Biography

American botanist at the herbarium of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, California. Steve Boyd is interested in the flora of southern California and has conducted taxonomic work on members of the Brassicaceae, Lamiaceae and Rhamnaceae families. Born and raised in Riverside, California, Boyd has maintained a lifelong interest in nature and natural history. Attending the University of California, Riverside, his choice to pursue a career in botany was highly influenced by his undergraduate, and later graduate, advisor Frank C. Vasek who taught Boyd on the non-majors course "Spring flowers". In 1980 he received a bachelor's degree in biology having also worked as a herbarium assistant at the university (1979-1980). Working as a botanical consultant for Tierra Madre Consultants (1980-1985) he continued his studies and was awarded a master's degree in 1983 with a thesis entitled "A flora of the Gavilan Hills, western Riverside County, California". In 1985 Boyd began to work as a herbarium technician at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and he has remained at this institution ever since, rising through the posts Herbarium Manager (1986-1993) and Herbarium Administrative Curator Herbarium (1993-1999) to become Herbarium Curator in 1999. In 2009 Boyd was named Curator Emeritus and Research Associate.

Having encountered the narrowly endemic Allium munzii (Ownbey and Aase ex Traub) McNeal, as well as a number of other edaphically restricted plants at a Riverside County nature preserve, Boyd developed a particular interest in the flora and phytogeography of southern California. This led to extensive fieldwork in the wildland regions of the southernmost counties of this state (Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego), concentrating particularly on western Riverside County the Santa Ana Mountains region of the Peninsular Ranges, the Liebre and San Gabriel Mountains regions of the Transverse Ranges, and various portions of the Mojave Desert. His fieldwork has been largely floristic in nature, focusing on the vascular plants and in particular studying the relative importance of annual plants to floristic diversity in various habitats of southern California. Highlights in his career include the discovery and description of Ceanothus ophiochilus. S. Boyd, T.S. Ross and Arnseth (Rhamnaceae) and Sibaropsis hammittii S. Boyd and T.S. Ross (Brassicaceae), both narrowly endemic species from Riverside County. Boyd was involved in efforts to secure State and Federal protection for the former of these species, and the latter, a new Brassicaceae genus.

To a lesser degree Boyd has also collected in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Utah as well as in Mexico (in the coastal, desert, and montane areas of Baja California and Baja California Sur and a small amount in Morelos). In 1990 he visited Inner Mongolia, China where he also collected plants. His taxonomic and systematic work has focused on the genera Ceanothus L. (Rhamnaceae), Arabis L., Boechera Á. Löve and D. Löve, and Sibaropsis S. Boyd & T.S. Ross (Brassicaceae), and Lepechinia Willd. (Lamiaceae). Boyd has served on the board of Southern California Botanists in various capacities and is also a member of the California Botanical Society, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the California Native Plant Society. Acting as editor for the Jepson Flora Project of the University of California Berkeley, his publications include "Research needs for conserving California's rare plants" (1995) and "Vascular flora of the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness Area, Cleveland National Forest, California" (1995). Boyd has also been involved in promoting the value of local floristic studies in the training of new botanists, particularly through the support of master's students at Claremont Graduate University, and the species epithet of Monardella boydii A.C. Sanders & Elvin (Lamiaceae) honours his contributions to botany.

Sources:
Personal communication, March 2011.