Peter H. Raven and his wife, Patricia J. Duncan Raven, bought a three-bedroom, 2.5-bath home at 3420 Longfellow Blvd. in Compton Heights from Jittaun Floyd for $307,500 on April 8.

Mr. Floyd paid $367,500 for the 2,000-square-foot house in August 2004. It was built in 2009.

Mr. Raven is president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a trustee of the National Geographic Society and chairman of its Committee for Research and Exploration. He served for 12 years as home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Third World Academy of Sciences.

He is a co-editor of the Flora of China, a joint Chinese-American project that is leading to a contemporary account on all the plants of China.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1960, after completing his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ms. Raven has spent 30 years in public horticulture. While with the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, she served as deputy director at Planting Fields Arboretum, director of the Bayard Cutting Arboretum and at Caumsett State Historic Park, and at all Frederick Law Olmstead gardens on Long Island. She then served as executive director of Mercer Arboretum and Botanical Garden in Houston, Texas.

Ms. Raven has won numerous awards for public service in horticulture, taught botany and horticulture for public and university audiences, and writes a gardening column for the Ladue News.

She did her undergraduate studies in botany at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She pursued graduate studies in horticulture at North Carolina State University and earned her doctorate at Ohio State University in 1984.

The Ravens also own a four-bedroom, 4.5-bath home at 17143 Hidden Valley Forest Drive in Wildwood. They paid $485,000 for the property in Sept. 2005.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 20 home sales in Compton Heights in the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $290,000.

Address: 3420 Longfellow Boulevard
Buyer(s): Peter H Raven and Duncan Raven
Seller(s): Jittaun Floyd
Sale date: Apr. 8, 2010