There have been many great bryologists. Here we will publish stories and memories about some of these. We will start this series with Nancy Slack.
Nancy Slack
1930-2022
Nancy Slack spent her professional career teaching at Russell Sage College.
She was a botanist, bryophyte ecologist, and later added botanical history to her research interests.
Nancy Slack in London, 2013
From Janice Glime:
Nancy and I met at a meeting of the American Bryological Society. It was one of the many meetings held at a university, and the organizers facilitated finding roommates for us. I was fortunate that they put Nancy and me together. We were bryophyte ecologists while American and Canadian bryologists were still struggling with determining the North American flora. We were pioneers. I had recently finished my Ph.D. and Nancy was finishing hers. It was a wonderful opportunity to have discussions about our mutual interests. We became lifelong friends, and after that whenever Nancy came to the meetings without her husband, Glen, we shared a room. For some unknown reason, whenever I shared a room with Nancy at a conference, the air conditioner didn’t work! We both preferred a cool room.
Nancy was my great supporter throughout my career, and I found that she spent much time at meetings encouraging young bryologists, bringing them along to meals, introducing them to other bryologists, and generally making them feel they were part of the professional group.
Nancy made every minute count. She seemed to have an endless supply of energy. Shortly before her death on 21 December 2022 she was planning fieldwork on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, for the next summer, but she said it would probably be her last year of research there. In less than a week she was gone.
She was known for hosting bryologists in her home. She invited me to do a stream bryophyte study in the Adirondacks and hosted me at her home before and after the trip. I know that other bryologists enjoyed similar hospitality.
From Noris Salazar Allen:
I do not recall where I first met Nancy for the first time, maybe in Alberta while doing my Ph.D. She has always been very supportive throughout my career and with my students who were lucky to share with her a field trip she did to Panama. She has an incredible energy and always kept a diary of her travels. She used to send me her interesting books autographed.
She was my roommate in the field trip to Malaysia after the symposium. She was the only one who did not get sick with fever and stomach problems though she ate the same as everyone else. Her spirit and energy were remarkable and chatting with her until late at night was so rewarding. I invited her to come to Panama to see our forest. She said she would, and sure enough she came. In our way to the field, we stopped in a small restaurant along the road that served our typical Panamanian breakfast. She tried it and was delighted. Afterwards, we spent a whole day botanizing in El Copé cloud forest, part of the Atlantic Biological Corredor of Panama. It was drizzling all day, but she was so enthusiastic looking at the bryophytes and at the animals of the park encouraging the students who came with us. We also gave her a tour to Panama City before leaving. Once I visited her at her home and spent an enjoyable lunch with her late husband talking about everything from physics to botany and many other themes. Every time I met her at a bryological meeting she was very cheerful, asking about my research and supportive. Although she invited me to the Adirondacks, I could never make that trip. She used to write to us every Xmas and I looked forward to her letters. I miss her, an inspiring bryologist, teacher, and a very good friend.
From Dale Vitt:
I first met Nancy at the University of Michigan Biological Station in 1969. She had come to the station to learn bryophytes from Howard Crum. Howard taught the bryophyte and lichen courses there for a decade or two. At the time, Howard was writing his book ‘Mosses of the Great Lakes Forests’. Also at the station during the summers of 1968-1969 was Norton Miller, along with visits from Lewis Anderson and Wolfgang Maass. It was during these times of long afternoons and evenings at the microscope and days in the field with Howard, Andy, and Norton that I learned bryophytes. Nancy tagged along trying to keep up with the taxonomy, but in hind-sight Norton, Howard, and I teased her daily – but she never wavered and it was then Nancy and I became life-long friends. Spurred on by Howard I think, we all had a particular interest in Sphagnum and that led me down the path of peatland ecology. The next summer Howard was again scheduled to teach his courses at the station, but illness prevented him from doing so, and I was asked to replace him, so in 1970 my wife and two young sons spent the summer at the station. Nancy again was there and together we began our first peatland ecology study – doing quantitatively what Howard had observed during many previous years. Nancy was very good at the vascular plants and we spent the summer surveying fens of the area. We learned together the beginnings of multi-variate analyses and in 1975 our first joint paper was published (Vitt and Slack 1975).
