Charles Russell Orcutt

Who was Charles Russell Orcutt?

Charles Russell Orcutt or C.R. Orcutt was a noted naturalist sometimes called "cactus man" because on many expeditions he found new species of cacti. He moved to San Diego in 1879. He worked with his father, collecting plant specimens in the San Diego area and Baja California. His travelled there with Charles Christopher Parry, Cyrus Pringle, and Marcus E. Jones, with whom he learned to properly catalog, collect, and preserve specimens. The genus Orcuttia and variants are named for him. In 1884 he began The West American Scientist, which he irregularly published until 1919. He began to be referred to as witty and as a hopeless eccentric. The year 1892 proved significant for him as his father died and he married a doctor from New York named Olive Lucy Eddy. She was the first woman to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Michigan’s Homœopathic Medical College at Ann Arbor, 30 June 1882. Her medical practice did much to support them and with her sister Clara she published a magazine titled Out of Doors For Women. The couple had four children.

At first Orcutt collected primarily plant specimens, but his interest began to shift from botany to conchology.