Delzie Demaree (1889-1987) was an American botanist whose name is synonymous with the flora of Arkansas and the southeastern United States. Demaree began his career as a plant physiologist, focusing on water relations in trees, but in later years became an avid specimen collector. Over his seven decade career, Demaree collected over 70,000 vascular plant specimens, including several new to science. Remarkably, Demaree did all his collecting while riding a Trailways or Greyhound bus, as he gave up driving right before leaving for Europe and the First World War in 1917 (he was a decorated US Marine). Demaree is thought to have traveled more than 200,000 miles by bus, pulling the yellow cord to exit whenever he noticed an interesting site to botanize. He would press specimens in the field (often making up to 20 duplicates) and then wait by the road for the next passing bus. As he was often dropped off far from civilization, Demaree’s labels usually recorded the nearest Post Office as a reference for his collecting sites. Demaree was still collecting specimens well into his 90s! In August 1937, Demaree got off the bus near the Arkadelphia, Arkansas, Post Office to collect a tall, white-flowered annual butterfly plant (genus Gaura in the Onagraceae or Evening-primrose family). True to their name, butterfly plants attract leipidopterans (butterflies or moths) to their slightly irregular, 4-petaled flowers. The specimen collected by Demaree was later determined to be an undescribed species endemic to southwestern Arkansas. Peter Raven and D.P. Gregory of the Missouri Botanical Garden named the plant Gaura demareei in 1973. In the late 2000s, Warren Wagner and Peter Hoch from the Smithsonian Institution reassessed genera in the Evening-primrose family using modern molecular and cladistic methods and determined that many genera, including Gaura, nested within the widespread genus Oenothera. As a result, the species was renamed Oenothera demareei in 2007. – Walter Fertig 20 January 2026
