored in our herbarium. He can then take the
excess material that was collected and make nutritional analyses
for his studies.

Lage: Sounds like another interesting sidelight of your career. Any

other remarks on the Greek experience?

McCaskill: Just one. People ask me about it, and I say I came hone tired

but exhilarated at the same time. I don't think I'd ever worked
that hard in my life, and I'd lost weight. But I would leave
again tomorrow, [laughs] I would do it all over again, gladly I

Lage: How long a trip was this?

McCaskill: It was pretty much the summer for Lou and me because we went

ahead of the group and made a dry run. Then we had two sessions
with time in between. At the end of the trip I was able to go
to Crete for a week and also on a short cruise on the
Mediterranean seeing the Greek Isles — quite a contrast to our
expedition where we had more spartan, but perfectly adequate
accommodations.

60

McCaskill: The group was wonderful and Lou was — is — a fantastic man. After
the end of the day when we were rested a bit and ready for
dinner we'd eat in tavernas. those cafes that are often in the
street. The cars sort of go through you instead of around you.
We'd eat as a group every day, all three meals. At mealtime he
would teach us so many things. Not as a stiff, dry, boring
professor but just as a wonderful human being who knows so very
much about that part of the world. We often sat until eleven or
midnight, and did lots of laughing together, I must add. Then
off we'd go again early the next morning.

Lage: Did his Greek wife come along?

McCaskill: She didn't. The original intent was for her to come, but it
didn't work out that way so Louis had to hire a young college
student as a translator. Eleni's the one that actually got me
through much of the hard work. Sometimes we'd find ourselves
still pressing those plants on the floor where we were staying
into the night, into the wee hours. She'd say, "Just one more,
June; we can do it!" [laughs]

Lage: Sounds like a great spirit of teamwork.

McCaskill: It was. And we've kept in touch with many of those people. I'm
hoping for a reunion some day. We haven't gotten around to that
yet.

I nearly forgot to tell you. . . shortly after the plans
for the trip jelled there was a Palestinian hijacking of a TWA
plane in which an American was killed at the Athens airport. But
in spite of this, not one of our team backed out. When we flew
into Athens there was a huge banner reading, "Athens Airport is
Safe." When we left in August security was tighter than a drum.

Friends of the Davis Arboretum

Founding and Fostering the Friends

Lage: We want to turn now to talking about the arboretum at Davis.

You mentioned you first became involved in 1971, although it was
originally founded in the thirties.

McCaskill: Yes. Officially in 1936, I believe, when plantings were made by
students on Aggie Labor Day. In the early forties, also long
before my involvement, there was a planting of a redwood grove,
coast redwoods, initiated by Dr. Elliot Weier. who is a professor
emeritus of our botany department and sill an ardent supporter
of the arboretum.

61

McCaskill: In 1971 there was a cutback of many things on our campus —

in our UC system, I should say — and on our campus it affected me
directly. I lost our plant mounter, and the arboretum lost its
two top staff people — Roman Gankin and Dick Hildreth. two
outstanding plantsmen.

Lage: It left the arboretum without leadership?

McCaskill: Well, to a degree. They served as superintendents, but Grady

Webster continued as director at that time. He is my boss now.
("Boss" sounds funny to me because Grady and John both are such
great guys and working with them is a pleasure.) My first boss
at UC Davis. John Tucker, was the arboretum director for twelve
years after Grady served.

Back to 1971 — with this cut in state funding, something
had to be done. There had been a group called the Pioneers, a
community support group. However, those people. Dean Knowles
Ryerson and a few others, had either moved away — Ryerson had
returned to Berkeley — or in some cases had passed on. The group
had dissolved, so it was felt that a new one should be started.

ft

McCaskill: So a new community support group was founded, and in the spring
of 1971 a group of us. concerned members of the community, held
meetings. Our first official meeting was in June. According to
my records as membership chair, several life memberships were
given in that year. So we were on our way. We had a
core of very dedicated people and slowly, but surely, our
membership grew through those early years.

Lage: What is the group called?

McCaskill: Friends of the Davis Arboretum. It is composed of local people
primarily, as you would guess, but also a few members from afar.
The membership does continue to grow and gather momentum. We
have a mailing drive every September; we have an annual membership
luncheon; we have wonderful support from the local newspapers
giving us good coverage on our events — our field trips, our
walks through the arboretum on Sunday afternoons, our education
program. All of this helps us to gather more members as the
years go by.

Lage: Does your membership reach beyond the University community?

McCaskill: Yes it does, out into the business community, through

California, across the U.S., and as far as Canada; we do have
some foreign members.

6 la

of

the Arboretum
1986 Brochure

61b

CD

c

CO

113

62

McCaskill: One year — this was a fun thing — we canvassed the whole town, and
we hope to do that again, incidently. It's quite an operation to
do that.

Lage: How did you do that?

McCaskill: You get volunteers. We have an active group of volunteers —

there are the propagators, waterers, docents, librarians, people
that want to help address and stuff envelopes, and that's what
they would do for me when we have these membership drives. That
year I tore some pages from the Davis phone book and went to see
these people that had indicated they would like to help and
said, "Here you go, address these pages."

Betty Quick and her husband are two of our most dedicated
volunteers. Betty reminds me that that's how we met. I was on
her doorstep with part of the Davis phone book in hand.

Lage:

McCaskill:
Lage:
McCaskill :

Lage:

You sent mailings when you say you canvassed the community.
Yes. we mailed out thousands of membership packets.
What kind of response did you get from those?

Enough to pay for the paper, the postage, and all the financial
involvement we had there, plus gaining enough members to make it
worthwhile. This coming year, in 1989, we're going to do that
again after we work out the logistics. We know there are many,
many more people out there that would happily become involved
with the Friends if they had the opportunity presented to
them.

How about your renewal rate?
that renew year after year?

Is that pretty good — memberships

McCaskill: Oh yes, renewals are made unless they just let them fall through
the slats and are temporarily forgotten. We'll pick them
up again in a year or two, though.

