The Native Plant Society of Northeastern Ohio Awards
Barb Andreas
The Gentian Award for 2020
Barb’s interests in botany began when she was a farm girl growing up in Dundee, Tuscarawas County. Her father taught her the common names of trees. Her first botanical effort was to compile the vascular flora of Wayne Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio.
Barb has come in and out of my life several times over the years. I first met Barb in 1984 in the Herbarium of Kent State University, where she was working on her doctor’s degree and I was working on my master’s. We shared a lab table keying out plants and referencing herbarium specimens. Barb was my mentor and inspiration in continuing on my path; she was raising two boys, pursuing a degree in botany and teaching biology at Tri-C. We traveled to downtown Cleveland from Kent State with Tom and Mix Cooperrider to my first Native Plant Society annual meeting to hear Dr Edward Voss, author of The Flora of Michigan Speak, whose books I would often reference.
Being on the board of the Nature Conservancy in 1988, Barb was one of my interviewers and hired me as a Northeast Ohio Stewardship Intern, where I learned vegetative sampling, rare plant monitoring and exotic species control. She even offered to let us stay at her house in Twin Lakes to shower after cutting poison sumac at Brown’s Lake Bog Preserve all day.
Barb taught biology at Cuyahoga Community College and asked me to cover her biology lecture and lab when she went on sabbatical. In 2002, she joined the faculty at Kent State University.
While a professor at Kent State University, Barb hosted a Native Plant Society program on the identification of mosses in February of 2003. I soon took over the presidency of the society. Luckily for me, she was already on the board as Vice President. She remained on the board until 2006 when she moved to the Hocking Hills region of Ohio.
Barb has authored several articles for the Journal over the years. In the fall of 2018, she was commencement speaker for the December graduation at Kent State University. Barb is a founding member of the Ohio Moss and Lichen Association and the Ohio Rare Plant Committee. She is on the board of Ohio Natural Areas and Preserve Association.
Gentian Award
For Dedication to the Native Plants of Ohio
Barb Andreas
2020
This tribute was given by Judy Barnhart, president of the Native Plant Society of Northeastern Ohio.
