A story by Barbara Moss on Marjie Becus. This article is also featured in the June 6, 2025, issue of The Ripple.

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Marjie Becus is alone in the woods. She moves slowly, careful not to crush any vulnerable plants. A bramble snags her pants, and she takes a wide step to avoid tripping on a vine. She spots a wildflower species that she knows but has never seen in this location. She takes a picture and makes notes on the date and weather conditions. She may even count the number of individual plants in the population if that information interests her for future explorations or is simply more data for the record.

Go back a few years. Marjie is doing lab research for Procter and Gamble on samples from clinical trials of dental products. The company offers her a part-time position instead of a forty-hour week. She delightedly jumps at the opportunity. On her days off, she gets to “play in the woods”—her expression.

Another account from Marjie’s past. Her husband is a U.C. professor. Family members of faculty can take tuition-free courses, so she signs up for a botany class. The instructor becomes her mentor and friend, and Marjie is now happily engaged in field studies with classmates and then as a teaching assistant. As a byproduct, she is learning to speak with authority to a group.

Back up a few more years. In college, Marjie is a biology major, but she never takes a course in botany, admittedly an odd outcome.

Now go back to her youth. Her love of nature is formed from the freedom she had to explore the fields and forests.

While this story seems to be developing in reverse, there is a pattern that is both predictable and not. As a child, Marjie Becus thrived on unstructured outdoor activities in the natural areas of her home state of Virginia. A degree in biology was a reasonable next step and led to a professional career. Diverging into botany study through a non-traditional route gave her confidence in field identification, an opportunity to build relationships with experts, and the confirmation that plant life was her passion.

Today, Marjie is an expert herself and is called upon by various agencies to generate a plant list—essentially a botanical bio-blitz—of a park, a preserve, or a conservation area. As a popular trail guide for groups, she is an acknowledged “wildflower ambassador,” providing identifications of rare species, explaining relationships among plants, or simply turning people on to what’s in the woods and fields.

What has become Marjie’s claim to fame among her botanist peers is her stewardship of running buffalo clover. Back in 1988—a time when this species was on the federal endangered list—Hamilton County Parks requested that she do a count of individual plants at Shawnee Lookout. She found 104. Now, she says, there are thousands.

The campground at Morgan’s Canoe livery near Fort Ancient proved to be another location where running buffalo clover could be monitored in a longitudinal study and where groundskeepers agreed to apply conservation maintenance practices. Marjie has also found evidence of the plant at Sharon Woods and Miami Whitewater Forest as well as Cincinnati Nature Center.

Why the interest in this humble species? Once common in nine states, running buffalo clover was thought to be extinct until a population was discovered in West Virginia in 1983. Interest in finding other populations led park systems and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to instigate and underwrite searches. Since the plant can reproduce vegetatively by stolons—or runners—Marjie counts only the rooted crowns and flowering specimens in order to have a reliable and potentially relevant scientific record. While this clover benefits from disturbances such as grazing and trampling (note “buffalo” in its common name), it needs to set seed, so any mowing that removes the flower heads will reduce plant numbers.

The USFWS citation states, “This past year [2021], the running buffalo clover was successfully delisted thanks largely to the tireless efforts and conservation advocacy of Marjie Becus and Jenny Finfera over the years. When the plant was listed as federally endangered in 1987, we knew of a single remaining population. Because of their championship of the species and dedication to its recovery, today there are more than 170 clover populations across five Midwest states. Becus and Finfera have successfully built trusted and lasting relationships with property managers; provided valuable input into the best management actions; conducted monitoring, data collection, and habitat restoration; coordinated volunteers and collaborated with a diverse array of partners; developed numerous management agreements; and communicated the essential value of this species.”