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We have not targeted plant ecologists, so this is a very minimal list. We include here only those scientists who published a significant number of articles on plant ecology (in the journals we have been indexing). All botanists are amateur ecologists, and all ecologists are amateur botanists (both categories have exceptions). |
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1911 - 1963 
Paul Allen Paul H. Allen was an American orchidologist and plant ecologist who collected extensively in Panama in cooperation with the Missouri Botanical Garden, and who collected wild and cultivated bananas in the western Pacific for United Fruit Co. as part of a large breeding project. |
1933 - 2008 
Fakhri Bazzaz Fakhri Al-Bazzaz was an Iraqi-American plant ecologist and educator who specialized in succession of plant communities. |
1914 - 1998 
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Noel Beadle Noel Beadle was an Australian plant ecologist on the faculty of University of New England, Armidale, Australia. Beadle had collected across New South Wales after finishing college, and worked with the Soil Conservation Service, NSW, publishing the Vegetation Map of Western New South Wales in 1948. His book The Vegetation of Australia was published in 1981. |
1910 - 1997 
William Billings William Dwight Billings was an American plant physiologist and ecologist, with special interest in desert and arctic ecology. |
1922 - 2012 
Frederick Bormann F. Herbert Bormann was an American plant ecologist on the faculty of Yale University. He was the co-discoverer of the phenomenon of acid rain (with Gene Likens and Noye Munroe Johnson). |
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1889 - 1971 
Emma Braun Lucy Braun, an American botanist, is considered to have been one of most important plant ecologists of the 20th century and was an expert on the physiography of the deciduous forests of the eastern U.S. |
1884 - 1980 
Josias Braun-Blanquet Josias Braun-Blanquet was an important Swiss plant geographer (phytogeographer) and plant ecologist most famous for his system for classifying plant associations/vegetation types, and for his development of sampling methods for ecological studies. |
1879 - 1943 
Aimo Cajander Aimo Cajander was a Finnish botanist and professor of forestry who became Prime Minister of Finland (for the first time) in 1922. |
1891 - 1969 
Jens Clausen Jens Clausen was a Danish-American botanist who, in collaboration with David Keck and William Hiesey, established the concept of ecotypes, that "climatic races" are adapted by heredity to grow in specific environments, rather than environment-induced changes in growth form somehow affecting genetic makeup. |
1874 - 1945 
Frederic Clements Frederic Clements was an American plant ecologist and educator known for his extensive pioneering work on vegetation and plant succession in eastern North America. |
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1874 - 1971 
Edith Clements Edith S. Clements was an American botanist, plant ecologist and illustrator and the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska. She was the spouse of plant ecologist Frederic Clements. |
1894 - 1988 
Walter Cottam Walter P. Cottam was an American educator, ecologist, and early conservationist who co-founded the Nature Conservancy. |
1869 - 1939 
Henry Cowles Henry Chandler Cowles was a prominent American plant ecologist and plant geographer during the first half of the 20th Century. |
1913 - 1961 
John Curtis John T. Curtis was an American plant ecologist and orchid specialist who is remembered for is his 1959 publication The Vegetation of Wisconsin: An Ordination of Plant Communities as well as for his collaboration with J. Roger Bray in developing numerical ecological measures, namely the Bray-Curtis ordination and Bray-Curtis dissimilarity. |
1909 - 1995 
Rexford F. Daubenmire Rexford Daubenmire was an American plant ecologist on the faculty at University of Idaho and later at Washington State University. His 1946 textbook Plants and Environment, a Textbook of Plant Autecology became a standard reference and was published in several editions. |
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- 2011 
Joan G. Ehrenfeld Joan G. Ehrenfield was an American plant ecologist who spent 35 years as a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey |
1852 - 1935 
Charles Flahault Charles Flahault was a French pioneer of phytogeography and forest ecology on the faculty of Universite de Montpellier, who founded the Institut de Botanique, and is credited for coining the term "releve" in plant community sampling. |
1908 - 1993 
Francis Fosberg Francis R. Fosberg was an American plant taxonomist, ecologist, and collector on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, who was best known for his work on plants of Pacific islands. |
1894 - 1952 
Ray C. Friesner Ray C. Friesner was an American plant ecologist, plant taxonomist and physiological ecologist. He was especially interested in plant growth in forest environments |
1882 - 1975 
