Flora was His Interest and Prime Course of Study: A Botanical Career for W.E. Ricker Disappears |
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Authors: | Karl E Ricker |
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Institution: | (1) Karl E. Ricker, 3253 Archibald Way, V0N 1B3 Whistler, BC, Canada |
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Abstract: | Synopsis Bill Ricker’s career went through many twists in his academic years. He had taken botany in his senior matriculation year
at high school and he had collected over 100 species of flora before commencement of university life. At the conclusion of
his first university year, he set out over the summer to collect a much larger sample of species, primarily from the Great
Lakes-St. Lawrence ecoregion, to fulfil a requirement for a second year botany course (spermatophytes). He identified about
390 species, and some 254 were collected and pooled with those from previous years to make a final submission of 354 spermatophyte
species. Field plant identification continued in each academic year thereafter, in concert with collections and identifications
of aquatic invertebrates in his summer projects while under the employment of the Ontario Fisheries Research Laboratory. At
the conclusion of his undergraduate years, Bill had taken more courses in botany than in zoology, and it was the summer employment
that had really prepared him for postgraduate work in fisheries biology, which was ecologically oriented. When Bill left Ontario
in the autumn of 1931 he had identified over 600 species of plants, excluding lower cryptogams, but including many aquatic
species of higher plants. In western North America Bill’s botanical career began at Cultus Lake in 1931. He again studied
all aspects of the basin while employed with the federal government, and from the work he assembled a Ph.D. thesis. At the
time of thesis completion he had identified over 300 species of flora, including alpine plants at timberline, 1500 – 1800 m
above lake level, and planktonic algae in its water column. In 1939, after more field fisheries work in the Fraser River basin
of British Columbia, Bill accepted a position with the biological staff at Indiana University. In this period which concluded
in 1950 he identified another 50 – 110 species of flora, all in the Carolinian ecoregion, and hitherto not seen by him. Considering
all floral classes, Bill’s eastern North American repertoire had by then added up to 791 species, representative of more than
112 families of plants. Returning west for the remainder of his life, new identifications elsewhere added to his Cultus Lake
list which slowly added up to about 1000 species for the west coastal region of North America. Flora was also identified elsewhere
in the mid-continental region of North America, in Eurasia where the Abisko region of Lappland was a highlight, and in South
America and New Zealand. Records of his botanical prowess, were kept primarily in his diaries, which began in 1923 and were
maintained consistently to the end of 1934, and thereafter intermittently to 1949. The diaries reveal that his career as a
budding botanist was subtly hijacked by a wily Professor W.H.K. Harkness in the rival Biology Department who out-manoeuvred
Drs. R.B. Thompson and R.A. Sifton in the Botany Department. The former always managed to employ Bill in summer and keep him
occupied in the department’s labs during the autumn and winter and spring, tying up any free time when the botanist had approached
him on lab work. Certainly, the botany courses taken and which he excelled at were more appropriate for his aquatic ecological
pursuits. Salesmanship won the day for the zoologists, but Bill was a life-long botanist regardless of whatever else he studied
or managed throughout his professional career. The last days of his life had a botanical conclusion. |
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Keywords: | plants botany ecology |
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