Robbin C. Moran, Ph.D., is a Curator Emeritus at the New York Botanical Garden. He is an expert on ferns and lycophytes.

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John T. Mickel, Ph.D., Senior Curator Emeritus at the New York Botanical Garden, died peacefully at his home in Westchester County, New York, on November 15, 2024. He was 90 years old.

John joined the Botanical Garden in 1969 and worked here for nearly 50 years. He was internationally recognized as an expert on the taxonomy and horticulture of ferns, having published 11 books and over 120 scientific articles about these plants. He was well known for his research on the genera Anemia and Elaphoglossum, the latter being one of the largest fern genera in the world, containing about 600 species, many of which were described by John as new to science. In 2004, he published his magnum opus, The Pteridophytes of Mexico. It was co-authored with Alan R. Smith, Ph.D., John’s former doctoral student and pteridologist (now retired) at the University of California, Berkeley. This book, which consists of 1,054 pages that describe and illustrate the 1,008 species of ferns that grow wild in Mexico, is considered one of the most comprehensive books on the taxonomy and identification of tropical ferns. In recognition of this achievement, John and Alan were awarded the prestigious Engler Medal in Silver by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy.

Besides scientific contributions, John popularized ferns for the public. For 20 years he edited the Fiddlehead Forum, the bulletin of the American Fern Society. He started the bulletin because the society’s main publication, American Fern Journal, accepted only scientific articles, and no outlet existed for certain subjects of interest to amateurs and fern growers. The Fiddlehead Forum was (and still is) vital to the health of the American Fern Society, most of whose members are nonscientists.

John wrote three field guides to ferns. His best-known is How to Know the Ferns (W. C. Brown Publisher, 1979). It includes an introductory chapter containing one of the clearest explanations for lay people about various aspects of fern biology such as life cycle, polyploidy, hybridization, and apogamy, a type of asexual reproduction. John also revised The Southern Fern Guide (Doubleday, 1972), by Edgar T. Wherry, a book still widely used in the Gulf States.

More than anyone, John promoted fern horticulture. He wrote extensively about fern cultivation and gave talks around the country to garden clubs, fern societies, and native plant societies. He published the Home Gardener’s Book of Ferns (Ridge Press/Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979) and Ferns for American Gardens (Macmillan, 1994; reprinted by Timber Press, 2003). The latter was selected by the American Horticultural Society in 1997 as one of the top 75 horticultural books published in America over the preceding 75 years. John advised commercial nurseries about cold-hardy temperate ferns and introduced several new ferns into cultivation in the United States, such as the winged beech fern (Phegopteris decursive-pinnata), Dixie wood fern (Dryopteris ×australis), and ghost fern (apparently a hybrid between Athyrium angustum and A. niponicum).

In 1973, John and his wife Carol founded the New York Fern Society. For 43 years they ran the society and presided over its monthly meetings, which took place at the Garden on the first Saturday of every month from October to May. The late Scott Mori, Ph.D., who was a Senior Curator Emeritus at the Garden, said about these monthly events: “I always knew when those meetings were taking place because Robbin Moran, Tom Zanoni, Jim Montgomery, and John and Carol started setting up the chairs, the slide projector, and making the coffee in the lunch room area just outside my office for the 30 to 50 fern lovers that attended the meetings. When the meeting started, I was periodically interrupted by peals of laughter, usually set off by John’s repertoire of puns.”

During the summer months when the Fern Society was not meeting, John organized local field trips for members to see ferns. Occasionally, he led longer trips to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Trinidad, and Oaxaca, Mexico. To the latter destination, he led field trips three times. The third trip in 2000 was the subject of Oaxaca Journal (2002), by the prominent neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks, a longtime Garden Trustee and an avid member of the New York Fern Society.

John, often assisted by Carol, developed several fern gardens in the New York City area. Their home garden in Westchester County boasted over 150 species of ferns and was generally considered the finest cold-hardy temperate fern garden in the eastern United States. At the Garden, John encouraged planting ferns in the Native Plant Garden and in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. He volunteered on weekends to establish fern gardens at the Rockefeller State Park Preserve; the Lyndhurst estate (a National Trust for Historic Preservation site overlooking the Hudson River); the fern glen at the Mary Flagler Cary Arboretum in Millbrook, New York; and Rocky Hills in Westchester County, New York.

John’s career was a model of scientific research and public outreach. He created a legacy of fern systematics and horticulture at the Garden, and his efforts led many people, both amateur and professional, to study and appreciate ferns. John, whose car license plate read “Fernman,” will be long remembered for his wit, collegiality, and contributions to the study of ferns at the Garden.