Henry Gleason Henry Allen Gleason was an American ecologist, botanist, and taxonomist whose ideas about vegetational succession put him at odds with the orthodoxy of that time. |
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1935 - 2021 
John Grime John Philip Grime was an English plant ecologist on the faculty of University of Sheffield, credited with integrating plant ecology with evolutionary biology and the earth sciences. |
1941 - 2007 
Bruce Haines Bruce Lee Haines was an American botanist and ecosystems ecologist on the faculty of University of Georgia. |
1874 - 1932 
Harvey Hall Harvey M. Hall was an American botanist and ecologist whose work on plant adaptation, genetics, and phylogeny led to his assembling the famous experimental team of Keck, Hiesey, and Clausen at Stanford University. |
1890 - 1962
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Herbert Hanson Herbert C. Hanson was an American plant ecologist and plant geographer associated with The Catholic University of America. |
1878 - 1966 
Roland Harper Roland Harper was an American plant ecologist, economic botanist and systematist who was primarily employed in survey work (mostly in the southeastern United States) for various agencies and institutions. |
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1903 - 1998 
William Hiesey William Hiesey was an American botanist who, in collaboration with David Keck and Jens Clausen, established the concept of ecotypes, that "climatic races" are adapted by heredity to grow in specific environments, rather than environment-induced changes in growth form somehow affecting genetic makeup. |
1904 - 2002 
Robert Humphrey Robert R. Humphrey was an American zoologist and plant ecologist, known as a pioneer in fire ecology and controlled burning to maintain ecosystems and rangelands in the American west. |
1959 - 2023 
David Hunt David M. Hunt was a plant systematist and conservationist who specialized in the oak genus Quercus. A native of Framingham, Massachusetts, he earned his Bachelor's degree at Cornell University in 1981 and Ph.D. at University of Georgia in 1990. He settled in Grafton, New York, where he was a leading authority on the surrounding Rensselaer Plateau, serving to protect rare plants and habitats, and worked as an ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and New York Natural Heritage Program for many years. |
1903 - 1995 
David D. Keck David Keck was an American botanist who, in collaboration with William Hiesey and Jens Clausen, established the concept of ecotypes, that "climatic races" are adapted by heredity to grow in specific environments, rather than environment-induced changes in growth form somehow affecting genetic makeup. |
1925 - 2021 
Jean Langenheim Jean Langenheim was a renowned plant ecologist and mentor to young women in academia whose expertise in plant resins developed over years of research in chemical ecology, ethnobotany and geologic history in ecosystems around the world. |
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1887 - 1948 
Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold was an American ecologist, forester, conservationist and author, probably best known for his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac. He was influential in the environmental movement of the 20th Century, an advocate of environmental ethics and of science-based wildlife management. |
1907 - 1999 
Alton Lindsey Al Lindsey was a professor of ecology at Purdue University who had interrupted his graduate studies in botany at Cornell University to serve as vertebrate biologist on an expedition to the Antarctic with Admiral Richard Byrd. After finishing his degree, he spent subsequent summers as a ranger at Glacier National Park and at Mount Rainier, experiences which are said to have influenced his interest in vegetation and landscape ecology. |
1865 - 1958 
Daniel MacDougal Daniel Trembly MacDougal was an American plant physiological ecologist and experimentalist who served as laboratory director at the New York Botanical Garden and for the the Carnegie Institution of Washington. |
1951 - 2007 
Wilfried Morawetz Wilfried Morawetz was an Austrian plant ecologist, plant geographer, and cytogeneticist on the faculty of Universitaet Leipzig, where he was also director of the herbarium and the botanical garden. He worked extensively in the tropics and was the first to employ a "canopy crane" in South America (Venezuela) to explore forest canopy. |
1909 - 1997 
Cornelius Muller Cornelius H. Muller was an American plant taxonomist and ecologist who studied allelopathic interactions between species, as well as evolutionary relationships among oaks. |
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1887 - 1973 
Theodore Osborn Theodore Osborn was an English plant ecologist and expert in the vegetation of Australia, especially of coastal environments. He established what is today known as the T.G.B. Osborn Vegetation Reserve, Koonamore (South Australia), where agricultural grazing is excluded. |
1886 - 1955 