Lage: Did all the educational programs come along with this friends
group or had they existed before?

McCaskill: I'm not certain about that. Certainly, the organized ones came
along with this group. We have a corps of docents that lead
walks through the arboretum, some designed for school children and
others for the community as a whole. Some of them do other
jobs; some volunteers are seed-sorters, some mappers, whatever
they enjoy doing. I mentioned librarians and volunteers at the
Plant Faire. Every year we have a Plant Faire that's our
biggest fund-raising event. The propagators that I mentioned

63

McCaskill: are the ones that make this sale such a success. It grows
every year and it's become a looked-forward-to event in the
community.

Lage: Does it focus just on trees?

McCaskill: No. ground covers, herbaceous plants, annuals, perennials, and

some trees. They are propagated by volunteers through the year.
I should mention that the majority of them are our native plants
because in our arboretum, although we have an exotic section,
the focus is on drought-tolerant plants, which would be natives.

Lage:

So the arboretum also doesn't just focus on trees?

McCaskill : Right. 1 guess in some definitions an arboretum would be trees
but ours has a wider scope.

Lage:

Would it be properly called a botanical garden?

McCaskill: That would be fine, certainly.
Lage: And it's located on the campus?

McCaskill: Yes. That's something I should have mentioned early on. Many

people think of an arboretum as a square block or something with
a fence around it — an enclosed area. What we have is over 100
acres bordering both banks of the north channel of old Putah
Creek that runs through campus. The rains normally keep it
filled in the winter, and in the summer it's fed by the campus
wells. Without this quiet water in that creek the ancient oak
trees and the poplars along the banks would not be able to make
it.

Lage: So it does need some irrigation?
McCaskill: Yes.

Lage: How about the coast redwoods?

McCaskill: They're doing fine with some summer watering.

Lage: It seems hot in Davis for redwoods.

McCaskill: Doesn't it, though? People can scarcely believe this, and yet
it's a wonderful oasis. There are lunch tables down in the
shaded areas; there's duff from off the trees underfoot; and
they've planted associates of redwood trees in there also — plants
that would normally be found with them in the wild. People make
use of these picnic tables pretty much through the year.

Lage:

It's an accessible area for students?

64

McCaskill: Yes — heavily used by students. There are bicycle paths, walking
paths, benches to sit down on and enjoy the plants — just to sit
and relax. Children adore it. It's a place where they can go
with their school teachers or with their parents to see the ducks,
other waterfowl, the turtles, all the plant life and the animal
life. It's heavily used and admired.

Special Arboretum Gardens: The Ruth Risdon Storer Garden

McCaskill: We could talk about one of the special gardens, if you like.
Lage: Yes, please.

McCaskill: In the arboretum we have several special gardens. One of them is
the Shields Oak Grove with the largest collection of Quercus
species in western North America. We have many large
collections of plants from Mediterranean climates — Eucalyptus
and Acacia, both primarily from Australia I should say
Mediterranean-type climates such as you find also in Australia
and parts of South America and Southwest Africa.

One very special one that comes to mind is the Storer
Garden, This garden is the most popular one in the arboretum
for all ages, I would say. It was supported both morally and
financially by Ruth Risdon Storer. Dr. Ruth, as she was fondly
called, was the wife of Dr. Tracy Storer. The two of them had
gone to school in Berkeley. Tracy Storer was a zoology
professor who left Berkeley and came to Davis. With him he
brought his wife, Dr. Ruth Storer, who had acquired her M.D.
here in Berkeley.

So the two of them arrived in town in 1923. She was
recovering from a bout with tuberculosis. She did get better, and
it wasn't long before people became aware that she had an M.D.
and was such a caring person and they went to her with their
children. She was a pediatrician, and she started the first baby
clinics in the area. She founded them in both Yolo and
Sacramento Counties. Actually, the first clinic was in Tracy's
den. Tracy was a very serious, hard-working zoologist* and
he'd come home and sometimes find babies and mothers in his den
that she was helping through some crisis. They begged her to
set up these clinics, which she did, and she remained in that
career until she was eighty years old.

Meanwhile, she always had a beautiful garden at their own
home. After she retired from the medical profession, she then
put all her time and efforts into her plants and her garden and

65

McCaskill: the arboretum. The Storers were very generous to the arboretum,
and one thing that they endowed was the garden that I mentioned
that was named in her honor.

The interesting thing about this garden and what makes it
so popular is that many of the plants in it are drought
tolerant — some more than others, of course. There are native
plants, also there are introduced exotics. It is a gathering
of plants that can tolerate the Central Valley, which we're in
the middle of. and that will give color all year long. You can
visit that garden, figure out what you would want to plant at
your own home and see color during every season. So this has
been a great success. It's so important now since the water
conservation has become vital.

Lage: It sounds as if it came about before all the concern and focus on

water conservation, or was it started during the first drought
in the 1970s?

McCaskill: I don't know the date actually, but it was begun in the late
1970s and dedicated while Dr. Ruth was still living.

Lage: So there was a general concern about drought- resistant plants?

McCaskill: Yes. I'm sure there was. The Davis community on the whole has
always been tuned in to conservation practices.

Lage: Is it used for research at all. or is it more for public

education?

McCaskill: That particular garden would be for public education, primarily, I
would say. Although classes such as environmental design would
certainly use it. too.

Lage: How about the arboretum in general?

McCaskill: The arboretum in general is used both for education of school
children and interested adults and for research. Many
departments on campus have used areas of it for research
experiments of one kind or another. Yes, it's a valuable
resource, and fortunately our new chancellor sees it that way
also.

Organizing and Leading Arboretum Trips: Southern California,
Canada. Hawaii, and the Mid-Atlantic States

Lage: That's nice to know. Now tell ne about the trips.

move into the trips you've been involved with?

Shall we

66

McCaskill

Lage:
McCaskill

Yes. The trips are another part of my involvement with the
arboretum and one of the happiest parts of my life — I wish you
[the reader] could see me grinning. But, really, when I think of
the people that I've met and enjoyed traveling with, I feel so
fortunate.

