E. Lucy Braun (1889-1971): Ohio's Foremost Woman Botanist: Her Studies of Prairies and Their Phytogeographical Relationships

To create this book, Ronald L. Stuckey combined biographical information on the life and work of Dr. E. Lucy Braun with her studies of the prairie and other herbaceous flora of south central and southwestern Ohio. Braun is referred to by Stuckey as "Ohio's Foremost Woman Botanist." She was a most respected colleague, indefatigable worker, and original thinker in the fields of plant ecology, vascular plant floristics, plant geography, and plant conservation leading to the establishment of nature preserves.
The book is organized in three parts. Part I is the biographical portion and consists of a reprint of Stuckey's 1973 paper on E. Lucy Braun that appeared in The Michigan Botanist. As an introduction to that contribution, he selected the abridged article "Memories of E. Lucy Braun" by Lucile Durrell, published in the Proceedings of the Sixth North American Prairie Conference held in 1981.
Part II contains five journal papers written by Braun on the topics of prairies in unglaciated Adams County, Ohio, the phytogeographical relationships of the prairie plants, and the geographical affinities of other floristic elements of both unglaciated south central Ohio and the Illinoian Till Plain of glaciated southwestern Ohio.
Part III is labeled "Notes on Prairie Preserves in Adams County, Ohio," and is comprised of the reprinting of four guide booklets written on these prairies. These accounts contain information on the historical acquisition, geological setting, general ecology, names of plants, descriptions of trails, and a map of each preserve.
A section on "Remembering E. Lucy Braun," written in 2001, 30 years after her death, is a recollection of how Dr. Edward G. Voss and Ronald L. Stuckey came to know of her. This section is placed at the front of the book and also features several photographs of Lucy and her sister Annette at different ages in their lives.