Remembering A Beloved Botanist

Dr. Leslie Mehrhoff was a keen observer of the natural world, a dedicated scientist and advocate. He was instrumental in the passage of Connecticut’s first state-endangered species legislation back in 1989. And more recently helped shape the first laws to control invasive plants in the state.

 

But when colleagues talk about Mehrhoff, they focus on his sheer love of the outdoors.

 

“Oh, look at over here!”

 

Last April, despite a bad knee, Mehrhoff practically bounced through the woods pointing out wildflowers.

 

“This is Saxifraga virginiensis: small basal leaves, a hairy stock and lots of white flowers, early in the spring. This is exciting. Look at the garter snake! Oh Cool!

 

“Every time he came across what he was looking for he was like a kid in a candy store.”

 

University of Connecticut Biologist Kent Holsinger says this made Mehrhoff a great teacher.

 

“His eyes lit up. This big grin came across his face and you couldn’t help but get excited.”

 

Mehrhoff was an old-time botanist who venerated the scientists who preceded him. In his office at the University of Connecticut, cluttered with plant and animal specimens, Merhoff kept a photograph of the early twentieth century ecologist William Beebe, decked out in torn field trousers. Mehrhoff joked the picture helped rationalize his own attire: often hiking boots fresh from the trail, and a hand lens, at the ready, tucked into his shirt pocket. The time he spent outside gave Mehrhoff an incredible depth of knowledge, says Kent Holsinger.

 

“He not only knew the names and was able to identify every species and variety of plant in New England, he actually seemed to know most of them individually, as individual plants.”

 

UConn Professor Emeritus Greg Anderson hired a young Les Merhoff to be his field assistant nearly 40 years ago. In recent years when one of Anderson’s students needed to know where a certain plant grows and how many there are, he’d go to Les Mehrhoff. 

 

“What  an incredible loss such a sudden death is because Les was a walking repository, perhaps the person who knew the New England flora overall the best. And it’s just lost.”

 

But not all of it. For nearly two decades, until 1995, Mehrhoff coordinated a biological inventory of rare and endangered species at the Department of Environmental Protection.  He then became the curator of the Torre Herbarium at the University of Connecticut. More recently, he directed the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England, where he trained an army of citizens to identify and map invasives, in places like Eagleville Nature Preserve in Mansfield.

 

“You know, this forest has pretty much been taken over by these nonnative species that are out-competing and forcing then native diversity either out of the forest or into situations where it can’t do as well.”

 

Despite the challenges of protecting native ecosystems, Mehrhoff shared a sense of optimism with others, including ecologist Elizabeth Farnsworth of the New England Wildflower Society.

 

“By conveying the sheer happiness of the small victories that he had won, the absolute joy of discovering new plant populations in the wild and just his sheer love of the field, and that’s what he conveyed to everyone.”

 

That’s what he conveyed to me last spring when we talked about wildflowers.

 

“You go from brown and quiet without these things and all of a sudden all your friends are coming back and people have laughed at me for years for referring to these things as friends.”

 

Les Mehrhoff has been a dear friend to the natural world and will be sorely missed.

 

For WNPR I’m Nancy Cohen.

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