It happened this way. In 1982, Mary Major who worked with
special events for Friends of the Arboretum for many years, felt
we should have some fairly lengthy trips. We'd had and still
continue to have day field trips up to the Stebbins Reserve, to
Bear Valley, Table Mountain, the Sutter Buttes.

But Mary was a good one to think of how to raise funds for
the arboretum, and this would be a fund-raising thing. People
going on these longer trips would donate an extra amount to the
arboretum. Arboreta throughout the country have trips as fund
raisers.

So in the spring of 1982 we decided to go to Santa Barbara.
We knew they have some wonderful gardens there, private gardens
in addition to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and others open
to the public.

My friend. Sue Armstrong, eagerly pitched in to help me.
We got a plan, prepared a flyer, and off we went for four days
to Santa Barbara. We took the train down, and we rented some
cars and drove ourselves around and had a glorious time. We saw
some beautiful private gardens. We were privileged to see
those and appreciated the people of Santa Barbara opening them
to us.

Did you arrange that through the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens?

Yes. some I did. through the director there, who at that time was
a woman, Dr. Katherine Muller. She gave me names of local
garden clubs and people that I could contact. Mary knew I liked
to travel, and she also knew that I was fond of Santa Barbara.
that I enjoyed it and went through it often on my way home to
Pasadena so, "June, why don't you put this trip together?" and I
said, "Fine, I'll do that," and it was a success.

Then we were all saying, "What do we do next year?" and
then this continued. People would ask, "June, why don't we go
somewhere every year?" Well. fine, that's great. I will help
with trips as long as people would like to go. but you know, the
years do go ticking by. But I'm ready, willing and able at this
point 1

So you really organized all these trips.

67

McCaskill: Yes, a good many of them. For longer trips we work with travel
bureaus. You have to figure out where gardens that we want to
see are located. Next I write and phone people in those areas
and arrange dates for the visits at the botanic gardens and
other attractions needing reservations. Then you figure out the
logistics with the travel people. They make the arrangements
for transportation and accommodations, of course.

Lage: — and special tours usually?

McCaskill: Yes. We'll ask for a guided tour through each arboretum or

botanic garden. We don't limit it to that. The group that goes
with us — there are repeaters for many, many times, and then we
draw in new people also — they are the sort of people that like
other things too. We always have birders with us from whom we
learn a great deal; I know I do. We go to art museums, natural
history museums, historic homes, historic sites of all sorts, and
they like this. It's a good mix with the plant part of it.

Lage: Tell us some of the places you've gone.

McCaskill: The next year we went on down to southern California, further
down, and we went to the Huntington Gardens and nearby Rancho
Santa Ana Botanic Garden, and the Arcadia Arboretum, where I
mentioned my brother is still working. These places I had
become familiar with as I grew up in Pasadena, so it was a
natural and easy area for us to get around in. We did get up
to Rancho Santa Ana to see the native plant garden. And on that
trip we added a tour of the Gamble House, which is a wonderful
piece of architecture built by the brothers Greene and Greene in
west Pasadena.

Lage: Did you get to go through that?

McCaskill: Yes. we did. It was a special treat for me because we had
visited it as children when the Gambles still lived there.

And at that time we went to art galleries too. We always
have a few of those included. All of these things are optional,
of course. These people are adults. They're well-travelled.
Most of them, I would venture to say, are more well-travelled than
I'll ever be. They've been on sabbaticals through their careers;
many are retired professors. So I remind them early on, "This
is your time and your money and everything's optional." If you
would like to go to things we have scheduled, meet us at the cars
or buses for whatever is going on that day. But they always
show up. [laughs] It's a very rewarding part of my life.

After southern California we decided to branch out some. We
went to Hawaii in 1984. We went to see the major botanic garden
there on Kauai— the Pacific Tropical Botanic Garden—and also saw

67a

THE FRIENDS OF THE DAVIS ARBORETUM

invite you to visit

OLD HAWAII

APRIL 20 to MAY 2, 1988

Your tour host - June McCaskill
Curator of the Botany Department Herbarium, UC Davis

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TOUR:

Seven days on Hawaii (the Big Island):

The Kona Buddhist Mission

Captain Cook's Landing

Hulihee Palace

The Parker Ranch

Kilauea Volcano Area

Rainbow Falls Macadamia Nut Farms

Nani Man Gardens

Kaimu and Punaluu Beaches

Six days on Molokai:

Dole Pineapple Plantation

Palaau Park

Halawa Valley

Father Damien's Leper Colony (by mule or

Hoolehua

Moomomi Beach

Maniloa Town

air)

GENERAL INFORMATION

The cost of the tour is $1460.00 per person, double occupancy, and includes air fares,
hotels, sightseeing, and a $100 tax-deductible donation to the Friends of the Davis
Arboretum. The cost does not include meals or gratuities. All touring and sightseeing will
be by private motorcoach.

TO RESERVE YOUR PLACE, or for further information, please contact the Arboretum, or

Carol Terra
Terra & Hendrickx Travel

222 D Street

Davis, CA 956 If

(916) 753-5060

68

McCaskill: gardens on Oahu and Maul. All of these trips require a lot of
planning. What causes them to be a success is the background
work that we do. We have lots of help from grad students we've
had at Davis who have gone on to a job in another part of the
world. They are so helpful. They'll make contacts for us.

Lage: You'll contact the grad student in that particular area?

McCaskill: Yes.

Lage: And you get ideas, maybe not the usual tourist attractions.

McCaskill: Exactly. And often times they'll come with us, and they add so
much to the trip because our group enjoys meeting them. They're
just by and large delightful people that we enjoy going with
to the gardens.

