Remembering Richard S. Felger, 1934–2020
Richard Stephen Felger, ethnobotanist, worldwide desert researcher, poet, champion of sea turtles, and visionary proponent of dryland food crops, passed away peacefully at his home in Silver City with his wife by his side on October 31, 2020. He was 86.
PHOTO:
Richard near Tastiota
on the coast of Sonora, Mexico, with the rare Tiburon barrel cactus (Ferocactus tiburonensis) and senita (Lophocereus schottii)
green ride on the names of plants, letting them roll deliciously in your mouth, remembering from your own history: screwbean, amaranth, jojoba, chia.
—comments by Sharman Apt Russell, author and winner of the 2016 John Burroughs Medal
ADDITIONAL PUBLICATIONS 2020
PLANTS & ANIMALS IN THE YOEME WORLD: Ethnoecology of the Yaquis
of Sonora and Arizona
by Richard Stephen Felger &
Felipe Silvestre Molina
Special Publication of the Desert Laboratory,
University of Arizona, Tucson
est. 550 pp., open access
THE DESERT EDGE: Flora of the Guaymas–Yaqui Region of Sonora, Mexico
by Richard Stephen Felger,
Susan Davis Carnahan, &
José Jesús Sánchez-Escalante
Special Publication of the Desert Laboratory,
University of Arizona, Tucson
est. 900 pp., 3 volumes; open access
TREES OF THE GILA FOREST, New Mexico
by Richard Stephen Felger, James Thomas Verrier,
Kelly Kindscher, & Xavier Raj Herbst Khera
in review, University of New Mexico Press, est. 150 pp.
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL ARTICLE — Controls of plant diversity and composition on a desert archipelago.
Wilder, B.T, R.S. Felger, & E. Ezcurra. 2019.
https://peerj.com/articles/7286/PeerJ
7:e7286 DOI 10.7717/peerj.7286
Dark Horses and Little Turtles
and Other Poems from the Anthropocene
by Richard Stephen Felger
to purchase, click here
Reader, beware, something in these poems may leap out at you like a big extinct sharp-toothed cat or a trickster god—both of whom prowl this book—or like your own anger and fear about the state of the world, so many humans now and not enough turtles. Don’t worry. There’s plenty of hope here, too, and sex and sly humor. Be prepared to time travel. Settle in, of course, for a