Biography

American botanist from California who completed extensive work on Cactaceae and the taxonomy of Ranunculus. Lyman Benson was born and raised on a pear farm in Kelseyville, north of San Francisco. His uncle, whom he greatly admired, was an amateur ornithologist who had served as president of the California Audubon Society and wrote a weekly column on birds for the local paper. In 1926 Benson enrolled in the journalism programme at Stanford, but soon switched to botany, having decided it was a subject that was greatly in need of improvement in its standard of writing. He subsequently received MA (1931) and PhD (1938) degrees from Stanford. His doctoral dissertation, a treatise on the North American Ranunculaceae, was published a decade later in American Midland Naturalist.

All through graduate school Benson taught botany and zoology at Bakersfield Junior College and afterwards he was hired by the University of Arizona as an instructor and botanist. In 1944 he moved to Pomona College as Associate Professor, Chairman of the Botany Department, and Director of the Herbarium, into which he incorporated his personal herbarium of approximately 21,000 specimens. He was concurrently appointed to Claremont Graduate School, where Edward Anderson was one of his PhD students. In 1949 he was promoted to full Professor and in 1974, after his retirement, he was named Professor Emeritus. His books include The Cacti of Arizona (1940), Trees and Shrubs of the Southwestern Deserts (1944, 1954, 1981), Plant Classification (1957, 1979), Plant Taxonomy, Methods and Principles (1962), and The Native Cacti of California (1969).

Benson ceased writing after the death of his wife in 1980. His last publication, the monumental Cacti of the United States and Canada (1982), was the culmination of 48 years of research and won the Henry A.Gleason Award from the Botanical Society of America in 1983. Benson received other prestigious awards from scientific organisations, including the Greater Linneaeus Medal from the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Certificate of Merit from the Botanical Society of America, and the Golden Cactus from the International Organization for Succulent Plant Studies. He was a past president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America (1956-1957) and served on its Board of Directors for many years. Dr Benson collected in northern Mexico, westward from Chihuahua, between 1938 and 1944 when he was on the faculty of the University of Arizona. He is commemorated by the Mexican cactus Opuntia bensonii Sánchez-Mej.

Sources:
L.W. Mitich, 1993, "Lyman Benson (1909-1993)", Cactus and Succulent Journal (U.S.), 65: 289
L.W. Mitich, 1995, "Lyman Benson, Premier Botanist", Cactus and Succulent Journal (U.S.), 67: 131-135.