Today Aunt Elsie stepped over the final fence,
dying peacefully at her home in Nashville, Tennessee,
attended by her nephew Patrick and his wife Ann,
as she had wanted.
Arrangements are still in progress.
Perhaps more about the family later.
For now, here is a biography with some pictures.
The Wilson Post wrote 20 April 2011,
Quarterman shares fervor for cedar glades,
…her passion for the plant life of Middle Tennessee’s cedar glades
blooms ever strong through the generations of students she inspired
at Vanderbilt University from the 1940s into the mid-1970s. And those
students, many now teachers themselves, continue to inspire new students
and conservationists….
Continue reading →
Not wanting to miss a chance to pay tribute to my friend, the 103+ year old Dr. Elsie Quarterman, I’m sitting down to reflect on my remembrances of this wonderful woman who befriended me and many other botanical and conservation colleagues. It was the summer of 1976 when I moved to Nashville to join the young staff of the Tennessee Heritage Program as its first botanist. The program, now well established with the State Department of Environment and Conservation, benefited greatly from the prior work of Dr. Quarterman (Elsie) and many of her graduate students at Vanderbilt University who had done vegetation and rare plant studies in the Central Basin of Tennessee.
For help with understanding and conserving the best examples of cedar glades and their many endemic, nearly endemic, or otherwise rare Tennessee plant species, I and other colleagues frequently turned to Elsie and her Continue reading