We also went to Canada one year. We flew up and sailed
back home on the Rotterdam, which was fun. We travel many ways —
private cars, vans, buses, planes, trains, boats and mules,
[laughs]

Lage: So Canada, Hawaii, southern California —

McCaskill: Yes. Then we had a trip to the mid-Atlantic states. I think
that was one of the most memorable ones for me. I'd heard a
good deal about the gardens on the East Coast but had not seen
them. They are different. Of course, the climate's different,
and they have to have many of their plants in huge glass houses.
Several of these gardens that we saw in the Pennsylvania and
Delaware Valley area were supported by the duPont trusts, where
no money was spared. They had the most incredible displays in
conservatories, as well as outside too.

Ones I remember so well would be the Longwood Gardens in
Pennsylvania and then Winterthur in Delaware. We also went to
the Brandywine Conservancy River Museum at Chadds Ford in
Pennsylvania. All of these were clustered fairly close to one
another. At Brandywine, in addition to the gardens, we saw the
Wyeth paintings, and the Helga paintings before they vent on
tour. That was exciting.

Lage: When was that?

McCaskill: That was in the fall of 1986. There again, we combined plants
with history. We were staying in Philadelphia §o certainly ve
saw Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell Pavilion, went to the
Bookbinder Restaurant, things like this. Then ve worked our

™*

way down the coast as far as William sburg and Jamestown and
along the vay toured Annapolis. Outstanding gardens along the
rest of the way were at Monticello and Oatlands.

69

Lage: It sounds like you found a second career as a specialty tour
guide.

McCaskill: Yes. People have said that to me and I do enjoy it immensely.
I'll keep going as long as we can.

Lage: Has it been successful in raising funds for the arboretum?

McCaskill: Yes. I was looking at our first flyer, and we were asking $10 as
a contribution to the arboretum for that trip, and now it's $150
for any trip of considerable length — not the day trips, not the
short outings — but the amount has increased, and we are able to
raise funds that way. You figure that from twenty to thirty
people go with us each time so their donations build up the
kitty.

Lage: It's fulfilling its purpose.

McCaskill: Yes, both as a fund raiser and as a way to get to know each
other.

Lage: You mentioned the memories of Ruth Storer on one of these trips
that you wanted to tell about.

McCaskill: Yes. I remember clearly that she went to southern California

with us, and I still have a mental picture of her on Amtrak. A
very independent, self-sufficient lady she was. Of course, people
were wanting to carry her luggage but no, she could manage that
fine. On that trip she was ninety-five years young. Just an
incredible woman — so talented, so lovely, so admired by the whole
town.

Lage:

It sounds like she contributed tremendously.

Memorable Plant People; Taxonomic Charactersff

McCaskill: One thing more, when I do retire from my postion in the

herbarium I plan to become a volunteer, far more active in an
arboretum — in our local one if I remain in Davis. Wherever I
am, I am going to be out there with the plants.

Lage:

I believe that, having talked to you.

McCaskill: [laughs] I started as a youngster, and I guess it's in my
blood.

Lage: You wanted to talk about some other people you've met. memorable

people, through your botanical enterprises.

70

McCaskill: I think I wanted to finish the interview by saying that I only
hope that I will be half as vigorous and healthy when I reach
their age. I hope to be much like these older taxonomic
characters that I've long admired. At Davis we tease each
other some about being tazonomic characters. My good friend Dr.
Fred Addicott in the botany department there came up with that
term, and I use it in the fondest sense.

Early on I met Annette Carter. Elizabeth McClintock.
Mildred Mathias* — the great ladies of plant taxonomy in the
state. I was doing a bit of research the other day checking
ages and found that many of the botanists I met at that time
are eighty-plus years young and going strong. For example,
Ledyard Stebbins in Davis — he is a world renowned geneticist that
everyone recognizes as unique. He will be leading field trips
connected with our upcoming AIBS [American Institute of
Biological Sciences] meetings hosted in Davis this month.

Lage: Is he in his eighties also?

McCaskill: Yes. He is, I believe, in the lower half of his eighties. When
I was young and following him on field trips, I was exhausted by
the time we'd crashed through several manzanita bushes or other
chaparral areas. He was so into his plants and surroundings
that he was unaware of anything else. This was particularly
apparent at lunch time when he'd pull something out of a sack,
and he would scarcely look at what it was. He'd be poring over a
map and showing us where we were going as soon as we could down
this food that was necessary but nothing we should linger over.
So he would pull his sandwich out and while showing you the map,
set the sandwich down in the dirt, pick it up. and munch a few
bites, and go on. He was a real eye-opener to me. He knew
all the plants of California, as far as I could tell. He's a
general practitioner type like Tom Howell; they know the flora
of the entire state, and it's incredible.

Lage: Tom Howell, did you work with him?

McCaskill: No, I didn't. Tom is the grand old man in the herbarium at the
California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park in San
Francisco. Tom, I understand, is still going to the academy a day
a week, being driven there by the Knights — Walter and Irja
Knight, who are themselves ur.forge table taxonomic characters
who have been of tremendous help to me.

*See oral history of Annetta Carter and Elizabeth McClintock in
California Women in Botany, volume I (1987). Regional Oral
History Office, and oral history of Mildred Mathias. conducted
by Oral History Program, UCLA (1982).

71

McCaskill : Also in that age group would be Lincoln Constance, who is right
here and who I know you've interviewed.*

Lage: Would you have had any chance to work with Lincoln Constance?

Does he borrow plants from Davis?

McCaskill: Yes. we've loaned back and forth members of his favorite

families, the Umbelliferae and Hydrophyllaceae. But I have not
done field work with him. He just always turns up in my survey
of people that I feel so fortunate to know.

It seems to me, too, that plant people live longer than most
people.

Lage: I think I've heard others say that.

McCaskill: I bet it could be proven statistically.

Lage: Do you have any thoughts on why that could be?

McCaskill: I don't know. Perhaps they're low key and enthused about their
work.

Women in Botany

Lage: What other women in botany, since this is the topic of our

series; how have they fared, would you say, having seen the scene
for a long time?

McCaskill: There have been some problems, I know, but I would say by and
large they've fared well. They are certainly increasing in
number; there's no question about that. I see that in my own
area in Davis. When I arrived in the department, there were four
women, including only one female graduate student, and I would
say that at this time in history it would be more like a
fifty/fifty division of men and women graduate students.

