76 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



OPPORTUNITIES FOR BOTANICAL RESEARCH 

 IN CENTRAL AMERICA 



J. M. Greenman, Curator of Herbarium, Missouri Bo- 

 tanical Garden, St. Louis, Mo. 



It was my good fortune during the winter of 1922 to 

 make a botanical expedition through Central America. 

 I have no intention now of giving an account or travelo- 

 gue of that expedition, yet, remote as my topic may seem, 

 there are a few matters relative thereto which, I think, 

 are of sufficient general interest to bring before this 

 group of active scientific men and women. I should like 

 furthermore to say at the outset that by opportunities for 

 botanical research in Central America I do not mean op- 

 portunities offered by elaborately equipped and well 

 manned laboratories in endowed institutions, nor do I 

 have reference to special grants generously made by 

 scientific organizations in Central America to encourage 

 botanical research. These things, as you all know, do 

 not exist in that country. 



I do want to call your attention, however, to the fact 

 that Central America itself offers exceptional opportuni- 

 ties for research in botany — first on the part of the sys- 

 tematist ; second, the ecologist ; third, the plant geograph- 

 er; and fourth, the one interested in the development of 

 economic plant products. 



It is true that the flora of Mexico, Guatemala, Salva- 

 dor, Costa Rica and the Canal Zone, through the labors 

 of Gray, Watson, John Donell-Smith, Coulter, Robinson, 

 Rose, Brandegee, Pittier, Maxon, Standley and others, 

 has been studied somewhat intensively during the past 

 25 or 30 years, but that work has been more or less 

 intermittent, the publications are fragmentary, and there 

 exists today no complete or comprehensive published 

 flora of these countries; and as a matter of fact a vast 

 amount of work must still be done before an exhaustive 

 flora of Mexico or the other countries mentioned is pos- 

 sible. 



British Honduras, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the 

 Republic of Panama have been explored but little and the 

 flora as yet is but superficially known. Indeed, only a 



