Seville Flowers photograph collection, circa 1935-1965

Seville (Bill) Flowers (1900-1968) was a Professor of Botany at the University of Utah from 1936 until his death in 1968. He was born Bradnum Saville Flowers on 1900 January 14 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Caroline Saville and John Flowers. Seville Flowers received undergraduate degrees from the University of Utah and Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1925-1926 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1931. Before joining the staff at the University of Utah, he was a Fellow at the University of Chicago in 1931-1932 and taught biology at Carbon County High School between 1926-1930 and 1932-1936. On November 29, 1933, Seville Flowers married Emily Jones; together, the couple had two children.

Flowers specialized in bryology (the study of mosses and lichens) and phycology (the study of algae). He was Vice President (1964-1965) and President (1966-1967) of the American Bryological Society. After joining the University of Utah, Flowers served on a number of academic committees, including the Scholastic Standards Committee, the National Educational Association, Science Department, of which he was State Chairman (1934-1936), and the Utah Education Association, Biological Science Section, of which he was President from 1935-1937. Flowers belonged include the American Fern Society, the Phycological Society of America, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Sigma Xi, and the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Throughout his career, Flowers published numerous articles, particularly in the journal the Bryologist. With Angus M. Woodbury, Flowers contributed to surveys of vegetation, flora, and fauna of basins and reservoirs throughout Utah. Flowers produced numerous surveys of mosses, ferns grasses, and algae, including Ferns of Utah (1944), Liverworts of Utah (1954) and Common Grasses of Utah (1959). Mosses: Utah and the West was edited by Arthur Holmgren and published posthumously in 1973.

Seville Flowers died on 1968 April 29.

Source: Behle, William. " Number 2 Article 2 4-30." Great Basin Naturalist, vol. 44, no. 2, 1984.