Mason had recently begun studying the unique flora found on serpentine soils in California. under the supervision of Herbert Mason, with Hans Jenny and G.

I had the occasion to spend a week at a conference in Japan with Art in 1989 he could still speak the language AND remembered the plants he had seen there even though it had been over 40 years since he had left Japan.Īfter the war, he returned to California to start grad school again, this time at Berkeley. To the very end of his life, Art was proud of his mastery of Japanese.

He spent the rest of the war years and a year of postwar occupation, translating Japanese documents and interpreting interrogations of captured Japanese prisoners. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Art enlisted in the Navy and was recruited into their language program, where he learned Japanese. He began grad school in 1941 at Stanford, where he spent the previous summer as a field assistant for the famous botanical research team of Jens Clausen, David Keck, and William Heisey (Clausen, Keck, and Heisey rolls off the tongue of most botanists the way Tinker, Evers, and Chance does baseball aficionados).ĭue to forces beyond his control, graduate study would have to wait.

He grew up in California and was imbued with all things botanical from an early age his family owned a publishing house called Kruckeberg Press, which published gardening and horticultural publications. Art left a legacy as a scholar, teacher, promoter of gardening with native plants, and conservation activist.Īrt joined the Botany Department as an Assistant Professor in 1950 after completing his Ph.D. Art Kruckeberg, Emeritus Professor of Botany, died yesterday at age 96.

The Ecology Book by D.K. Publishing