1952] 



PLANT HUNTING IN ECUADOR 



19 



thousand little courtesies extended to a stranger as one would go about one's 

 daily tasks. None of these can be properly acknowledged here. 



I would also wish to thank the Director of the New York Botanical Garden for 

 having obtained a grant of $2,500 for the work of the last six months. It was an 

 opportunity which I felt should not be wasted, since I knew something of the coun- 

 try and had available a crew of excellent assistants already trained in the details 

 of plant collecting. But to maintain this crew, even at very modest salaries, and 

 to take care of our daily living expenses and travel, it was necessary to add to 

 this sum an equal amount from my own funds. I have never regretted this personal 

 investment toward a better understanding of the complex flora of this part of the 

 American tropics and also to fill out my botanical education. 



Also, I would wish to thank my former colleagues of the New York Botanical 

 Garden who undertook the care of the collections when I left that institution, and 

 especially Mr. John Wurdack, onto whose shoulders fell the usually thankless and 

 always tedious task of sorting the bulk of the collections and of seeing to the 

 typing of the labels, chores which were only partly done when I left. 



Lastly, it is my great pleasure to thank those various specialists in plant 

 taxonomy who have studied and still are working over various groups of this ma- 

 terial. I naturally await their determinations with considerable interest. Some of 

 the specimens doubtless will be from widespread Andean "weeds"; I often knew 

 them to be so, but even "weeds" are often of ethno-botanical importance. Others 

 of the specimens are certain to be from little-known kinds, and so increase our 

 knowledge of them. And a few, perhaps, may prove to be those cherished jewels 

 of all taxonomists— the so-called "new species." And here it should be admitted 

 that, as a person primarily interested in the genetic structure of plant popu lations, 

 I was not above slipping into the collections of groups other than those of partic- 

 ular interest to me certain series of "intergrades" between what I supposed might 

 otherwise appear to be rather sharply defined species. This was not done to fur- 

 ther perplex my taxonomic confreres, but as a possible aid in furthering an under- 

 standing of the complexity of our tropical floras. I trust that, in general, my field 

 notes will serve to indicate the nature of such collections. 



Several technical papers in part based on materials collected during the course 

 of this work already have appeared. They are as follows: 



Camp, W. Ho, Cinchona at High Elevations in Ecuador. Brittonia 6:394-430. 

 1949. 



Steere, William Campbell, A Report of Some Recent Collections of Rubiaceae 

 from Ecuador. Bull. Torrey Club 72:295-311. 1945. 



COLLECTION NUMBERS 



On leaving for Ecuador, there was no idea that any sort of extensive collect- 

 ing was to be carried out; certainly the work of the last six months was not en- 

 visioned. The records of my previous collections had been stored in New York 

 and the boxes moved out of my former office. It therefore was impossible to as- 

 certain the last number in my regular collection series and I had forgotten it in 

 the many activities of the early war years. Therefore it was necessary to start a 

 new series; however to avoid duplications, these were prefixed with an "E" 

 (indicating Ecuador) to distinguish them from the same number of my earlier 

 collections. 



Certain of the collections made during the work of the Misibn de Cinchona 

 have somewhat complicated code letters. This was advisable because of the need 



