Edwin Blake Payson (born Norwood, Colorado, [1] February 18, 1893; died Denver, Colorado, May 15, 1927) [2] was an American botanist.
Payson was the son of Amon R. Payson (1859–1938), a cattle rancher and one of the founders of Naturita, Colorado. Payson's mother Sarah Payson (1869–1893) died about a month after his birth.
Payson went to Montrose High School in Montrose [3] and then attended the University of Wyoming where he received a B.A. in 1917.
Following graduation he entered the military, where he served in the 89th Infantry Division. [4] He trained at Camp Funston, then returned to Laramie for his marriage to Louise Butler, a fellow botany student. [5] After the end of World War I, Payson was an instructor at the American Expeditionary Forces University at Beaune, France. Payson returned to the United States in May of 1919.
He was a teaching fellow at the Washington University in St. Louis school of botany and earned a M.A. (1920) and a PhD (1921) there. [6]
Payson then became an associate professor of botany at the University of Wyoming, where he was a protégé of former college president and botany department founder Dr. Aven Nelson. In 1926 he was raised to full professor. Unfortunately he suffered a partial paralysis of his left arm in 1926, underwent gall bladder surgery in 1927, and died shortly afterwards of heart failure. [7]
Shortly before his death Payson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to "continue evolutionary and taxonomic studies of flowering plants of the families Cruciferae and Ranunculaceae with special emphasis on the question of generic phylogenies; the genera Draba and Aquilegia are to be studied in detail, mainly at Kew Gardens, London". [8]
Payson described and named many species, and a number were named in his honor following his "untimely end", as The American Botanist called it. [9] The genus Paysonia (a part of the former genus Lesquerella which Payson studied) and the species Cryptantha paysonii, Dryopetalon paysonii, and Astragalus paysonii are named in his honor.
The standard author abbreviation Payson is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. [10]
Payson married Louise "Lois" Elizabeth Butler (1895–1970), a botanist, librarian, and plant collector. [11] She was a niece of Laramie sheriff N. K. Boswell. [12] Payson and his wife are buried in neighboring plots in Greenhill Cemetery in Laramie, Wyoming.
The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming, United States. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming's location is written into the state's constitution. The university also offers outreach education in communities throughout Wyoming and online.
Aquilegia coerulea, the Colorado columbine, Rocky Mountain columbine, or blue columbine, is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to the Rocky Mountains and some of the surrounding states of the western United States. It is the state flower of Colorado. The Latin specific name coerulea means "sky blue".
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Johnstonella is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Boraginaceae.
Oreocarya is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. There are about 63 species and its native range extends from western and central Canada, through western United States to north Mexico. It is part of subtribe of Amsinckiinae.
Eremocarya is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. There are two species and its native range extends through the western United States and Texas to northwestern Mexico. It is part of subtribe of Amsinckiinae.
Greeneocharis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. There are two species, and it has a disjunct distribution in the western United States and northwestern Mexico in North America and western Argentina in southern South America. It is part of subtribe of Amsinckiinae.
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