Back in Alberta, I personally was more and more intrigued by fens and bogs and how these wetlands were so dominated by bryophytes. I asked Nancy if she would like to do some more vegetation surveys and in 1976, she joined me and a new student, Diana Horton, for the month of August. During her visit to Alberta we first worked in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains surveying the vegetation and chemistry of extreme-rich fens and then traveled northward to the subarctic and studied permafrost-dominated bogs in the Caribou Mountains of northern Alberta – where she met, with a close encounter, her first woodland caribou. During this time I learned that Nancy has much more energy than I do, and can go non-stop from five in the morning (when she woke me in the tent by turning pages as she read waiting for everyone else to wake up) to late at night identifying plants by firelight. We published the results of these field campaigns in 1979-1980 (Horton et al. 1979; Slack et al. 1980).
During this time, both Nancy and I became interested in bryophyte niches and how to define better the microhabitats where species of bryophytes occurred. In 1981, I was asked to teach a field course in bryophytes at the University of Minnesota Itasca Biological Station. Having read Eville Gorham’s and Paul Glaser’s work on the Red Lake peatland in northern Minnesota, Nancy and I thought this would be a great opportunity to study the habitats of Sphagnum and in August of that year, supported by NSERC, we rented a helicopter and spent much of August visiting Sphagnum-rich habitats in the Red Lake Peatland. Here I learned that despite Nancy having much shorter legs than I, she could still move from hummock to hummock much faster than I. We published this work in 1984 (Vitt and Slack 1984). Nancy was a great contributor to all of these papers. Her writing skills were excellent and she could synthesize results amazingly well. One drawback – remembering the days when writing was done by pen and paper, anyone who has received one of Nancy’s hand-written Christmas cards with very small writing – first in lines across the card, and then wedged around all four edges in script that could make one go blind, the same was true of her manuscript writing.
After the early 1980’s we both moved on to other topics – Nancy working with Claire Schmitt on bryophytes and lichens on trees in the eastern part of the continent, and with Janice Glime on stream bryophytes. But over the years, Nancy and I would spend time together in Jamaica, and at various ABLS meetings. We attended the International Botanical Congress in Berlin (together with her husband Glenn and my wife Sandi) – it was there that on the subway Nancy (sometimes a little disorganized) left her purse with passport, money, and credit cards. After determining that without speaking German we could report it to the police, Nancy and I took the subway and reported it to the local police. Luckily, the next morning the purse was turned into the police (without money, but with the passport!).
Nancy was a wonderful friend and great colleague. Her boundless energy, always helpful attitude, and knowledge of all-things ecological will always be remembered. I will miss her.
Dale H. Vitt, School of Biological Sciences, Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, email: dvitt@siu.edu
Nancy Slack in Nestow, Alberta, Canada in 1976.
References
Vitt, DH and NG Slack. 1975. An analysis of the vegetation of Sphagnum-dominated kettle-hole bogs in relation to environmental gradients. Canadian Journal of Botany 53: 332-359.
Horton, DG, DH Vitt, and NG Slack. 1979. Habitats of circumboreal-subarctic Sphagna. I. A quantitative analysis and review of species in the Caribou Mountains, northern Alberta. Canadian Journal of Botany 57: 2283-2317.
Slack NG, DH Vitt, and DG Horton. 1980. Vegetation gradients of minerotrophically rich fens in western Alberta. Canadian Journal of Botany 58: 330-350.
Vitt, DH and NG Slack. 1984. Niche diversification of Sphagnum, relative to environmental factors in northern Minnesota peatlands. Canadian Journal of Botany 62: 1409-1430.
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Anastasija Lavrentievna Abramova
1915-2012
Anastasija Lavrentievna Abramova was a famous Russian and Soviet bryologist. All her scientific activities were connected with the Komarov Botanical Institute, Leningrad / St.-Petersburg, with works on the flora, taxonomy, and geography of bryophytes.
