Geraldine Watson (deceased)

Region: Coastal Plain

Topics: Botany, Forestry, Science, Big Thicket


Mrs. Watson was a self-trained botanist who lives near Silsbee, in southeast Texas. She made many contributions to protecting the Big Thicket, from her efforts in identifying and collecting plants for the University of Texas and the National Park Service, which went far to document the great biodiversity of the Thicket, to her political efforts with the Big Thicket Association to advocate for a federal preserve, to her work restoring a portion of the Thicket on her own land, near Warren.  In 2003, the University of North Texas Press released her book, Reflections on the Neches:  A Naturalist's Odyssey Along the Big Thicket's Snow River, and three years later published the third edition of her guide, Big Thicket Plant Ecology: An Introduction.

Interviewed

October 12, 1999
Warren, Texas
Reels 2056 and 2057