The University of North Carolina Herbarium
(NCU) has catalogued about a dozen specimens collected by Don Stone. However, in the course of his research, he
frequently consulted NCU’s specimens, and hundreds of specimens of Carya and Juglans in our
collection were annotated by him.
+++++
Don
Stone.
Image courtesy of Duke
University
Biology Department website
Anon. 2011.
Obituary: Donald E. Stone
1930-2011. Flora of North America
Newsletter 25(1): 15.
Donald Eugene Stone died from a short bout
with cancer on Friday, March 4, 2011, in Durham, North Carolina. Don was born on December 10, 1930, and grew
up in Eureka, California. Don did his
undergraduate work at Humboldt State College and the University of California
at Berkeley. He remained at Berkeley and
was awarded his Ph.D. in Botany in 1957.
Subsequently, he taught at Tulane University for six years. In 1963, he joined the Botany Department at
Duke University and taught at Duke for the remainder of his career. In 1969-70, Don took a one-year leave of
absence to serve as the Associate Program Director in Systematic Biology at
NSF [National Science Foundation].
In 1976, while teaching full-time at Duke, he
began shepherding the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) as its
Executive Director, expanding the consortium from 20 to more than 60
universities, colleges, museums, and research institutions. During this period he enhanced the
Organization's field-based graduate courses and created an on-the-ground
training program for policy makers.
Most importantly, he strengthened OTS's three biological field
stations in Costa Rica, La Selva, Las Cruces, and
Palo Verde, as major research centers, and, in particular, established the La
Selva station as one of the most important sites in
the world for research in tropical biology.
In the early 1980s, under Don's guidance, OTS took a leadership role,
along with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the World
Wildlife Fund, and The Nature Conservancy, in establishing a protected,
47,000-hectare, forested corridor from the Braulio
Carrillo National Park, located in the central highlands of Costa Rica, to La
Selva, more than 35 miles away in the Caribbean
lowlands. As s result of these
efforts, in 1985 OTS was the first organization to be awarded the John and
Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
When Don retired from OTS in 1996, he served
as the chair of the Botany Department at Duke for three years. In 2000, he joined the OTS Board of
Visitors, which he formed in 1992, and from 2003 to 2005 he served in a
volunteer capacity as OTS's Interim Executive Director during an 18-month
search for the current CEO.
Don's own research interest centered on the systematics and evolution of temperate and tropical
plants using biochemistry, cytotaxonomy, comparative
anatomy, and comparative morphology in the walnut family (Juglandaceae),
and pollen development in the ginger family (Zingiberales). In addition to many other publications, he
contributed Juglandaceae to the floras of
Mesoamerica, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and China as well as Juglans and Carya to the Flora of North
America, Volume 3. Memorial
contributions may be sent to OTS, Box 90633, Durham, NC 27708-0633.
+++++++
Don Stone is survived by his spouse, Beverly
Stone.
SELECTED
PUBLICATIONS
Stone, Donald E. (1961) Ploidal level and stomatal size
in the American hickories. Brittonia 13(3):
293-302.
----- (1962) Affinities of a Mexican endemic, Carya palmeri,
with American and Asian hickories.
American Journal of Botany 49(3):
199-212.
----- (1963) Pollen size in hickories (Carya). Brittonia
15(3): 208-214.
----- (1964) New chromosome counts for two
species of hickory (Carya).
Brittonia 16 (2): 230.
Stone, Donald E., George A. Adrouny and Salpi Adrouny (1965)
Morphological and chemical evidence on the hybrid nature of bitter
pecan, Carya
x Lecontei. Brittonia
17(2): 97-106.
Stone, Donald E. (1968) New World Juglandaceae: A new species of Alfaroa from Mexico. American Journal of Botany 55(4): 477-484.
Stone, Donald E., George A. Adrouny and Robert H. Flake (1969) New World Juglandaceae,
II. Hickory nut oils, phonetic
similarities, and evolutionary implications in the genus Carya. Am. J. Bot. 56(8): 928-935.
Stone, Donald E. (1970) Evolution of cotyledonary
and nodal vasculature in the Juglandaceae. Am. J. Bot. 57(10): 1219-1225.
----- (1972) New World Juglandaceae,
III. A new perspective of the tropical
members with winged fruits. Annals of
the Missouri Botanical Garden 59(2):
297-322.
----- (1973) Patterns in the Evolution of Amentiferous Fruits.
Brittonia 25 (4): 371-384.
Kress, W. John, Donald E. Stone and Susan
C. Sellers (1978) Ultrastructure of exine-less
pollen: Heliconia (Heliconiaceae). Am. J. Botany 65(10): 1064-1076.
Stone, Donald E, Susan C. Sellers and W.
John Kress (1979)
Ontogeny of exineless pollen in Heliconia, a banana relative. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden
66(4): 701-730.
----- (1981) Ontogenetic and evolutionary
implications of a neotenous exine
in Tapeinochilos
(Zingiberales:
Costaceae) pollen. Am. J. Botany 68(1): 49-63.
Kress, W. John and Donald E. Stone (1983) Morphology and phylogenetic significance of exine-less
pollen of Heliconia
(Heliconiaceae).
Systematic Botany 8(2):
149-167.
James W. Hardin and Donald E. Stone (1984) Atlas of foliar
surface features in woody plants, VI. Carya (Juglandaceae) of North America. Brittonia
36(2): 140-153.
Kress, W. John and Donald E. Stone (1993) Morphology and
flora biology of Phenakospermum
(Strelitziaceae), an arborescent
herb of the Neotropics. Biotropica
25(3): 290-300.
Manos, Paul S. and Donald E. Stone (2001) Evolution,
phylogeny, and systematics of the Juglandaceae.
Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 88(2): 231-269.
Manos, P.S., P.S. Solits,
D.E. Soltis, S.R. Mancheser,
S.-H. Oh, C.D. Bell, D. L. Dilcher and D. E. Stone
(2007) Phylogeny of extant and extinct
Juglandaceae inferred from the integration of
molecular and morphological data sets.
Systemtic Biology 56: 1-19.
_______________________________________________________________________________
