American naturalist and publisher. 'An inquisitive boy, interested in everything,' noted Charles Parry, the famed explorer of the American West, of Charles Orcutt, who at age 18 not only drove a mule wagon on Parry's botanical expedition to Ensenada in Baja California in 1882, but quickly learned from the explorer how to collect, preserve and catalogue specimens for study. Two years later Orcutt wrote a witty account of the expedition in The West American Scientist, the first of several scientific journals the amateur botanist was to publish in his lifetime.

Born in 1864 on his father's farm in Hartland, Vermont, Orcutt never did go to school but was taught how to read and write by his parents. His mother Eliza Gray was an accomplished poet who wrote poetry and articles for literary magazines. She also shared an interest in plants with her farmer husband, Herman C. Orcutt, who not only grew cash crops but was an horticultural enthusiast who studied professional plant journals and contributed articles for publication.

In 1879 the family moved west to San Diego where Herman set up a horticultural nursery, collecting local plants and trees for nursery stock, but soon exploring for new plants in the region with Orcutt, traveling to Cuyamaca, Soda Springs, Campo and becoming ever excited at finding dozens of plants unfamiliar to them. At this time naturalists were starting to study the Baja California, and Herman and his son were invited to join Parry's 1882 expedition to Ensenada, an opportunity that sealed Orcutt's lifelong interest in collecting.

The Orcutts continued collecting together until 1885 when Charles went off on his own expeditions. By then he had also become interested in shells, which would become his second collecting obsession. Immersing himself in studying the Baja landscape, he made lengthy and detailed notes about plants and the sites he explored. To present his fieldwork, Orcutt, now 20, decided to publish his own nature journal. ' A popular review and record for the Pacific Coast' proclaimed the masthead of the first issue of The West American Scientist, which contained a collection of scientific articles, poems, book reviews and science tidbits from around the world. It was to continue appearing sporadically over the next 35 years.

In 1892 Orcutt was devastated when his father died at age 65, but found a new lease on life when he married Olive Eddy, a young doctor living in Pasadena who was publishing with her sister a magazine entitled Out of Doors for Women. For their honeymoon they made a horseback trip from Pasadena to San Jacinto and on to San Diego, collecting plants along the way. In San Diego they settled in on one of several houses Orcutt built with his brother and over the years had four children.

With Olive supporting the family through her medical practice, Charles continued his collecting expeditions, working mainly alone and away from home for long periods, travelling through Texas and Arizona and when he could afford it into Mexico. Ever short of money, he would often barter or sell parts of his collection in order to continue, and by the end of his collecting career he had the genus Orcuttia Vasey (Poaceae), 15 species of plants and 19 species of molluscs named after him. When his dream of starting his own museum faded, he gifted his ever-growing collection, stored haphazardly in a variety of places, to the San Diego Society of Natural History. By 1927 he was living and collecting in Jamaica, sending off his specimens to museums, especially to the Smithsonian Institution which in 1929 gave him funds to work in Haiti, finally a clear sign of recognition from the scientific establishment. After seven months of work there, now ill and exhausted, he died in Jeremie on August 25, 1929.

Often judged a hopeless eccentric, erratic and careless in his work, ' a librarian's nightmare' for all his field notes, articles and specimens scattered widely, there is no single body of Charles Orcutt's collection in existence. Yet this self-taught and passionate botanist contributed valuable notes and specimens to botanical gardens, museums, universities and scientific societies around the world.