Janice Emily Bowers

Janice Emily Bowers (born January 15, 1950 in Upland , California ) is an American botanist , horticulturalist and non-fiction author.

Life

Bowers is the daughter of Melvin Homer and Miriam Berenice Bowers, née Harder. Her father was a psychologist, her mother a librarian. In 1969 she moved from California to Tucson , Arizona . Bowers was married for the first time from 1969 to 1979. From this marriage a daughter was born. She has been married to a professor since January 1990. In 1976 Bowers received her Bachelor of Science degree in botany from the University of Arizona at Tucson. From 1976 to 1982 she was a research assistant and coordinator at the University of Arizona. Since 1982 she has been a hydrological assistant and botanist at the Desert Laboratory of the United States Geological Survey on Tumamoc Hill, Arizona.

Bowers wrote numerous books and guides on natural history, plant life, wildflower identification, and horticulture, in which she is eloquent about the Sonoran Desert . In 1998 she worked with landscape photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Dykinga for her work Dune Country: A Naturalist's Look at the Plant Life of Southwestern Sand Dunes .

Bowers is a member of the Torrey Botanical Society, the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science, and the California Botanical Society.

Works (selection)

• 1986: Seasons of the Wind: A Naturalist's Look at the Plant Life of Southwestern Sand Dunes
• 1987: 100 Roadside Wildflowers of Southwest Woodlands
• 1988: A Sense of Place: The Life and Work of Forrest Shreve
• 1988: Chiricahua National Monument
• 1989: One Hundred Desert Wildflowers of the Southwest
• 1991: The Mountains Next Door
• 1993: Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts
• 1993: A Full Life in a Small Place: And Other Essays from a Desert Garden, 1993; (with Raymond M. Turner and TL Burgess)
• 1995: Sonoran Desert Plants: An Ecological Atlas
• 1997: Fear Falls Away and Other Essays from Hard and Rocky Places
• 1998: Dune Country: A Naturalist's Look at the Plant Life of Southwestern Sand Dunes (photographs by Jack Dykinga )
• 1999: Desert: The Mojave and Death Valley (illustrated by Brian Wignall)
• 1999: Flowers and Shrubs of the Mojave Desert
• 2000: The Desert
• 2003: Frequently Asked Questions About the Saguaro
• 2003: The Changing Mile Revisited (with Robert H. Webb, Raymond M. Turner, and James Rodney Hastings)
• 2004: The Best Spring Ever: Why El Niño Makes the Desert Bloom

literature

• Terri M. Rooney: Contemporary Authors , Volume 162, Gale Research International, 1998. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-78761-997-8
• Lisa Kumar: The Writers Directory 2011. Volume 1: A – L. 26th edition, St. James Press, Gale Cengage Learning, 2010. p. 254. ISBN 978-1-55862-758-1

Web links

• Biography at JSTOR Global Plants
• Literature by and about Janice Emily Bowers in the WorldCat bibliographic database