Arthur Cronquist, a senior scientist at the New York Botanical Garden who developed an evolutionary classification system for flowering plants that has become a standard in the field, died March 22. Cronquist died of a heart attack at the Brigham Young University Herbarium in Provo, Utah, while working on a compendium of flora of the intermountain United States. He was 73 years old.
Cronquist's classification method, known as the "Cronquist system," incorporates information on plant chemistry, the fossil record, and physical characteristics. It has been adopted internationally. He was the author of the Manual of Vascular Plants of the Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada (2d ed., Scientific Publications, New York Botanical Garden, 1991). Dubbed "The Green Bible," the work is a comprehensive catalog of flowering plants and ferns indigenous to the region, on which many popular field guides are based. He was considered an international expert on the sunflower...
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