George Ledyard Stebbins was a Professor of Botany, Genetics and Evolution at Colgate University, UC Berkeley and UC Davis. Stebbins attended Harvard where he majored in biology and botany and went on to get his masters where he continued his research and later took a teaching position at Colgate University. In the early 1930s he moved to Berkeley where he began teaching Biosystematists and organic evolution and received an assistant professorship in genetics in 1939. Stebbins later transferred to UC Davis where he established the Genetics Department in the 1950s. He also created the UC Davis herbarium and began his involvement with the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). Stebbins became the president of CNPS in 1966 and focused on the Rare Plant Project, various field trips, and coordinating the council and members. In this interview Stebbin discusses his early years and family history, his time at Harvard, introduction to teaching, developmental genetics, various colleagues, advising graduate students, creating the UC Davis department, work in the CNPS, various field trips and research projects, endangered species, travels abroad, the Botanical Society, Friends of the UC Davis Arboretum, the North Coast-Central Valley Biodiversity Transect and the Botanical Congress. This interview is part of a group of interviews documenting the origins of the California Native Plant Society and was a donated history.