Lage:

How about on the faculty?

McCaskill: On the faculty it would be more. I would guess, a fourth women and
three-fourths men at Davis.

*Lincoln Constance. Versatile Berkeley Botanist: Plant Taxonomy
and University Governance. Regional Oral History Office. 1986.

72

Lage:

McCaskill:
Lage:

McCaskill!

Lage:

McCaskill

Lage:

McCaskill!

Lage:

McCaskill!

Lage:
McCaskill!

Do the graduate student women seem to have as easy a time being
placed in the field and get as good jobs?

Yes, I would say they do.

Was that always the case, or were you ever aware in the earlier
part of your career of problems with the women getting jobs?

I don't know about that. Some people, of course, would
immediately say that perhaps now women would be given a slight
preference. I am not so sure, though. I think they're screened
for their merits and not their sex. But the discrimination is
certainly far less than it ever used to be, as it is in all walks
of life — I like to think.

How do you think being a woman might have affected the course of
your career? Do you think it affected the educational level that
you stopped at, or the kind of job opportunities you may have had?

No. I hadn't really thought about that.
Ann — food for thought.

That's a loaded one,

I think in herbaria women were more often hired — people
thought of women in herbaria in my time when I began in the one at
Davis, and now that has switched. There are more and more men
in herbaria. But 1 think when I was first out of college
and went to that herbarium it was just a very natural situation.

That was accepted?

One probably expected to see a woman fill that position.

Do you think you might have gone on for a Ph.n and into a
teaching career had there been more openings for women?

No, I think not. To be perfectly honest with you, I feel
comfortable at my level, and I think it would have been a
struggle for me, actually, in many ways to go on. As far as
teaching, I enjoy low-key teaching such as helping interns in
the herbarium. I am teaching them the care and feeding of the
herbarium. I like to hold forth on something I'm very familiar
with — weeds, how to run a herbarium, things of this nature. But
it would have been difficult for me to go on to a higher degree.

So you're pretty happy with what has come about?

Yes. I think I accepted early on that there's a niche for all
of us, and I've found one that suits me to a tee, and I couldn't
be more comfortable.

Lage: That's a very nice way to finish up our interview.

73

TAPE GUIDE — June McCaskill

Interview 1: January 25, 1988

tape 1. side A *

tape 1, side B "

tape 2. side A [side B not recorded] 20

Interview 2: April 11. 1988 21

tape 3. side A 21

tape 3, side B ^l
tape 4. side A

tape 4, side B **

Interview 3: August 8, 1988 53

tape 5, side A -|3

tape 5. side B "
tape 6, side A

APPENDIX A

Resume of Billie June MoCaskill

Mail Address;

Botany Department
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
(916) 752-1091

Place and Date of Birth;
Education;

731 "A" Street
Davis, CA 95616
(916) 753-3413.

Pasadena, California, June 2, 1930

Professional Employment;
July 1953 - to date

Sept. 1951 - June 1953:

Summer 1951:

Specialization:
Publications;

Memberships:

Offices;

Awards;

Mills College, Oakland, California
Bachelor's degree in Botany Dept. , June 1951
Member Dean's Honor List

Herbarium, Botany Dept., University of Calif., Davis.
Present title: Principal Museum Scientist.

Biology Dept., Mills College, Oakland, CA.
Technician for Prof. Howard McMirm, plant taxoncciist,
and teaching assistant for nursing candidates from
Merritt College.

Biology Dept., Calif. Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, CA. Technician for Drs. A. Lang and J.
Liverman, plant physiologists.

Identification, taxonomy, and geographic distribution
of weeds. Allergenic plants. Poisonous plants.

Articles semi-technical in nature on weeds and weed
problems in California. Co-author Growers Weed
Identification Harrflxy>k,

California Botanical Society

California Native Plant Society

Friends Davis Arboretum

Friends of Jepson Herbarium

Los Angeles State and County Arboretum

Native Hawaiian Plant Society

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Business Manager and Treasurer, California Botanical
Society, Oct. 1967 - Dec. 1971.

Membership Chairman and 2nd V.P., Friends of
University Arboretum, U.C.D. , July 1974 to date.

Outstanding Performance Award, Botany Dept., U.C.D. ,

1974, 1987.

Selected (1 of 18 participants nationwide) to attend

Developing, Managing and Maintaining Collections

Workshop at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington,

D.C., 1977.

Award of Excellence, California Weed Society, 1985.

75

APPENDIX B

INTERVIEW OF VERN AND JACK McCASKILI
by ALMANAC editor Lewis Lawyer

Almanac:
Society for
Pacific Coast
Native Iris

FALL 1987

Volume XVI Number 1

THE McCASKILLS

Lewis Lawyer

Vern McCaskJ.ll is a well-known
nurseyman in Pasadena specializing in
camellias and azaleas. His nursery has
been a primary source of Pacific Coast
Irises since the early 50s and has prob
ably distributed more native iris plants
than any other nursery in the world. His
son, Jack, is in charge of plant records
at the Los Angeles County Arboretum at
Arcadia. Jack is a charter member of
SPCNI and was our first Vice President.

Vern McCaskill is a very special per
son. You know that the minute you meet
him. He is hard-working, but his in
tense love of plants and flowers shows
through his face and in his soft-spoken
voice.

The following article is taken from
tapes recorded on two successive days
in early December, 1986, the first with
Vern in his lath house office at the
McCaskill Nursery in Pasadena, and the
second with Jack in his office at the
Arboretum in Arcadia.

When asked how he became interested
in native iris, Vern was a little hes
itant; in this instance it certainly was
not a case of love at first sight.,
"Well, «y wife had one or two of them

growing around the yard. That was a
long time ago, but I remember one of them
was AGNES JAMES. I think they came from
a friend of hers; her friends were always
bringing her plants. To me, the natives
were pretty, but not very exciting and I
really didn't think too much about them
until my son, Jack, got involved."

