Richard Clinton "Dick" Harris (December 6, 1939 – May 10, 2021) was an American lichenologist associated for most of his career with the New York Botanical Garden. He was especially known for his work on pyrenocarpous lichens and lichenicolous fungi and for his wide field knowledge of the lichen flora of eastern North America. Over more than five decades he described over 200 new species and infraspecific taxa, 14 genera, and three families of lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi, and became an influential figure in North American organismal lichenology.
Early life and education Harris grew up in Michigan, where he began studying lichens in the field and developed a detailed knowledge of the state's flora while still a student. As an undergraduate at Oberlin College he became interested in the biology of lichen symbioses, an interest that led him into graduate study in lichenology under the bryologist and lichenologist Henry Imshaug. Throughout Harris's training he focused on floristics and systematics of lichens. His early work on the lichens of the Straits of Mackinac region in Michigan, including a self-published manual and keys, established his reputation among North American lichenologists for clear, usable treatments that covered both macrolichens and inconspicuous crustose species.
Career and research Harris spent virtually his entire professional career at the Cryptogamic Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in the Bronx. There he worked on the curation and reorganization of the lichen collections, applying his own taxonomic framework and routinely subjecting specimens to thin-layer chromatography to investigate their chemistry. Colleagues and students recall him as a meticulous worker who spent long days at the microscope and in the herbarium, gradually resolving numerous taxonomic problems in eastern North American lichens. Together with James C. Lendemer he later co-authored an overview of the New York Botanical Garden lichen herbarium, outlining the history of the collection, Harris's long-term role in reorganizing and expanding it, and its importance as a modern resource for fungal biodiversity research and training.
Fieldwork was central to his approach. Harris began with floristic projects in his home state of Michigan and later carried out extensive collecting in Florida from the panhandle to the Everglades, in the Ozark region of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and across northeastern North America. He participated regularly in Andrews Forays, Crum Bryophyte Workshops and other field meetings, and helped organize the Tuckerman Lichen Workshops, which combined intensive field collecting with evening identification sessions. He also collected in eastern Canada, including several mycological "bioblitz" events in New Brunswick and fieldwork in Quebec. Harris continued active field collecting into his eighties; his last known collection, number 62893, was made in November 2020 at California Hill State Forest in Putnam County, New York, where he gathered the rare species Peltigera hydrothyria. Taxonomically, Harris was one of the most productive describers of new lichen taxa in North America. A tally based on later checklists and databases shows that he published 212 new species and infraspecific taxa; around 90% of these were still regarded as valid a decade into the 21st century, although a number had been transferred to other genera. He also described 14 new genera, only a small minority of which were later synonymized, and three new families that continued to be accepted. Much of this work focused on pyrenocarpous lichens, particularly the families Pyrenulaceae and Trypetheliaceae, where his publications of the 1980s helped to sharpen generic boundaries and character sets for tropical and subtropical species. Later in his career Harris devoted increasing attention to lichenicolous fungi, despite long claiming to have no special interest in them. He routinely examined every lichen collection that crossed his desk for parasitic or commensal fungi and assembled a large series of such specimens from North America, many of which were sent to specialist collaborators for formal description. Numerous lichenicolous species were eventually described from his material, some of them bearing his name, such as Lepraria harrisiana, Buellia harrisiana, Capronia harrisiana and Sticta harrisii. Although he rarely accepted coauthorship when he had only collected the material, he did agree to be listed among the authors of a few species, including the lichenicolous fungi Abrothallus pezizicola and Tremella imshaugiae. Harris also produced a series of practical identification manuals and keys that circulated widely among field lichenologists. His mimeographed Some Florida Lichens and its follow-up More Florida Lichens provided keys not only to macrolichens but also to many crustose and pyrenocarpous taxa, including an overview of tropical groups then poorly treated elsewhere. For a lichen course and forays in Puerto Rico he prepared Working Keys to the Lichen-Forming Fungi of Puerto Rico (1989), an extensive key that for many years served as the only comprehensive resource for that flora. These and other self-published works were valued for their direct style, dense taxonomic content and emphasis on characters observable with modest equipment.
Teaching and mentorship
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