Reid Venable Moran was an American botanist and the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1957 to 1982. Moran was the world authority on the Crassulaceae, a family of succulent plants, and in particular the genus Dudleya, the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation. He named at least 18 plants new to science — some in that family and some not — and published many papers elucidating relationships within the Crassulaceae. As a mark of the respect he earned among his peers, more than a dozen plants have been named for him. Jane Goodall described Moran as "a sort of living myth in botanical exploration in Baja California and the Pacific Islands of Mexico," citing specifically his analysis of the environmental impact of introduced species on the flora of Guadalupe Island.
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California on June 30, 1916 to Edna Louise Venable and Robert Breck Moran, Moran was raised in Pasadena. He received his B. A. from Stanford University in 1939 and his M. S. from Cornell University in 1942. After service as a navigator in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946, Moran received his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A Revision of Dudleya." Moran conducted a botanical survey of the Channel Islands for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and performed taxonomic work for the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden and the Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University before joining the San Diego Museum of Natural History as curator of botany, succeeding Ethel Bailey Higgins in 1957. Moran specialized in the systematics of the Crassulaceae, and in the floristics of the Baja California peninsula. In addition to a large number of technical research papers, Moran published The Flora of Guadalupe Island and the treatment of the Crassulaceae for the Flora of North America. He co-authored The Grasses of Baja California, Mexico in 1981 and The Vascular Flora of Isla Socorro, Mexico in 1989. Among Moran's publications was "Cneoridium dumosum Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles", a paper which comprised, apart from its title and acknowledgements, just five words and a reference number. Moran died on January 21, 2010, in Clearlake, California. .