Jack agreed: "You know, my dad has
introduced about £.00 came lias and he was
so involved with his camelia crosses at
that time... But it really is strange how
we did get into the natives. Back in the
early 50s, mom and my older sister, (I
have another sister up at the University
of California at Davis) , but the one who
lives down here and my mom, started
taking a course in flower arranging. I
was working here on weekends plus three
days during the week. I happened to
have some time to spare on the day they
went to their class. I started going
with them and continued for about a year.
Mom had a few native irises growing in
our garden to pick for bouquets and we
all liked to use them in our arrangements,
Then my sister planted a few of the
common ones in her back yard and I got
to like to see them growing.

"I gathered plants and seed all along
the coast from Mendocino down to below

76

THE McCASKILLS (continued)

Monterey. Dad and I grew the seed in
gallon cans so he could sell the ones
we didn't want to keep. Actually, none
of these plants were very good, and it
wasn't until we got seed from Lee Lenz
that we made much progress.

"Peg Dabagh knew that we were inter
ested in getting going on the natives,
so she talked to Dr. Lenz at the' Santa
Ana Botanic Garden. This was before
he had incorporated Iris munzii into
his crosses, but he had things that
were far ahead of anyone else's at the
time. Apparently, he had introduced a
few selections in the early to mid-
1950s and, according to Peg, had given
some of his things to commercial grow
ers to distribute. But they just sold
all the stock he gave them and made no
attempt to increase anything on their
own. I guess he was kind of fed up,
and Peg told me that he wasn't going
to release any more. She apparently
convinced him, however, that dad and
I were used to increasing our own
stock, so he very graciously let me go
out and pick seed from his stock
plants. We planted this seed and even
tually had thousands of seedlings, al
most any one of which was a Jump ahead
of everyone else down here.

Vern McCaskill explained: "You know,
my son went up and down the coast try-
Ing to get seed of all the kinds avail
able and we grew thousands of seedlings.
But none of our plants from these
crosses were very spectacular. Then
Jack went out to the Santa Ana Botanic
Gardens and visited Dr. Lenz who was
kind enough to give him quite a lot of
seed. It was from these seeds that we
got all of our best material. We kept
crossing back and forth and eventually
found any number of good selections.
Lenz had used douglaeiana and innomina-
tat and a little bit of bracteata.
which gave its striping to some of the
flowers.

"We grew thousands of seedlings each
year and sold most of them to landscape
architects by the truckload. The best
flowers we would keep for hand pollin
ations. The best plants remaining went
to the Iris fanciers and all the rest
went to the landscapers. For the last
year or two I've not done so much with
the natives. Part of this is because
of my wife's death last summer. She

had been sick for about six years and
I just sort of. . ."

Vern stopped and changed the sub
ject: "I think that the best PCN that
was ever developed was CANYON SNOW. We
increased CANYON SNOW for Dara Emery
and introduced it in 1975. I crossed
it with many of our things to see if I
couldn't get the same attributes but
with different-colored flowers, but
none of these crosses were successful.
CANYON SNOW is certainly a wonderful
grower and bloomer but, for me, it was
never a good parent.

Vern McCaskill

The McCaskill 's first-named selec
tions, CASILDA, CHIMES, and FAIRY
CHIMES weren't introduced until 1972
and then apparently only after some
persuation by their friend, Doris
Foster of Vista. At one time during
the interview Adele and I were asked
if we had ever grown CHIMES or FAIRY
CHIMES. When told that we still grew
both of them and that both were doing
beautifully, Jack said, "Oh, I'm glad
to hear that! CHIMES always grew well
for us but we had to give up on FAIRY
CHIMES, - well, maybe not 'give up*.

77

What happened was that we had a big
storm followed by some hot weather.
The lath house collapsed and we didn't
get FAIRY CHIMES shaded in time. Does
your CHIMES get covered with white
blooms like it did for us down here?"
Adele and I both recalled that when an
established clump of either CHIMES or
FAIRY CHIMES was in bloom in our gar
den, the expression "covered with white
blooms" was a perfect description.
Jack continued, "When we first had it
where it was planted in the ground we
had a sheet of white, - It was spec
tacular!"

Because of our interest in Iris
munzii we asked Vern about his experi
ence with this species. "Munzii se
lections and crosses have never done
very well for us here. Jack gathered
seed up in the Sequoia area and even
though we had about 1000 seedlings to
start with, we eventually lost the lot'.1

Jack McCaskill elaborated on this
experience: "About 1963, one of the
other fellows working here at the Ar
boretum and I took a few days off and
drove up to the Sierras where munzii
grows wild. We had found out from Dr.
Lenz when would be the best time to
make the trip, and so we came back with
a lot of seed. This seed germinated
real well but it was all gone after
about a year or two. Maybe it was be
cause we were trying to grow it in cans.

"I guess dad told you that we have
experienced a lot of trouble with all
the munzii-r elated plants. We were
supposed to introduce ALMA ABELL for
Dr. Lenz back in the early 1970s. We
put a bunch of them in the ground fig
uring that we would increase it for a
couple of years until we got enough di
visions. We wanted to have enough
plants to sell and still have enough
left over for further increases. But
it just kept decreasing instead of in
creasing. The plants bloomed beauti
fully but just wouldn't Increase. By
the end of three years we had lost them
all! Lenz had to increase it all over
again and I understand that it was dis
tributed through Bob Hub ley about 1982.

"Dr. Lenz grows his munzii things in
full sun, and they are beautiful! I
don't know how he does it. They don't
grow in the sun where they are wild.
It's hotter in Claremont than it is here
and we have never been able to grow them
in full sun or otherwise."

Vern McCaskill seemed quite exasper
ated about his inability to cope with
the demands of munzii. When he told
us about their experience with ALMA
ABELL he said, "You know, Dr. Lenz
named this beautiful munzii flower for
Thornton Abell's wife, Alma. She was
such a wonderful woman and the flower
was so beautiful, and I wanted to grow
it as much as I have ever wanted to
grow any plant. But it just wouldn't
grow for me. SIERRA SAPPHIRE, too, was
such a beautiful thing, and it bloomed
very well for us. Our customers would
see it and would have to have it, but
then they would come back with the sad
news about its death. The new Clare-*
mont introductions behave the same way
for us and we have just had to. Rive up
on them.