A.L. Abramova was born in St.-Petersburg, on October 26, 1915, into a worker’s family. From 1933 she had to work as a draftswoman at a factory, but in parallel to that job she received her education at the workers’ faculty of Leningrad State University (now the Saint-Petersburg State University). In 1934 at the same university, she entered the biological faculty. She chose the Department of Higher Plant Morphology and Systematics; Dr. N.A. Bush, the highly esteemed professor, became her first mentor in botany1. A.L.’s first paper that was published in 1938 involved the study of Festuca varia (Poaceae). However, from 1937 her research interest shifted in favor of bryology. She graduated from Leningrad State University with an honours degree and later became a postgraduate student.
During her postgraduate studies, A.L. married fellow student Ivan Ivanovich Abramov. Their family alliance was a very successful one for their future professional growth, as from then on, all major research was performed by them as a team. During the Great Patriotic War A.L., along with her daughter, were evacuated to Chrepovets, and then to Bashkiria. After the war A.L. was able to move back to Leningrad to continue her postgraduate research, and in 1947 she defended her dissertation – on the monographic studies of the moss families Meesiaceae and Catoscopiaceae of the USSR. The work was supervised by the University Professor A. A. Korchagin, with advisory assistance from Professor L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya, the leading expert in bryology from the Botanical Institute. In 1946, A.L. Abramova became a staff member of the Department of Cryptogams at the Botanical Institute where she worked until she officially retired in1979. ¹’²
In the 1950s, A.L. actively participated in the project “Flora Plantarum cryptogamarum URSS”. Treatments of the orders Schistostegales and Tetraphidales were published by her in the 2nd volume of the “Flora” in 1954; she also prepared original drawings for the Polytrichales for the 3rd volume.
Regional floristic research had always been an essential part of the Abramovs’ activity. Their publications on bryophyte floras of the Caucasus, Russian Arctic, and Mongolian People’s Republic summarized their scrupulous treatments of extensive collections from these regions. The Abramovs also clarified the problem of high endemism of the bryophyte flora of the Russian Far East, based on a detailed revision of herbarium materials. Also, together with I.I. Abramov, A.L. contributed to the study of fossil mosses.
The Abramovs’ rich experience and comprehensive knowledge in the field of bryology were shared with the wide Soviet audience in popular science multi-volume editions such as “The Plant Life”, published in the 1970s, where all the latest achievements of bryology at that time had been considered2. Bryology colleagues from all around the former USSR came to the Komarov Botanical Institute for consultations with the Abramovs.
A.L. Abramova was a talented and prolific bryophyte illustrator, which was another brilliant aspect of her professional life. Her papers on moss taxonomy (e.g., on genera Leptopterigynandrum, Helodium, Heterocladium, Neckeradelphus, etc.), as well as her monographs and handbooks were always supplemented with meticulous drawings. A fundamental, richly illustrated work such as the “Handbook of the mosses of the Arctic of the USSR” (Abramova, Savich-Lyubitskaya, Smirnova 1961) still serve as a valuable reference book for bryologists today.
A.L. Abramova spent much of her time working on herbarium collections of the Komarov Botanical Institute. She participated in the publication of several issues of “Hepaticae et Musci URSS exsiccati” and in specimen exchange with leading world herbaria.
A.L. Abaramova’s contribution to moss taxonomy was highly appreciated by foreign bryologists, and she was elected to serve on the Committee for moss taxonomy at the XII International Botanical Congress (1975) in Leningrad, USSR (now St.-Petersburg, Russia)2.
After retirement A.L. kept working actively on her research. After I.I. Abramov’s death in 1990, she decided to focus on his unfinished manuscript on the mosses of Karelia, which had been started by him in cooperation with L.A. Volkova. A.L. felt it her duty to accomplish this goal and publish this book, having provided it with her original illustrations, and by revising and editing its final version – “Handbook of the mosses of Karelia” (1998).
Throughout all her life A.L. Abramova was an example of self-sacrificing service to science and in particular to bryology. Two moss species, Entosthodon abramovae Fedosov & Ignatova (2010) (Funariaceae)3 and Didymodon abramovae Ignatova & Fedosov (2024) (Pottiaceae)4 were named in honor of Anastasija Lavrentievna Abramova.
References
1Afonina, O.M. & L.I. Abramova. 2005. Anastasija Lavrentievna Abramova (on 90th birthday). Bot. Journal 90 (12): 1929-1939.
