Meet Dr. Richard D. Porcher, Jr.
Dr. Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., is a native of Pinopolis in Middle St. John’s Parish, Berkeley County, South Carolina, and presently lives in Mt. Pleasant. He graduated from Berkeley High School in 1957 and the College of Charleston with a BS in biology in 1962. He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1974, where he studied field botany under Dr. Wade T. Batson. Porcher began a thirty-three year tenure as a biology professor at The Citadel in 1970. In 1995 he published Wildflowers of the Carolina Lowcountry and Lower Pee Dee. He is senior author of Wildflowers of South Carolina published in October 2001. Porcher is presently Professor Emeritus at The Citadel, having retired in 2003.
(Image courtesy of Alex Fox).
He currently is an Adjunct Full Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University, where he established the Wade T. Batson Endowment in Field Botany to assist students in the study of the state’s flora and plant ecology.
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Porcher and Sarah Fick published The Story of Sea Island Cotton in 2005. Porcher and William Judd published The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice in 2014. Porcher and Cecy Guerry privately published Our Lost Heritage, a history of the peoples and plantations in the St. John’s Basin in Berkeley County flooded by Lake Moultrie in 1942.
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Porcher is co-author of the revised Wildflowers of South Carolina; the new book published in 2022: A Field Guide to Wildflowers of South Carolina (USC Press). Porcher and Elizabeth Connor and Billy Judd in 2024 published The History of the Santee Canal (USC Press). Porcher is working on two new books, one a study of rare South Carolina plants, and the other a cultural history of Old St. John’s Berkeley: South Carolina’s Forgotten Landscape.
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Porcher served on the Board of Directors of the Waring Library and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, and is a past trustee of The Nature Conservancy and past secretary of the Board of Directors of the Huguenot Church in Charleston.
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In 2022, Porcher assembled a team of scientists and historians to write a cultural history of the Santee Delta. Fund-raising is ongoing and preliminary archaeological work has begun in the Delta.
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Achievements
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Porcher is the recipient of the 2006 1830 Award by The Charleston Horticultural Society, the 2008 recipient of the South Carolina Environmental Awareness Award, 2015 recipient of The Citadel School of Science and Math Faculty Award, The Order of the Palmetto in 2019, and the Thirty-Seventh Annual Tom Dodd, Jr. Award Of Excellence, as an Educator, Researcher, Field Botanist, Author, Mentor, Historian, An Inspirational and Motivating Voice for Southeastern United States Native Flora, presented by the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference.
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