Thomas Croat
American botanist and curator (1938— )
Thomas Bernard Croat (born 23 May 1938 in St. Marys, Iowa) is an American botanist and plant collector, noteworthy as one of botanical history's "most prolific plant collectors". He has collected and described numerous species of plants, particularly in the family Araceae, in his career at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Biography
After serving for about two years in 1956–1958 as a radar technician in the U.S. Army, Croat matriculated at Simpson College, where he graduated in 1962 with a B.A., majoring in botany and minoring in chemistry. He then matriculated at the University of Kansas, where he graduated in 1967 with a Ph.D. in botany. His thesis is entitled "The genus Solidago of the north central Great Plains".
At the Missouri Botanical Garden, Croat was from 1967 to 1971 an assistant botanist, from 1971 to 1976 a curator of phanerogams, from 1976 to 1977 and an associate curator. There he is since 1977 the P. A. Schulze Curator of Botany. From 1967 to 1971 he studied the flora of Panama with the sponsorship of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. From 1970 to 1971 he was a curator at the Summit Herbarium and Library in the Canal Zone.
The public source identifies “Thomas Croat” as american botanist and curator (1938— ). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Thomas, Croat and American.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1829652. VIAF identifies the subject as 45572435. The Library of Congress control number is n79028032. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1956, 1958 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Croat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.