Greg De Nevers

Greg grew up in the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais, near San Francisco. He received a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Education from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. His passion for botany began when he wandered through a field of Fremont’s star lilies in bloom. He keyed out his first plant (sun cups, Camissonia ovata) at the tender age of 21 using Munz’ A California Flora. Greg spent 14 years working for the California Academy of Sciences as Resident Biologist at Pepperwood, the Academy's 3,000 acre nature preserve in Sonoma County, CA. Greg then worked for five years as Resident Biologist at Audubon Canyon Ranch's Bolinas Lagoon Preserve in Marin County, CA. Greg has written floras of Pepperwood; the Kingston Range, an isolated mountain range in the eastern Mojave Desert; and the Comarca of San Blas in Panama, during a three-year period working for the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution. Greg has been fortunate to participate in botanical collecting expeditions throughout central America, Columbia, Peru, the Galapagos Islands, and Madagascar and is a specialist in tropical palms. When his family moved to Portland, OR in 2002 he shifted gears and became a writer (The California Naturalist Handbook), then a high school science teacher. He taught high school in the Portland area, and for three years in Cairo, Egypt. After his teaching career Greg was an agroforestry volunteer with the Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa. Greg is currently the Happy Camp/Oak Knoll District Botanist for the Klamath National Forest, stationed in Happy Camp, CA. His dearest hope for the next phase of his life is to see condors circling overhead while basking in a hot spring. In his spare time he loves exploring, river rafting, gardening, and doing tai chi.