Emma Lucy Braun

Emma Lucy Braun (born April 19, 1889, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.—died March 5, 1971, Cincinnati) was an American botanist and ecologist best known for her pioneering work in plant ecology and for her advocacy of natural area conservation. Her classic book, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America (1950), thoroughly describes the plants of the deciduous forest biome and the evolution of the forest community from the most recent ice age to the middle of the 20th century.

Braun was the younger of two daughters born to George Frederick Braun, a school principal, and Emma Moriah Wright Braun, a schoolteacher. During her early years, she became interested in nature following frequent visits to nearby woods with her family. In high school, Braun started a collection of pressed plants that would grow to nearly 12,000 specimens by the time of her death. She studied geology at the University of Cincinnati, receiving a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1910 and a master’s degree in 1912. After working with American botanist and educator Henry Chandler Cowles at the University of Chicago during the summer of 1912, she went on to obtain a Ph.D. in botany in 1914 from the University of Cincinnati.

She remained at Cincinnati throughout her career and lived with her sister, Annette, who was the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from the institution. Between 1910 and 1913, Emma served as an assistant in the geology department, but in 1914, she took on a similar position in the botany department. In 1917, she became an instructor in the botany department, and she advanced through the ranks, making full professor in 1946.

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Braun spent the early part of her career in the study of physiographic ecology—that is, the adaptation of organisms to their environment. She was particularly interested in comparing the present structure of the plant community of southern Ohio with that of the past. She examined evidence of plant migration in response to advancing and retreating glaciers. In addition, she studied relatively recent changes in the plant community structure by comparing early plant surveys of Ohio and Kentucky with those of her era. This comparative technique was lauded by her colleagues in the discipline for its innovativeness in gauging the changes in plant communities over time, as well as for its potential for monitoring communities altered by human activities. From 1928 to 1933, Braun was the editor of Wild Flower, the magazine of the Wild Flower Preservation Society.

During the 1930s, she expanded her fieldwork to include the forests of the Illinoian Till Plain, the Cumberland Plateau, and the Appalachians. These projects would lay the foundation for her most influential work, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America. The book was published after her retirement from the university in 1948, and it quickly became the quintessential reference on the region’s plant communities. For the remainder of her life, she focused on forest research, writing, and campaigns to protect natural areas from development.

Braun wrote a number of other works on plant ecology, including An Annotated Catalog of Spermatophytes of Kentucky (1943), The Woody Plants of Ohio: Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Climbers Native, Naturalized, and Escaped (1961), and The Monocotyledoneae; Cat-tails to Orchids (1967). Braun also held the distinction of being the first woman inducted into the Ohio Conservation Hall of Fame and the first woman elected president of the Ecological Society of America.