Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica pA 
his work in Costa Rica. It was [Pittier’s] sympathetic and fluent description that first 
gave [Standley] a desire to visit” the country. During his two seasons in Costa Rica (the 
winters of 1923-1924 and 1925-1926), Standley traveled widely (see Standley, 
1937b: 54—55; Calderon, 1963; Jiménez, 1963; Valerio R., 1963), often in the company 
of Costa Rican botanists Juvenal Valerio (1900-1971) or Rubén Torres Rojas 
(1890-1978). Aiming for 300 specimens each day, and drying all their own material in 
the field (Lankester, 1963), Standley and associates amassed an extraordinary total of 
15,000 numbers in Costa Rica (though mostly unicates deposited at the United States 
National Herbarium). Working largely from his own collections and those of Oersted, 
Pittier and associates, and Brenes, Standley produced the first comprehensive Flora of 
Costa Rica, which appeared in four parts in 1937 and 1938 (by which time he had 
moved to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History). The original intent had been to 
publish the first edition in Spanish; however, funding difficulties proved insurmount- 
able (McCook, 1999), and less than 200 pages of Flora de Costa Rica (Standley, 
1937a—1940) were ever published (compared with the 1616-page English text). 
According to Standley’s (1938b: 1571) own statistics, his flora treated 6085 spe- 
cies of seed plants, including 104 naturalized species and 270 species known only from 
cultivation. Sixteen genera and an astounding 2299 species were indicated as endemic. 
Lacking rigorous descriptions and (except for Part IV) keys, Standley’s flora was es- 
sentially an annotated checklist. Nonetheless, it marked a major step forward for Costa 
Rican floristics, and has stood to the present day as the standard reference for most fam- 
ilies of seed plants (see also Jiménez, 1963). 
Anastasio Alfaro reigned as director of the 
Museo Nacional until his retirement in 1930, 
when he was replaced briefly by José Fidel 
Tristan (1874-1932). Manuel Valerio (1887-— 
?) directed the Museo from 1932 to 1934, fol- 
lowed by Juvenal Valerio, who served until 1943 
(Kandler, 1987). Plant exploration in Costa Rica 
flourished throughout this period, galvanized 
by the publication of Standley’s landmark flora. 
Costa Rican botanists Alberto Brenes, Ot6n Ji- 
ménez, Juvenal Valerio, and Rubén Torres were 
joined by numerous compatriots, including José 
Maria Orozco (1884-1971; see Barquero, 
1982, for more about Orozco) and Fernando 
Solis Rojas, pharmacist Manuel Quirés Calvo 
(1904-1953), and Manuel Valerio. Important 
collections were also contributed by resident 
expatriates, including Englishman Charles H. 
Charles H. Lankester (1879-1969) 
Courtesy Kakteen und andere 
Lankester (1879-1969), based near Cartago Sukkulenten 38: 189. 1987 
