Introducing Elan Alford, New Rare Plants Chair, San Mateo County
Elan Alford on Coyote Ridge with Castilleja affinis ssp. neglecta on a recon survey Don Mayall sent her on in May 2014. Photo by Elan Alford
Full length version of an article published in the May-June 2016 Blazing Star Newsletter
By Vicki Silvas-Young, Hospitality & All-round Support
Our new San Mateo Rare Plants Chair, Elan Alford was born the second of four children on a misty, Spring day in Pennsylvania. She has always had a respect for plants ever since she could remember. Perhaps it has to do with the sense of joy and solitude that one can slip into so easily amongst a field of green? Perhaps it has to do with helping tend her father’s mountain side garden in Pennsylvania? Elan never intended to do anything in particular, except listen and explore. She views life as a series of happy accidents and her life philosophy comes from the cult classic musical Rocky Horror, “Don’t dream it, be it.”
When it came time for college, Elan chose to study ecology because one could specialize in plant biology. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Ecology & Evolution. After school she decided to work in a laboratory at the university. There she learned about molecular biology, microbiology, and, most importantly, she started working on legumes. Elan was intrigued by their unique symbiotic interactions with rhizobia and the fact that it all happens in the hidden realm of the underground.
