Acknowledgements 
First I want to thank the people to whom I owe most of my grow as a person during my 
stay here in St. Louis, with them I had the chance to share many things of daily life (specially 
cooking!), confronting points of view and building strong bonds of friendship, an aspect that 
facilitated my development in the academic issues. Particularly I am indebted to Gillian Bowser, 
German Carnevali, Avelina Espinoza, Rosa Ortiz-Gentry, Josiane LeCorff, Guillermo Paz y 
Mino, [von Ramirez, Armand Randrianasolo, Carolina Valdespino, Eric Wiener, and Sachiko 
Yasuda. I want to mention also Ana Guevara, Carolina Israel, Evan Notman, Mark & Barbara 
Olson, Diego Pérez-Salicrup, Carlos Reynel, Monica Romo, Cindy Smith, Ana Villegas, and 
Guanghua Zhu. I want to thank also my friends in Mexico, who always were concerned with how 
I was doing in St. Louis. 
Also, I want to thank the people who, despite they were not here, through their artistic 
work contributed to lessen the monotony of this place. The encouragement and input of feelings 
and ideas I had from them was a primary energy to keep going. I am talking about José Agustin, 
The Beatles, Jorge Luis Borges, Chico Buarque, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gabriel Garcia- 
Marquez, Rodrigo Gonzalez, Akira Kurosawa, John Lennon, Pablo Milanés, Milton Nascimento, 
Pablo Neruda, Charlie Parker, Octavio Paz, Elena Poniatowska, Diego Rivera, Silvio Rodriguez, 
U2, Mario Vargas Llosa, and CaetanoVeloso, among others. 
I owe to some friends the support I had in various ways during my visits to Mexico and 
other countries while I was collecting plants or visiting herbaria there. Specially, I want to 
mention, from Mexico, Eleazar Carranza, Goreti Campos, Rafael Fernandez, Rosa E. Gonzalez, 
Ana R. Lopez-Ferrari, Lucio Lozada, Armando Luis, América Castafieda, Rosa Murillo, Martha 
lll 
