Dana York received his M.S. in botany from California State University, Fresno, and his B.S. in forest/natural resource management from Cal Poly Humboldt. For over 30 years, he has worked on floristic and special-status plant species surveys throughout California and Oregon, on both public and private lands, discovering new plant species in the Oregon Cascade, Klamath, and Sierra Nevada ranges. He retired after 25 years as an environmental unit supervisor for the State Department of Transportation and is now a botany research associate with the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. He also teaches botany workshops on the Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada, and Klamath Mountains. Dana lives with his family in Arcata, California. Follow him on Instagram @pct_botanist.

James M. André, a lifelong Californian, began hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the late 1970s. While completing his undergraduate and graduate work in plant ecology, taxonomy, conservation botany, and rare plant population biology at UCLA, CSU Humboldt State, and UC Davis, Jim was employed as the Forest Botanist at Inyo National Forest, and since 1994 he has served as Director of the University of California's Granite Mountains Desert Research Center. Over the years, he has written Floras of the Mojave National Preserve, the Mojave Desert, and the San Bernardino County desert region, and discovered and published several species new to science. He is a strong advocate for native plant conservation, serving as the Senior Advisor to the California Native Plant Society's Rare Plant Program. He also enjoys also enjoys backpacking, cycling, baseball, beerology, storm-chasing, writing, theater, woodworking, and most of all, hanging out with his family.