2Anonymous. 2012. In memory of Anastasija Lavrentievna Abramova (1915-2012). Obituary. Arctoa 21: 273-274.
3Fedosov V.E., E.A. Ignatova, M.S. Ignatov & G.Ya. Doroshina. 2010. On the genus Entosthodon (Funariaceae, Musci) in the Caucasus. Arctoa 19: 75-86.
4Ignatova E.A., V.E. Fedosov, O.I. Kuznetsova, A.V. Fedorova & M.S. Ignatov. 2024. On the genus Didymodons. str. (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta) in Russia. Arctoa 33: 129-155.
Y.I. Kosovich-Anderson
My gratitude goes to O.M. Afonina for sharing the photographs of A.L. Abramova.
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Zoya Nikolaevna Smirnova
1898-1979
Zoya Nikolaevna Smirnova was a renowned Soviet bryologist and geobotanist. She was born in Saint-Petersburg, on February 7, 1898, to the family of a shipyard employee.
In 1913, Z.N. received her comprehensive education from the Women’s Gymnasium in Saint-Petersburg, which she graduated from with a silver medal. Being a person of many interests, she decided later to advance her education in the same Gymnasium by taking extra courses in cosmography, logics, law, political economy, psychology, teaching methodology, and Latin language (in addition to German and French languages). In 1914, Z.N. became a student of the Women’s Pedagogical Institute and after her graduation she started teaching geography and natural sciences at school. In the 1920s, she was hired as an Assistant Professor by the Department of Plant Systematics and Morphology in Leningrad Agricultural Institute, later combining it with a job as a Research Associate at the Laboratory of Plant Morphology and Systematics in the Institute of Natural Sciences at Petergof, near Leningrad. In this lab, a highly erudite Professor N.A. Bush organized a group of promising scholars led by distinguished and experienced botanists, like V.N. Sukachev, I.D. Bogdanovskaya-Gienef, V.G.Tranzschel and others; the creative atmosphere of the team contributed greatly to Z.N.’s education. Vascular plant flora of the North-Western portion of Russia and geobotanical studies of meadow plant associations were among her first projects. Parallel with this, she was tasked to identify mosses that were brought by her colleagues from expeditions, under the supervision of the bryology consultant L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya, who later would become her closest ally and colleague in bryological studies. Field research by Z.N. in forests and bogs of the Leningrad Oblast resulted in geobotanical publications with surprisingly accurate and detailed characterizations of the moss component of the explored communities, remarkable for the 1920s. In her subsequent expeditions across the country – to Ural Mts. and northern tundra areas (Kolguev Island) – methods of the Soviet geobotanical school were successfully applied, and her knowledge of bryophytes as well as lichens was essentially advanced. The Tables of Lichens of the Tundra Zone of the USSR were later published by her, based on this experience. In the late 1930s, Z.N. was hired as a lecturer in telmatology (peatland science) in the Leningrad Peat Industrial and Technical School, and then in the Leningrad Zootechnical Institute. In 1936, she received a degree in biological science, based on the totality of her work.
At the time of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) Z.N. Smirnova struggled a lot. Her husband died during the siege of Leningrad, after she was evacuated to Vologodskaya Oblast together with her three kids. There she had to work teaching at a school. Then they moved to Kostroma, where she found a job as an inspector of the Central Statistics Agency. During the next three years, Z.N. provided exceptional, dedicated work as a caregiver at a local orphanage, for which she was later awarded with the medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”.
In August 1945 Z.N. returned to Leningrad by personal request of L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya, the head of the Laboratory of Bryology of the Department of Spore Plants at the Botanical Institute. Z.N. was invited to start her doctorate research on the systematics of the genus Drepanocladus. Thus, from 1945 bryology became her main specialization. For three summers (1946-1949) she worked in the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden in Khibiny on the topic of her dissertation. This period of her personal life was also full of hardships. Professional and personal support was provided by many colleagues, especially by L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya, I.D. Bogdanovskaya-Gienef and R.N. Shlyakov. In March 1954, Z.N. defended her dissertation – a worldwide monograph of the genus Drepanocladus, and she received a full-time position as a Senior Research Associate of the Department of Spore Plants at the Botanical Institute.