"Of course this is true about a lot
of plants. They seem to do best where
they are selected and may not do well
anywhere «lse. You have a very good
iris grower up your way, Joe Ghio. I
used to get all of Ohio's new varieties
and bring them down here. Some of them
performed quite well and others were
nothing but trouble. Climate, I guess.
Ghio has a fine climate, right along the
coast. Its pretty cool here today, but
you should be here during the summer! We

might as well admit it, - we're in a
desert here and pouring water on it
doesn't change it very much.

"I had trouble with Roy Davidson's
plants, too, but for quite a different
reason, even though it was tied in with
the weather. He wasn't able to ship
plants in the late fall when I wanted
the plants because up in Seattle he
was already frozen in. So he would
ship to me in the spring and they
would invariably arrive here at the be
ginning of a hot spell. I would keep
them in the shade and pour water on
them but it was a losing battle."

Every iris plant from the McCaskill
Nursery is sold in cans using their
standard camel la mix. "We use a mix
ture of about one third each of peat,
sand, and a good loamy soil which we
get by the truckload. I don't use any
compost although I imagine compost
would be good for them, too. I just
figure that the peat will take the
place of the compost, and you are al
ways sure of peat moss whereas compost
can be made from almost anything."

Vern McCaskill was brought up in

78

THE McCASKILLS (continued)

Missouri where his father owned a gen
eral store, selling "everything from
needles to plows". His mother, how
ever, was more interested in gardening
than she was in housework and it was
she who nurtured his interest in plants.
To please his father, however, he en
rolled at Anapolis and studied there
for one year. He resigned after the
first year because " I finally figured
out that there was no way that I would
ever be able to grow plants on a battle
ship!"

His first home in the west was in
Altadena, California. He and his wife
worked for the Coolidge Rare Plant
Nursery in nearby Pasadena from about
1925 to 1935, during which time his
son, Jack was born. Vern remembers the
Coolidges with great fondness, saying
that he and his wife were treated more
like a son and daughter than they were
like employees.

Vern recalls a day when Liberty
Hyde Bailey came to the nursery to
visit the Coolidges. Mr. Coolidge in
troduced Vern as "a young man he was
going to make into a plantsman."
Bailey's rejoinder was, "Oh, no you
aren't! He is a born plantsman. You
can't create a plantsman - either they
are or they aren't!" Vern thought,
about this a great deal and decided for
certain that this was the field he
should pursue.

Vern built his present home on Mich-
illinda Avenue Just south of Colorado
Boulevard in 1932. Jack worked in the
adjoining nursery with his father from

the time his father went into business
for himself until Jack started working
at the Arboretum. "Even after I started
working here, I worked a lot with dad.
You know, I've been living at that house
ever since I was a kid, and living there
has been so pleasant that I hate to
think it might end sometime. Our family
was very close. I remember dad always
felt that the name given to a plant
could make it or break it. So when he
was going to introduce a new camelia he
would bring a flower into the house
after dinner and he and mom and I would
sit in the den and try to think of a
name for it. Mom was always good at
making up names. Of the hundred or so
camelias he introduced, mom named almost
all. She would sit there In the den,
look at the flower dad was holding,
and in a little while she would come up
with a name and it would always seem to
fit the flower.

"Dad promised mom that he would re
tire when he got to be 65. He will be
85 next month and now he says he doesn't
remember ever making such a promise.
He's slowing down a bit on the natives
and not planting the thousands of cans
he used to plant each year ; but I guess
he might not even be around any more if
he didn't have something he loves to do
so much."

Which reminds your editor that when
Adele and I went into his yard to tape
this interview, we found Vern up on a
ladder pruning a large shrub alongside
his house. He smiled a welcome to us,
threw down the limb he had just sawed
off, and said, Well, we'd better go in
to the office."

Cultivars named for McCaskills:

Callistemon viminalis cv. McCaskillii
Camellia maliflora cv. Betty McCaskill
Camellia japonica cv. Jack McCaskill
Camellia japonica cv. June McCaskill
Hemerocallis hybrid cv. Billie McCaskill

79

APPENDIX C

^

IN THE HUNTINGTON GARDENS

Observations on Their Culture
and Behavior and Descriptions ofCultivars

VOLUME III

BY WILLIAM HERTRICH

Curator Emeritus, Huntington Botanical Gardens

THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

SAN MARINO, CALIFORNIA
1959

80

CAMELLIA JAPONICA • JUNE MCCASKILL

Flower: semidouble; Phlox Pink 625/2, veins slightly darker; to 9 cm. broad by 5 cm.
high. Buds: elliptic. Calyx: to 4 cm. across, flat, silky; brown outer segments, crisp
brown margins, inner segments silvery green, broad translucent margins; three petal-
oid sepals to 3.5 cm. long by 2.25 cm. wide, petal color, reflexed. Petals: about IS,
narrow obovate, some heavily channeled, fair substance, to 4.5 cm. long by 2.75 cm.
wide, short hafts, apices rounded, margins entire, recurved. Center of flower: few in
complete petals and petaloids carried erect, mixed with a few crimped stamens, white
filaments to 3 cm. long, small yellow anthers. Leaves: elliptic, only slightly cupped,
very dark glossy green, lighter undersurface, heavy texture, 7-10 cm. long by up to
4.5 cm. wide; serration, broad, shallow; apices, mostly short pointed; petioles, fairly
stout, to 1.3 cm. long; venation, noticeable surface, pronounced undersurface. Habit:
upright, spreading, medium growing, midseason.
Source: Seedling originated by McCaskill Gardens, Pasadena, California.

