William S LyonLYON, William Scrugham (1851-1916), was born in New York and moved to Los Angeles early in life. He was a forester for California's first forestry board and collected on Santa Catalina Island with Reverend Joseph C. Nevin in 1884. Lyon's Santa Catalia Ironwood species is the first one to be gathered. The Harvard University's Dr. Asa Gray was asked to name the tree specimen, and the genus was given the name Lyonothamnus in honor of the person who found it. In April 1885, Nevin and Lyon got back together on San Clemente Island. In 1886, scientist E. L. Greene went to Santa Cruz Island and found that the tree Barclay Hazard had told him about in the summer of 1885 was actually a new species of Lyonothamnus that only lived on Santa Cruz Island. The same species was found by T. S. Brandegee on Santa Rosa Island in 1888. He wrote that "the trees were small and often distorted by the wind." Emma Mellus Lyon, Lyon's wife (1857-1941), died at age 84. She was left by both their daughter, Catherine Lyon Johnston (1877-1953), and son, William Ward Lyon (1886-1961). The Gray Herbarium at Harvard has Lyon's most important collection of plants. "The Lyonothamnus asplenifolius" by Ford and Henry Chapman was published in the Bulletin of the Society of Natural History. Read More Read Less