Moses Ashley Curtis

Moses Ashley Curtis was an American botanist. He studied seed plants and mycology.

Biography
On May 11, 1808, Curtis was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and was educated at Williams College. After he graduated, Curtis became a tutor for the the children of former governor of North Carolina, Edward Bishop Dudley in Wilmington. He returned to Massachusetts in 1833 to study theology.

In 1834, Curtis married Mary de Rosset, and in 1835 was ordained and obtained a post to teach at the Episcopal school in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1841, Curtis became rector at the Protestant Episcopal Church in Hillsborough and in 1847 he was in charge of a parish at Society Hill, South Carolina before he returned to the Protestant Episcopal Churchi in Hillsborough in 1857. Curtis died in Hillsborough in 1872.

As a botanist, Curtis explored the southern Appalachian Mountains, going on a major expedition in 1839. He maintained an herbarium of his own specimens, and contributed specimens to John Torrey and Asa Gray. He collected lichens for Edward Tuckerman and corresponded with other botanists, including Miles Joseph Berkeley, to whom he sent many specimens and detailed descriptions and notes. Gray said of Curtis that "No living botanist ... is so well acquainted with the vegetation of the southern Allegheny Mountains ..." and that he "...was among the first to retrace the steps and rediscover the plants found and published by the elder Michaux, in the higher Allegheny Mountains." For the last twenty-five years of Curtis' life, he studied an became an authority in the study of mycology.

When citing a botanical name, Moses Ashley Curtis is abbreviated as M.A.Curtis.