John Potzger John E. Potzger was an American piano teacher and Lutheran youth leader in Indiana who, in his forties, changed course and became a palynologist and ecologist on the faculty of Butler University, where he developed new methodologies for collecting pollen from lake and bog sediments. |
1929 - 2017 
Michael Proctor Michael Charles Faraday Proctor PhD>/b> was an English plant ecologist, bryologist, and pollination biologist on the faculty of University of Exeter. |
1910 - 2014 
Elsie Quarterman Elsie Quarterman was an American plant ecologist who described the plant communities of the Tennessee cedar glades and rediscovered the Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea tennesseensis, thought to be extinct. |
1870 - 1942 
Francis Ramaley Francis Ramaley was an American plant ecologist and plant geographer on the faculty of University of Colorado. He is best known for his vegetation studies in the montane regions of Colorado, as well as of sandhill environments. |
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1901 - 1995 
Hugh Raup Hugh Miller Raup was a plant ecologist on the staff of the Arnold Arboretum, and professor at Harvard University. His ecological work involved the Mackenzie Basin, the Canadian Northwest Territories, and the Alcan Highway area (Alaska), among other sites. |
1871 - 1948 
Thekla Resvoll Thekla Resvoll was a Norwegian botanist, plant ecologist, and conservationist, also known for her work in the suffrage movement in Norway. |
1872 - 1961 
George Rigg George Burton Rigg was an American ecologist and botany professor who studied sphagnum bogs in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the United States and Canada. |
1936 - 2013 
Richard Root Dick Root was an ecologist, entomologist and professor at Cornell University who originated the concept of ecological guilds through his doctoral work and was noted for his studies of the plant-insect interactions of goldenrod. |
1886 - 1978 
Edward Salisbury Edward J. Salisbury was an English botanist and ecologist, who from 1943-1956 served as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. |
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1855 - 1939 
Carl Schroeter Carl Joseph Schroeter was a Swiss botanist and plant ecologist who coined the terms "autecology" and "synecology." |
1891 - 1990 
Paul Sears Paul B. Sears was an American plant ecologist and palynologist, regarded as a pioneer in the study of fossil pollen to inform knowledge of past climate in the United States. |
1877 - 1968 
Victor Shelford Victor E. Shelford was an American ecologist, zoologist, and conservationist who published much on vegetational succession, and in 1913 published Animal Communities in Temperate America. Shelford was the first president of the Ecological Society of America. |
1874 - 1972 
Laetitia Snow Laetitia Snow was an American professor of botany at Wellesley College who shared an interest in aquatic plants with Karl M. Wiegand at Cornell University, whom she consulted for her study of the Delaware coast. |
1871 - 1955 
Arthur Tansley Sir Arthur Tansley was an English plant ecologist and systematist, who in 1935 introduced the concept of ecosystems into biology (though the word "ecosystem" was actually coined by Arthur Roy Clapham). |
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1885 - 1964 
Benjamin Tharp Benjamin Carroll Tharp was an American botanist, plant ecologist, and educator at University of Texas, Austin, who helped settle the boundary dispute between Texas and Oklahoma by showing, using vegetational evidence, that the Red River channel was not migrating as some had claimed. |
1865 - 1932 
James Toumey James William Tourney was an American botanist and forester on the faculty of Yale University, who helped establish the Yale School of Forestry. Previously he had served as superintendent of tree planting, USDA Division of Forestry. |
1875 - 1960 
Edgar Transeau Edgar N. Transeau was an American phycologist and bog ecologist on the faculty of Ohio State University. |
1841 - 1924 
Johannes Warming Eugenius Warming was a Danish botanist considered the primary founder of the field of ecology, having taught the first university course on the subject and published the first textbook on plant ecology, Plantesamfund, in 1895. He also presented important observations about vegetation and the diversity of tropical forests. |
1884 - 1966 
John Weaver John Ernest Weaver was an American agrostologist and prairie/grasslands ecologist who studied North American grassland ecosystems. |
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1920 - 1980 
Robert Whittaker Robert H. Whittaker was an American plant ecologist who devised the "Whittaker Biome Classification," was the first to propose the five kingdom classification of life, and pioneered the use of radioactive tracers in ecosystem studies. |
1879 - 1970
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Albert Wright Albert Hazen Wright was a herpetologist, ecologist, botanist, and historian who studied at Cornell for his undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D., and later returned as a zoology professor and Bailey Hortorium board member. |