Conrad Vernon Morton (1905-1972)

Abstract

Conrad Vernon Morton, named Walter Vernon Morton at the time of his birth on October 24, 1905, was the son of Walter Crow Morton and Nioma (later Noma) Bartholomew Morton. He was born in Fresno, California, where his parents had been life-long residents and his father had a roofing and building contractor's business. Walter Crow Morton died when Walter was still young, and in about 1917 his mother married Alva B. McCray, who also had been a resident of Fresno for many years. In fact, the McCray and Bartholomew families were friends. Mr. McCray was employed by the Santa Fe Railroad. The family home at Fresno included a vineyard and various gardens on the property, and so young Walter was introduced to plants at an early age. As a child, he planted and tended a small garden of his own. His mother was well known in the area for her rose garden; she grew about 130 varieties abundantly. During his junior high and high school years, the family lived in Berkeley, where Mrs. McCray's sister and family lived. The climate there was more moderate than in Fresno, and better for Mrs. McCray's health. When he was in high school Walter won a fellowship to the local Art Institute. Of all the students in the class, he was the only boy, and for this reason he did not pursue his study of art very far at that time. (After he began his professional career, however, he studied both painting and the piano diligently, and mastered and practiced both arts with great pleasure for himself and his friends for the remainder of his life. He was also greatly interested in the history of the cinema, in dramatics, and in philately. For a more ample account of Morton's non-botanical interests, see Ewan, J. A. 1973. Taxon 22: 271-274.) Morton entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1924. At that time he changed his given names to Conrad Vernon (the legal change was made on April 14, 1926). His interests at first included the physical sciences, mathematics, astronomy, and slavic languages and literature. During the latter part of his freshman year he began a course in general botany. In his sophomore year he studied elementary taxonomy under Prof. Willis L. Jepson. Apparently this course triggered a strong interest in taxonomic botany, for he took several more courses from Jepson, plus algology and mycology from Prof. Gardner, plant physiology from Prof. Holman, and cytology and genetics from Prof. Goodspeed. His first botanical collections were made around Berkeley in January 1926. Morton held tuition scholarships at the University for the last three of his undergraduate years. He was a Levi Strauss Scholar in 1925-26, a Henry Morgan Holbrook Scholar in 1926-27, and a Carrie M. Jones Scholar in 1927-28. He was elected to membership in the scientific fraternity Sigma Xi and in the biological sciences fraternity Phi Sigma. In October 1926 he was inducted into