From The Davis Enterprise November 25

From The Davis Enterprise
November 25, 2005

Brinley Plaque goes to plant booster
By Crystal Ross O'Hara/Enterprise staff writer

Kate Mawdsley is excited by the array of wonderful plant life she sees in the world around her and she wants you to be, too.

She also has been a volunteer for more than 30 years with Phi Beta Kappa, the national arts and sciences honorary society.

Her love of nature is so intense, she volunteers her time extensively to plant-related organizations. Her efforts have benefited the UC Davis Arboretum, the UCD Center for Plant Diversity, the Botanical Conservatory, the UC Natural Reserve System and especially the Jepson Prairie Preserve, the Putah Creek Council, the Yolo County Grasslands Park, the Explorit Science Center, Duck Days and the Davis Botanical Society, of which she was a founding member.

Botanical volunteer Kate Mawdsley is the Brinley Plaque winner.
Greg Rihl/Enterprise photo

Her countless hours of enthusiastic volunteering have earned Mawdsley this year's A.G. Brinley Plaque.

Sponsored by the city of Davis, the award will be presented, along with the C.A. Covell Trophy, at the Davis Chamber of Commerce's annual installation dinner in January.

“Many of us could not do our jobs without Kate's help. She is a volunteer that is so a part of our lives that we cannot imagine our lives without her,” Ellen Dean, former director of the UCD Center for Plant Diversity, wrote in nominating Mawdsley.

Mawdsley said her volunteer work provides her with an opportunity to learn as much as she can about the things she finds interesting.

“What it amounts to is finding many opportunities to first increase my own knowledge and then share it,” she said.

Mawdsley, who has a master's degree in library science, said volunteering at the university has given her the chance to continue to take classes in botany. Dean noted that Mawdsley is known as an “excellent amateur botanist” who can identify hundreds of native plants by sight.

“I've taken about as many classes as an amateur can,” Mawdsley said.

Mawdsley expressed surprise at learning she would be given the award.

“Knowing the people who have received the award, it is truly a humbling experience,” she said.

Recipients are chosen by a panel of past winners and other community members. The plaque was established by John W. Brinley in honor of his father, A.G. “Samuel” Brinley. Last year's winner was Russ Kusama, executive director of Progress Ranch Treatment Services.

Mawdsley is perhaps best known for her work at the Jepson Prairie Preserve, where she has served as coordinator of the docent and public tour program since 1992 and has acted as a docent since 1987. What first attracted her to the area known for its vernal pools and grasslands, she said, was the “astonishing array of tiny flowers” that grow there.

“One of the things that keeps me going back there is that it's different every year. One of the things I really treasure is that it's a place I know,” she said.

Mawdsley, who retired in 1993 after spending 25 years as a librarian at UCD's Shields Library, also dedicates about 10 to 15 hours a week to the campus' Center for Plant Diversity, also called the UCD Herbarium. The center is a kind of plant library, with between 250,000 and 300,000 plant specimens from all over the world.

Grady Webster, director emeritus of the herbarium, died earlier this month shortly after including his comments in recommending Mawdsley for the Brinley Award.

“In 50 years of academic life at a number of institutions and in different cities, I have never known a volunteer to equal Kate's energy, enthusiasm, effectiveness in encouraging public interest and dedication to the field of botany,” Webster wrote.

- Reach Crystal Ross O'Hara at cohara@davisenterprise.net or at 747-8050

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