As her first scientific area of expertise was geobotany, during her career Z.N. taught geobotanists to identify mosses and lichens. In 1962 she published her “Forage Lichens of the Far North of the USSR (a short key)”. She participated in creating handbooks of mosses of specific Russian regions (Arctic), or special systematic groups (Sphagnum) – not only for bryologists, but also for biologists of different disciplines. Z.N. worked on exsiccates of mosses of many regions of the country, which are still in use as reference herbaria. Innovative directions of her research in 1959-1972 were cooperative works with L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya on mosses of Antarctica. With the same co-authorship three theoretical articles on the species concept in bryophytes were also published. Z.N. made a major contribution to the study of the bryoflora of the Ural Mts. and Yakutia.
Z.N. supported active collegial contacts with bryologists from all across the former USSR (e.g. V.Ya. Ardeeva/Cherdantseva, L.V. Bardunov, E.M. Bradis, A.F. Bachurina, K.O. Ulychna, G.F. Rykovsky, A.A. Abolin’, U.K. Mamatkulov). Her knowledge of foreign languages allowed her to communicate with colleagues from abroad (J. Duda, R. Grolle, B. Szafran, S. Lisowski, H. Persson, E. Nyholm, K. Holmen, T. Koponen, J. Dickson, E. Loge, T.C. Frye, A.Y. Sharp, L.E. Anderson, W.C. Steere, Z. Iwatsuki, H. Ando and others).
Z.N. Smirnova published about 70 works; among the most significant publications are: “Genus Drepanocladus (C. Muell.) Roth (monographic study)”, Diss. Doct. Biol. Science (1954, 1469 pp.!), “Handbook of the mosses of the Arctic of the USSR” (1961, co-auth. A.L. Abramova & L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya ), “Manual of Sphagnum mosses of the USSR” (1968, co-auth. L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya), and “Handbook of the mosses of the USSR. Acrocarpous mosses” (1970, co-auth. Savich-Lyubitskaya).
Throughout her life Zoya Nikolaevna Smirnova set an outstanding example of service to science and society. She was an internationally recognized scientist and a woman of indomitable spirit and perseverance.
The text of this biography was created by Y.I. Kosovich-Anderson who sourced her information from:
Katenin, A.E. In memory of Zoya Nikolaevna Smirnova, 1898-1979. 2002. Arctoa 11: 399-408. (in Russian)
We appreciate the help of O.M. Afonina who provided this publication with a rare archive photo.
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Lidiya Ivanovna Savich-Lyubitskaya
/ Savicz-Lyubitskaja
1886-1982
(pdf of Russian version of this biography)
Lidiya Ivanovna Savich-Lyubitskaya was an outstanding Soviet botanist, professor, and the founder of the Russian bryological school1, 2.
L.I. was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate of Russian Empire (modern day Daugavpils, Latvia), on October 24 1886, to the family of a teacher. After graduating from the Minsk Gymnasium, she was teaching in a Girl’s Junior Pre-Gymnasium and Boy’s 6th-grade School. In 1908, L.I. became a student of the Higher Women’s Natural Sciences Courses of M.A. Lokhvitskaya-Skalon, St.-Petersburg, which she graduated from in 1917. This institution played a key role in the development of women’s scientific education in early 20th century Russia, and was notable for employing distinguished professors, including future academicians. In 1908 L.I. also obtained a job at the Department of Lower Spore Plants of the Botanical Garden of Peter the Great (presently the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) as a lab assistant in the Kamchatka scientific expedition. In 1912, on V.L. Komarov’s recommendation, L.I. was invited by Professor V.G. Tranzschel to the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences to do research on mosses. After a year, L.I. started working as a bryologist in the Botanical Garden, and all her further life and scientific activity would be connected to these two institutions, which were subsequently combined into the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences2, 3, 4.
L.I.’s interest in bryophyte studies was also an inspiration to her students. Disseminating new knowledge and engaging a new generation of researchers, in 1925, L.I. in collaboration with V.P. Savich organized a Bryology and Lichenology Club, in which I.D. Bogdanovskaya-Gienef, A.A. Korchagin, Z.N. Smirnova and other future famous Russian botanists, were involved2.
