The red currant (Ribes sanguineum Pursh) is an attractive currant often used ornamentally. Found on the coast from British Columbia to central California, this shrub is also known from populations in Benewah, Shoshone and Clearwater counties of Idaho.

Curtis Bjork received his Master's degree from Washington State University in botany in 2003, investigating the evolution of mating systems in wild native Trifolium. Curtis is primarily a regional botanist, with extensive knowledge of the flora of the scablands of Central Washington, the Palouse Prairie and woodlands of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, and the Snake River Canyon system. He is also unmatched in his enthusiasm and knowledge for the often intricate ecological relationships found in the Northwest, in particular those of seasonal wetlands, lichen communities and grasslands. Curtis's current projects include describing various new plant and lichen taxa, researching the ecology of hair lichens as they relate to caribou forage in interior British Columbia, the Flora of Idaho checklist and co-authoring a publication on the lichens of subalpine forests of British Columbia.

  Ron Hartman is the current curator of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, which, at just fewer than 700,000 specimens, contains the largest representation of Rocky Mountain plants and fungi in existence. Dr. Hartman’s research interests include the systematics of western North American Apiaceae, Asteraceae and Caryophyllaceae, the floristics and biogeography of Wyoming, and the flora of the Rocky Mountains. At the University of Wyoming, Ron instructs in plant taxonomy, phylogeny and biosystematics courses, cladistic analyses, and herbarium curatorial techniques.

Larry Hufford has been the Director of the Marion Ownbey Herbarium at Washington State University since 1993. He has been especially interested in the use of the Ownbey Herbarium in educational outreach. Dr. Hufford's research emphasizes phylogeny reconstruction to resolve taxonomic problems and modes of evolutionary diversification.

The Marion Ownbey Herbarium, founded in the 1890s, houses nearly 350,000 collections, and includes significant collections from Charles Piper, William Cusick, Wilhelm Suksdorf, Harold St. John, Doug and Pam Soltis and their students, Joy Mastroguiseppe and, of course, Marion Ownbey.

Dr. John Little, Sycamore Environmental Consultants

Dr. John Little holds a B.S. degree in Botany from the University of Utah, a Masters in Biology from California State University Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in Botany from the Claremont Graduate School.  His M.A. thesis was a flora of a 4,000-acre Audubon Sanctuary in Orange County, CA.  His dissertation involved a study of floral mimicry between two desert annuals, Mohavea confertiflora (Scrophulariaceae) and Mentzelia involucrata (Loasaceae). 

He has coauthored / edited three books, Dictionary of Botany (1980), Handbook of Experimental Pollination Biology (1983), and An Eighty-year Index to Madroño (1916-1996), a West American Journal of Botany (2002).  He served as President of the California Botanical Society from 1997-2000 and has been a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley since 1986.

His research interests include Viola, pollination biology, and floristics.  He contributed the Violaceae family treatment for the Jepson Manual (1993), the Violaceae family treatment for the Vascular Plants of Arizona (2001), and recently completed the Violaceae family treatment for the San Juan Basin Flora (2005).  He is currently working on Violaceae treatments for the Flora of North America (with Landon McKinney), and the update of the Jepson Manual.

As a consulting botanist for over 25 years, he has prepared over a thousand reports involving botanical, wildlife, and wetlands resources in nine western states.  He formed Sycamore Environmental Consultants in Sacramento, CA in 1991 and currently oversees a staff of 11 botanists, wildlife biologists, and support personnel.

Dr. Richard J. Naskali, now retired, taught botany and advised students in the UI Department of Biological Sciences from 1967 to 1987. In 1987, Dr. Naskali undertook the initiation and development of the 63 acre UI arboretum and botanical garden, which now houses over 5,000 trees and shrubs, 80 dedicated trees, 60 dedicated groves, a xeriscape garden and several endemic Palouse species.  R.J., as his friends call him, is also a passionate student and collector of botanical art, traveling around the world to view, learn about and collect works of botanical art. In the fall of 2003, R.J. was responsible for bringing over 100 selected works from the Hunt Institute’s 10^th International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration to the Prichard Art Gallery. Dr. Naskali includes among his prized personal collections an 1837 folio album of watercolors from Singapore.