Baker, Milo S. (Milo Samuel), 1868-

A farmer, a teacher, and most of all, a searcher and saver of native plants, Milo Baker died in 1961 at the age of 92. From 1901 to 1922 he farmed the Kenwood ranch that he called Maplewood, at the mouth of Adobe Canyon in Sonoma County. Prior to that, he received his botany degree from the University of California and taught at Lowell High School in San Francisco. In 1922 Baker joined the Santa Rosa Junior College faculty. 13,000 plant specimens were collected by Baker and his students and associates for the North Coast Herbarium at the college. He compiled 15 plant lists between 1929 and 1958. (The 1972 list was a reissue of the 1954 list with 1958 supplement.) Violets were his great love. At his home in Adobe Canyon he tended more than 100 species from all over the world. He was still searching, when he died, for an associate who would go with him to Alaska to collect violets on Mt. McKinley. (Notes taken from Gaye LeBaron's column in The Press, 22 March 1981).