INDEX— June Me Ca skill

81

Addicott, Fred. 70
Allergenic Pollen Survey _of the
San Francisco Bay Area, 18
arboretum. See U. C. Davis arboretum
Arcadia Arboretum, 4, 7. 13, 67
Arctostaphylos, 15, 16
Armstrong, Sue, 66

Bacigalupi, Rimo, 17
Baldwin, Lucky, Estate, 4. 7
Barbour, Michael, 51
Bey, Eleni, 58-60
Bonner, James, 13, 53

California Botanical Society, 21
California Flora, A, 15
California Gardens, Inc., 11
California Native Plant Society, 38
California Natural Diversity Data

Base. 38
California State Department of Food

and Agriculture, 49
Caltech [California Institute of

Technology] , 53-55
camellias. 2. 3. 5. 6. 12, 13
Camellia Society, Southern

California, 13
Carter, Annette, 17, 70
Ceanothus. 15, 16
Cheadle. Vernon. 21. 47. 51
Constance, Lincoln, 71
Cool id ge Rare Plant Gardens. 2
Cooperative Extension Service. See

University of California
Crafts. Alden. 48. 50. 51
Crampton, Beecher. 25
crime control. 39-42
curatorial functions , 27-34

Dabagh, Peg, 5

Davis. See University of

California. Davis
Davis. California. 21, 22
Diplacus. 15
duck salad. 50

Earhart Plant Research Laboratory.
See phytotron

Educating Our Daughters. 20
environmental health and safety

facility. See University of

California. Davis
environmentalists. See rare and

endangered plants
Esau, Katherine, 26, 46-47
Eubank, Lois

farm advisors. See University of
California Cooperative Extension
Service
Friends of the Davis Arboretum, 61.

62. 66

Plant Faire. 62. 63
trips. 66-68
fumigation. 31. 32

Gamble, Cecil, garden, 6, 67
Gankin. Roman. 61
Gifford. Ernest. 39. 40. 51
Golden Gardens. 11
Goulandris Natural History Museum,
58

Greece. 57-60
Grivetti. Louis. 56-60
Growers' s Weed Identification
Handbook. 36. 37

82

Hahn. Jack, 11
Halogeton. 48. 49
Hand. Cadet. 16
Harvey, Bill. 48. 50
hay fever. 18. 19
herbaria. See University of

California. Berkeley, herbarium;

University of California. Davis,

herbarium

Heteranthera limosa. 50
Hildreth. Dick. 61
Hoak. Charlotte. 10. 11
Hollister Stier Laboratories, 19
How ell. Tom 70
Huntington Botanical Gardens. 4, 6,

67
Hypericum. 37

Index Herbariorum, 33
iris, native. 5. 6

Kasapligil, Baki. 18

Kennedy, P.B. , 25

Knight, Irja and Walter. 70

Lamoureux, Charlie. 46

Lang, Anton, 54. 55

Lenz . Lee, 5

Long, Robert. 13

Los Angeles State and County

Arboretum in Arcadia. See

Arcadia Arboretum

Major. Mary, 66

nanzanita. See Arctostaphylos

Mason. David. 17

Mason, Herbert. 17

Mason. Lucile. 9. 17

Mathias. Mildred. 70

McCaskill, Bettylee. 1. 8. 9

McCaskill, Vern Otho (father). 1-7.

12. 13. 53
McCaskill. Jack, 4-6. 13. 67

McCaskill. Billie Lee Nowlin

(mother), 1-5
McCaskill Gardens, 2-4
McClintock. Elizabeth, 70
Mclnnes Memorial Garden, 15
McMinn. Howard. 8, 9. 14-18. 42
Merrill boxes. 27. 31
Merrill. E.D. . 27
Mills College. 8. 9. 14-20
Monochoria, 50
Munz, Philip, 15, 42
Murphy, Terry, 51

New York Botanic Garden, 33
nightshade, 45

Pacific Coast Trees. 14
Pasadena

environment, 12

school system. 7, 8
Pavlick. Bruce. 17
phytotron. 53-55
Pioneers, 61
Plant Faire, 62, 63
plant growth regulators, 55
poison control center, 44. 45
poison hemlock. 43

O^iick, Betty, 62

Ranch o Santa Ana Botanic Garden, 5,

67

rare and endangered plants, 38, 39
Rasa, Engracia Arguelles, 46

Sample. Earle. 9
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, 66
Sessions. Kate. 11
Sharsmith. Helen. 17
Slosson. Elvenia. 11
South African daisies. 15
Spring Wild flowers of the San
Francisco Bay Region, 17

83

Srivastava. Lalit. 46

Stason. Margaret. 8

Stebbins, Ledyard. 70

Stocking. Ralph, 51

Storer Garden, 64

Storer, Ruth Risdon, 64. 65. 69

Storer, Tracy. 64

toxic plants. 36. 37, 43-45, 48,

49, 51
Tucker, John. 9, 21-23. 29. 40.

49-51. 61

Unger, Bob, 7

United States Department of

Agriculture Biological Control
of Weeds Laboratory, 37
University of California, Berkeley
herbarium, 17
UREP (University Research

Expedition Program) , 56-60
University of California Cooperative
Extension Service. 30, 35, 36,
48-50

University of California, Davis
arboretum, 60-65

Botany Department, 22. 50. 51. 71
Environmental Health and Safety

facility. 31
herbarium, 22-52, 72

Webster, Grady, 23. 51, 61
weeds. 29. 30. 36. 37, 45. 48-50
Weier, Elliot. 60
Wells. Kenneth, 44, 51
Went, Fritz. 54, 55
White, Gill. 46
White, Lynn, 20
Wie slander, A.E. , 15, 16
women, education for. 20; in
botany, 71. 72

ANN LAGE

B.A. , University of California, Berkeley, with major
in history, 1963

M.A. , University of California, Berkeley, history, 1965

Post-graduate studies, University of California, Berkeley,
1965-66, American history and education; Junior
College teaching credential, State of California

Chairman, Sierra Club History Committee, 1978-1986; oral
history coordinator, 1974-present

Interviewer/Editor, Regional Oral History Office, in the
fields of conservation and natural resources,
land use, university history, California political
history, 1976-present.