Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica 
The influx of American botanists to Costa 
Rica picked up dramatically after 1900, and was 
probably stimulated in part by Pittier’s having 
taken up residence in Washington, D.C., where 
he remained until 1919. Among the Washington- 
based Americans who collected in Costa Rica 
during the first third of the 20th Century were 
O. F. Cook (1867-1949) and C. B. Doyle (1884- 
1973), who concentrated mainly on palms; 
A.S. Hitchcock (1865-1935), an agrostologist; 
William R. Maxon (1873-1948), a pteridolo- 
gist (see Maxon, 1906; Nash, 1907); and Paul 
Carpenter Standley (1884-1963), a general 
collector. They were joined by other Americans, 
including Jesse M. Greenman (1867-1951), 
who became the first curator from the Missouri 
Botanical Garden to collect plants in Costa Rica, 
William R. Maxon (1873-1948) 
Courtesy Isabel Jiménez Alfaro, 
Ot6n Jiménez archives 
when he visited with his son in search of Senecio (Asteraceae) in early 1922; lichenol- 
ogist Carroll W. Dodge (1895-1988), who came to Costa Rica in 1925 and again in 
1929-1930 (Dodge, 1930, 1933); and Harvey E. Stork (1890-1959), of Carleton Col- 
lege, Minnesota, who collected mainly in the Central Valley region in 1928. Visitors of 
other nationalities also made notable plant collections in Costa Rica during this period, 
especially Austrian botanist Otto Porsch 
(1875-1959) who, accompanied by countryman 
Giorgio Cufodontis (1896-1974), collected in 
disparate regions of the country in 1930 (see 
Porsch, 1932); and Swiss botanist (based in Ger- 
many) Walter Kupper (1874-1953), who gath- 
ered some 2100 numbers in 1931 and 1932, and 
became the first botanist to ascend Cerro Chirrip6 
(Suessenguth, 1942; Weber, 1958: 145). 
Among all the foreign researchers enumer- 
ated in the foregoing paragraph, one stands out 
particularly. Paul Standley, a native of Missouri 
and one of the most prolific botanical collectors 
and authors ever to work in the Mesoamerican 
region, had already produced four major floras 
by the time he turned his attention to Costa Rica. 
Standley (1937b: 49) “had the good fortune to 
be associated intimately with [Pittier] for a num- 
ber of years, and heard from his lips much about 
Jesse M. Greenman (1867-1951) 
Missouri Botanical Garden archives 
