A Tribute to Alice Eastwood 
15 
California Botanical Club, whose activities she directed ever 
after. But she had no thought of permanent severance from the 
Colorado scene. 
She wanted to write, at home, and continue to spend her sum¬ 
mers in the mountains, going on exciting expeditions and col¬ 
lecting rare botanical specimens for her own herbarium. An 
exploratory trip through a little-known section of the Great 
American Desert was next on schedule. The winter she would 
divide between her family, her students, and her writing. A full- 
length book was nearing completion, after years of preparation. 
This she finally published at her own expense, calling it “Pop¬ 
ular Flora of Denver, Colorado.” She lost a good deal of money 
on the venture, knowing nothing of promotional methods, and 
so enraged her father that he burned a large pile of unsold copies 
which were cluttering up their small home. 
Perhaps for consolation, his oldest daughter then joined a 
Philosophy seminar presided over by a Unitarian minister and 
meeting in the living-room of the Denver Librarian, John Cotton 
Dana. Presently, as a commission, she arranged a botanical port¬ 
folio of local plants for the Public Library. From time to time she 
sent presents to her friends in San Francisco, including five rare 
birds’ eggs and two nests, as well as carefully mounted herbarium 
specimens. 
- At summer’s end in ’92, Katharine Brandegee wrote offering 
Alice Eastwood her own salary of $75 a month if she would re¬ 
turn to the California Academy of Sciences as Joint-Curator of 
Botany. She added that her husband’s resources now made it pos¬ 
sible for them both to work there without pay. The prospect of 
