Stebbins was one of the first to apply chromosome techniques to plant evolution. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1935, and founded the Department of Genetics at UC Davis in 1950. His 1950 book, "Variation and Evolution in Plants," is one of cornerstones of the the Modern Synthesis, and shows that evolutionary mechanisms demonstrated in animals also occur in plants. His 1974 book, "Flowering Plants: Evolution Above the Species Level," addressed questions of the origin of new super-specific taxa of plants.