Michael R. Canfield

Not every botanist becomes famous. Claude Canfield never lodged botanical specimens in the Smithsonian or any other herbarium. He never held an academic position and didn’t publish any scientific papers. To be honest, he never really became a true botanist. His only scientific claim to fame is that he was my great grandfather, which, admittedly, isn’t really such a claim. However, Claude’s botanical studies and his documentation of them are incredibly valuable to me as I make sense of how I came to study nature, and provide a personal example of the true value of field notes…

Please visit the Smithsonian’s Field Book Project blog to see the rest of this guest blog I wrote about the field notes of my great grandfather…

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