彩民宝典

Banner image: William Weber, a professor emeritus at 彩民宝典, has received three lifetime achievement awards for his research on lichens and mosses. (Credit:听AC Violet, 彩民宝典 Libraries)

William Weber claims a unique honor at his retirement community in Boulder: In the garden behind this complex is a species of lichen named after him.听

Weber, who will turn 100 in November, is a botanist and a professor emeritus at 彩民宝典. His namesake lichen, Lecanora weberi, grows on a rock in the community鈥檚 memorial garden. It鈥檚 a seafoam-colored species with specks of orange.

The lichen is one of about 30 species named after Weber, who joined the 彩民宝典 faculty in 1946鈥攆irst as a lecturer in biology and then as a curator in the Museum of Natural History. These 鈥渆ponyms鈥� include Saussurea weberi, a rare plant with purple flowers from Colorado, and Metzgeria weberi, a liverwort from New Guinea.

They鈥檙e a testament to Weber鈥檚 decades of work spent scouring Colorado and far-flung locales, such as New Guinea and the Gal谩pagos Islands, to find new flowering plants, mosses and lichens.听

Another testament to the almost-centenarian鈥檚 career are the three lifetime achievement awards in botany that he received this summer. They include the Acharius Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Lichenology from the . The medal is the highest honor a scientist can receive for studying these strange organisms鈥攊n which fungi and single-celled algae or cyanobacteria work together to grow and thrive. 听

Erin Tripp, the current curator of botany at the Museum of Natural History, said that the awards are a well-deserved recognition for a decades-spanning career. Weber founded the museum鈥檚 herbarium collection, which today includes roughly 600,000 specimens鈥攔anging from colorful lilies to forest mushrooms.

鈥淭here are very few human beings that have had the kind of expertise that he has鈥攏ot just in flowering plants, but in mosses and lichens, too,鈥� said Tripp, also an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. 鈥淗e鈥檚 done everything.鈥�

Weber, however, hasn鈥檛 let the honors go to his head. 鈥淚 take these things in stride,鈥� he said.

Colorado to the Galapagos

He鈥檚 had plenty of time to practice. The scientist was 5-years-old when his cousin, a naturalist himself, gave Weber his first microscope.

鈥淚 knew how to grow paramecium and amoebas, and I was spouting Latin names when I was this little tiny thing,鈥� Weber said from an easy chair in his Boulder apartment.听

As a child growing up in Manhattan, he rubbed shoulders with some of New York City鈥檚 most prominent naturalists. Famed botanist Elizabeth Gertrude Britton personally ejected Weber from a public garden after he tried to steal a leaf from a skunk cabbage for show-and-tell at his school. 听

He never lost that excitement for the natural world, said Tim Hogan, collections manager of botany at the Museum of Natural History.听

鈥淗e always had this little boy enthusiasm about plants,鈥� said Hogan, who worked with Weber at the university. 鈥淗e would tell you, 鈥楥ome here and look at this.鈥欌��

Still, when Weber arrived at 彩民宝典, it was no place for an avid botanist. The university鈥檚 plant holdings at that time included fewer than 50,000 specimens. He convinced the then director of the museum to begin a real herbarium, which for years occupied half of an attic on campus, and set about collecting. 听

鈥淚 began to make a manuscript of the plants of the Flatirons, for example, then Boulder, County, then the state of Colorado and so on,鈥� he said.

Weber covered a lot of ground before he retired from 彩民宝典 in 1990. The scientist studied and collected flowering plants, mosses and lichens from every continent except Africa. He spent a year in Sweden, searched for plants in the mountains of Nepal听and was the first researcher to make an exhaustive study of the lichens of the Gal谩pagos. As a result, researchers from around the world now turn to the 彩民宝典 herbarium to study the evolution and ecology of plants and other organisms, Tripp said.听

鈥淥ur strength is Colorado, but for Dr. Weber, the herbarium was only meaningful when put into a global context because plants and fungi get around the world,鈥� she said. The current team at the 彩民宝典 herbarium includes Tripp, Hogan and Dina Clark, also a collections manager of botany.听

Today, Weber is fond of sharing stories about his globe-trotting adventures and his turn as Boris Kolenkhov, a Russian dancing master, in a local production of the play You Can鈥檛 Take It with You. In May, he also 听using his walker, which carried a sign reading 鈥�100 years young. Still going strong.鈥�

From plants to lichens

In addition to the Acharius Medal, which was awarded in July, Weber was the first-ever recipient in August of two honors from the . They were the Chicita Culberson Award for Lifetime Achievement in Lichenology and the Elizabeth Britton Award for Lifetime Achievement in Bryology鈥攏amed after the same Elizabeth Britton who once kicked a young Weber out of a garden in New York.

Weber said what he鈥檚 most proud of about 彩民宝典鈥檚 herbarium collection鈥攚hich like that lichen in his backyard, is now named after him鈥攊sn鈥檛 its size but its diversity.听

More than 40 percent of the specimens in the Museum of Natural History鈥檚 collection are mosses and lichens. They include Colorado species like the pale-footed horsehair lichen (Bryoria fuscescens), which grows like a ponytail on tree branches, and the powdered sunshine lichen (Vulpicida pinastri), which looks a bit like a small head of cabbage.听

Casual hikers might not take note of these growths, but Weber said that lichen lineages are likely hundreds of millions of years old. By studying where and how lichens grow, scientists can learn a lot about how continents and life moved across the globe.听

鈥淚 am proud of the fact that, unlike most herbaria that are [made up of] flowering plants, we have an excellent collection of fungi, lichens, algae,鈥� Weber said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what I鈥檓 very proud to leave behind.鈥