Dr. Worthington is the Curator of the Herbarium. He received his Ph.D. in Zoology and Ecology from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1968. Since the middle 1970s, his interests have been focused on plant diversity in the southwestern United States.
The focus of research activities out of the herbarium concerns the documentation of the flora across southern New Mexico and in western Texas. Since starting that project, Dr. Worthington has made more than 25,000 plant collections. Coverage includes bryophytes, hepatics, and lichens. Exchange programs and expeditions to tropical America and Southeast Asia have greatly enriched the collection. Collaborative studies in areas such as pollination ecology, fire ecology, pollution effects on plants, plant cytogenetics, plant systematics, et al., have come opportunistically from the enormous data base that has been accumulated over the last 20 years.
Some recent publications:
Worthington, R. D. 1989. An annotated checklist of the native and naturalized flora of El Paso County, Texas. El Paso Southwest Botanical Miscellany No. 1. 56 pp.
Lemke, D., and R. D. Worthington. 1991. The genera Brassica and Rapistrum in Texas. Southwest. Nat. 36:194-197.
Freeman, C. E., R. D. Worthington, and M. Jackson. 1992. Floral nectar sugar compositions of some South and Southeast Asian species. Biotropica 23:568-574.
Worthington, R. D. (with B. Czeczuga et al.). 1997. "Carotenoids in lichens from the states of New Mexico and Texas in the United States of America." Feddes Repertorium 108:387-389.
Worthington, R. D. (with B. Czeczuga et al.). 1997. "Carotinoids in lichens from the United States of America and Mexico." Feddes Repertorium 108:401-417.
Worthington, R. D. 1997. "Nomenclatural changes, additions, and corrections to an annotated checklist of the native and naturalized flora of El Paso County, Texas." El Paso
Southwest Botanical Miscellany 2:1-27.
Last Update: 1 July 1999