PELLSTON — The popular book passed around to read last summer along Douglas Lake at the University of Michigan Biological Station features the grand adventures of a pair of scientists who frequented the field station in northern Michigan throughout their careers.
“Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon” by Melissa Sevigny is about two pioneering U-M botanists with close ties to the 10,000-acre research and teaching campus founded in 1909 just south of the Mackinac Bridge.
Drs. Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter took a historic boat trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1938 to record the plants that lived along what was then the most dangerous river in the world.
Sevigny’s book, which won the National Outdoor Book Award for history/biography, traces Clover and Jotter’s 43-day sojourn that powerfully influenced the future of botany, risking their lives for a plant collection just as that area in the American West was starting to be transformed by people.
The book also mentions their years at UMBS in the Midwest, such as Clover’s summer lectures at the Biological Station where she taught systemic botany.
Sevigny, an award-winning science journalist at KNAU (Arizona Public Radio), is now following in Clover’s footsteps by giving a talk in the long-running UMBS tradition.
As part of the 2024 UMBS Summer Lecture Series, the author will visit the campus along Douglas Lake to give a talk 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, at UMBS, located at 9133 Biological Rd. in Pellston, Michigan.
The event, titled “Michigan Botanists Brave the Grand Canyon,” on the Pellston campus is free and open to the public.
While in northern Michigan, Sevigny also will give a free, public talk at the Charlevoix Public Library, about an hour away from UMBS.
UMBS is partnering with Charlevoix Public Library to co-host the event featuring the author 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 4, at Charlevoix Public Library, located at 220 Clinton St. in Charlevoix, Michigan, followed by a reception.
“These are notable events for those of us who live and learn here at the Biological Station. We have great respect for the people who stewarded this special place before us,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of UMBS and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “At UMBS, we’re connected to a history that reaches back 115 years, and these two botanists — two trailblazing women in science — are part of our story.
“We also are proud to partner with the Charlevoix Public Library and welcome to northern Michigan the talented writer who tells the late botanists’ incredible tale of exploration in such a thrilling way. I look forward to Melissa’s talk transporting us back in time.”
Dr. Susan Fawcett, an instructor of the botany course at UMBS and an alumna of both UMBS and U-M, teaches students at the field station in northern Michigan how to identify, collect and catalogue all the plants they came across.
Whether along Douglas Lake or exploring Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, they follow the process of pressing plants between pages, just like Clover and Jotter nearly a century ago.
"One of my favorite things about working at the Biological Station is sharing an experience with a century of faculty, students and researchers,” Fawcett said. “So many of the treasured sites and spectacular biodiversity we take the students to see are in places Elzada Clover visited with her students. There is nothing quite like studying an herbarium specimen to make you feel connected to this rich history of plants, people and places through time. Fortunately, she left us a lot of specimens to study, from the deserts of western North America and northern Michigan.”
According to “A History of the University of Michigan Biological Station, 1909-2009,” Jotter was a botany student at UMBS in 1934. Clover was an associate professor of botany at U-M and an expert on cacti. At the time of the Colorado River exploration in 1938, Jotter was Clover’s graduate student assistant.
Clover and Jotter compiled a comprehensive plant list that included four new cacti species and would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystems.
The collection formed the basis for what is now Matthaei Botanical Garden’s desert house collection in Ann Arbor.
Clover went on to become assistant curator of Matthaei Botanical Gardens in 1957 and professor of botany at U-M from 1960-67.
Dr. Aly Baumgartner, a collection manager of vascular plants at the University of Michigan Herbarium and an alumna of both UMBS and U-M, manages some of the dried and pressed plants collected by Clover and Jotter on their trek. Some of these specimens include holotypes (or the individual specimen on which the description and name of a new species is based) of several cacti.
“Herbarium specimens represent a moment in time: when a particular person was in a particular place and collected a particular plant. In a way, studying these herbarium sheets allows us to travel back to that specific time and place,” Baumgartner said. “Because the specimens are publicly available online, anyone can be a botanical time traveler and follow the expedition through the plants they collected.”
Sevigny, the book’s author, is the science reporter at KNAU (Arizona Public Radio). She has worked as a science communicator in the fields of space exploration, water policy and sustainable agriculture. Her stories have been awarded regional Edward R. Murrow awards and featured nationally on “Science Friday.”
She is the author of three books, most recently “Brave the Wild River” in 2023, as well as “Mythical River” and “Under the Desert Skies.”
Sevigny has a bachelor of science in environmental science from the University of Arizona and an master of fine arts in creative writing from Iowa State University.
“Brave the Wild River” will be available for purchase, by credit card only, at the UMBS gift shop in 2024. The book also is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the Grand Canyon Conservancy.
“Brave the Wild River” was featured in the New York Times and People magazine, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker.
To view the full 2024 UMBS Summer Lecture Series lineup of speakers from across the country, visit the Summer Lecture Series itinerary website.
Founded in 1909, UMBS is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Laboratories and cabins are tucked into more than 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake to support long-term climate research and education.