In 1934, as a leading bryology expert, L.I. obtained a doctor of biological sciences degree, based on the totality of her works. Awarded by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, the degree was conferred without the public defense of a dissertation. In 1938, she was appointed to head the bryological sector of the Department of Spore Plants at the Botanical Institute4.
L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya is rightfully considered to be the first professional Russian bryologist2, 3. Her contribution to the development of the national sciences embraces almost all range of topics concerning bryophyte studies – from flora to physiology, biochemistry to practical uses. A colossal amount of work has been done by L.I. on floristic inventory of mosses in many regions of the Soviet Union, with personal participation in field expeditions – across North Caucasus, Karelia, Crimea, Central Russia, Kola Peninsula (Russian Arctic) and others. The appearance of a bryological sector of the Department of Spore Plants in the Botanical Institute, led by L.I., laid the foundation for the creation of one of the world’s largest collections of bryophytes in the Herbarium of the Komarov Botanical Institute (LE), presently totaling over 300,000 specimens of mosses, liverworts and hornworts from all around the world.
During the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) L.I. actively cooperated with Soviet physicians, having begun studying the prospects of using Sphagnum moss for dressing wounds. As a result these methods have been widely used in hospitals1, 2, 3,5.
The treatment of multiple collections resulted in the publication of comprehensive manuals and handbooks. The most fundamental works known by L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya are two volumes of “Flora of Spore Plants of the USSR” (1952 & 1954), “Handbook of the mosses of the Arctic of the USSR” (1961, co-auth. A.L. Abramova & Z.N. Smirnova), “Manual of Sphagnum mosses of the USSR” (1968, co-auth. Z.N. Smirnova), and “Handbook of the mosses of the USSR. Acrocarpous mosses” (1970, co-auth. Z.N. Smirnova).
L.I. curated exsiccatae series of bryophytes “Hepaticae et Musci URSS exsiccati”, which facilitated duplicate specimens exchange with foreign colleagues. She officially retired in 1963, but long after that she still actively worked as a bryology consultant. Her last paper was published at the age of 901, 4. She subsequently worked on her autobiography, the manuscript of which is presently kept in the library of the Laboratory of Lichenology and Bryology of the Komarov Botanical Institute.
L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya is considered a successor of Professor A. A. Elenkin, the founder of a Russian school of cryptogamic botany, but a plethora of specialists in the field of bryology grew up under L.I.’s leadership, including world-known scientists: Z.N. Smirnova, I.V. Dylevskaya, R.N. Shlyakov, L.V. Bardunov, V. Ya. Ardeeva/ Cherdantseva and others.
Two moss genera were named in honor of L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya: Lidiaea Laz. (Pottiaceae) and Saviczia Abramova & I.I. Abramov (Plagiotheciaceae), and two moss species: Bryum savicziae Schljak. (Bryaceae) and the fossil Echinodium savicziae Abramova & I.I. Abramov (Echinodiaceae)2, 4, 6.
For outstanding service to the state and science, L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals “For the Defence of Leningrad” and “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”. 2, 3
References
1Lidiya Savich-Lyubitskaya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidiya_Savich-Lyubitskaya
2Bardunov, L.V., A.F. Bachurina & R.N. Schlyakov. 1985. In memory of Lidia Ivanovna Savich-Lyubitskaya]. Bot.journal 20 (2): 278-283.
3Abramova, A.L. & Z.N. Smirnova. 1956. L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya: On 70th birthday. Bot.journal. 41 (10): 1555-1564.
4Afonina O.M. 2026, Feb 3-4. Pers. comm.
5Abramov, I.I. 1989. 70th anniversary of Soviet bryology. In the book: Problems of Bryology in the USSR. L.: Nauka, pp. 3-5.
6Tropicos. 2026. Tropicos.org. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO. Website: www.tropicos.org [accessed 6 February 2026].
Y.I. Kosovich-Anderson
My gratitude is extended to O.M. Afonina who shared rare photographs of L.I. Savich-Lyubitskaya for this publication and contributed to the text.