Creu Casas
Creu Casas i Sicart (April 26, 1913 – May 20, 2007) was a Catalan biologist and botanist who specialized in bryology, the study of mosses and related plants. She built an important inventory of Catalan and European bryophytes and authored two major reference works.
Creu Casas came from a family tied to gardening and nature in Catalonia. She began studying Pharmacy at the University of Barcelona in 1931, influenced by the botanist Pius Font i Quer. She finished her degree in 1936, but the Franco regime later revalidated it. She worked as a pharmacist from 1937 onward, including 27 years managing a pharmacy in Barcelona.
Her interest in bryology grew after World War II. In 1947 she joined the Botany laboratory at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Barcelona, and in 1951 she earned her doctoral degree, focusing on bryophytes from Montseny. In 1967 she became a professor of Phytogeography at the University of Barcelona, and in 1971 she was appointed chair of Botany at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She was named Professor Emerita in 1983.
In 1989 she founded the Spanish Bryology Society and served as its first president. Casas published about 216 works, especially on the taxonomy and distribution of bryophytes. She conducted fieldwork in Montseny, Garraf, the Pyrenees, the Balearic Islands and many other parts of Spain and Portugal.
Her major books are Flora dels Briòfits dels Països Catalans (two volumes, 2001 and 2004) and Handbook of Mosses of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands (2006). Her contributions to bryology were recognized with several awards, including the Narcís Monturiol Medal for Scientific and Technological Merit in 1983 and the Catalan Foundation Prize for Research in 2002, among others.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 00:12 (CET).