Rosalind has worked as a botanist for over 18 years, always focused on native plants – but on the East Coast! Before she moved to California in 2022, she was the lead botanist for Florida State Parks’ Southwest District 4, where she implemented rare plant searches, monitoring, rescues and re-establishment; assisted with the management of invasive plants across 30 parks; wrote the natural resources components of 10-year unit management plans (UMP) for many State Parks (e.g. Highlands Hammock State Park 2018 or Alafia River State Park 2019); initiated and facilitated a five-county Longleaf Restoration Implementation Team, and curated the District’s herbarium and database.

The 2024 season of the Cosumnes River Preserve’s Seeds of Success was the first time she could focus entirely on saving native species that weren’t already endangered. Learning their phenology and collecting their seed has been one of her favorite things to do so far! She loves the Seeds of Success mission. She has always taken a stand for native plants and rejoices that, finally (over 300 years late), we are nationally recognizing the importance of our hardworking native plants and supporting their propagation. And she is enjoying this opportunity to get to know California plants better!

Her botany-specific training has been a combination of great mentoring from other botanists, a lot of self-teaching and field work, and a number of field botany courses, workshops and labs. Her degree is in database management, chosen knowing that good database design and management are essential to good field science, reliable analyses, and useful mapping. Her training has served her well.

The years she spent working with Marie Selby Botanical Garden, The Nature Conservancy and the Florida State Parks system provided her with many acres and days of field work experience. She has worked the “back 400” in Florida Scrub in full sun in the high humidity and high-90s weather and she has trekked through blackwater slough to her thighs (complete with ‘gators and moccasins), often by herself. She looks forward to continuing her field work and project management, this time to further the work of growing our so-essential workhorse and keystone native plants.