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130 went on until the publication of the map in 1904. A great part of the botanical exploration of the country followed the routes of the mapping expeditions. “Perhaps the most important result of these efforts were his travels to the southern region of the country, almost unexplored at that time” (Castro Castro & Colombo Víquez, 1989: 114). Although hired to teach at secondary schools, Pittier had more ambitious ideas and immediately after his arrival in Costa Rica started to fight for the formation of a meteorological observatory and an institute. The Meteorological Institute (Fig. 43C) was founded in April 1888, under the direction of Pittier. “Shortly before Pittier arrived, a young Costa Rican named Anastasio Alfaro (1865-1951) (Fig. 43D) had persuaded the government to organize a national museum. Alfaro had overcome the obstacles facing any student of the sciences in Costa Rica (such as the lack of mentors and facilities) to become an essentially selftaught naturalist and archaeologist and a collaborator with several important U.S. scientists. Minister of Development Cleto González Víquez... had dispatched Alfaro on a mission to the United States to learn about the latest techniques in museum organization. On Alfaro’s return in May 1887, the government funded the creation of the Museo Nacional and named Alfaro its first director” (Eakin, 1999: 127). Pittier, who had been in Costa Rica for only two months, was named on the Board of Directors of the Museum, together with Pablo Biolley and José Cástulo Zeledón. With the publication of a list with the known plants of Costa Rica, an interest awoke in professor Alfaro for the study of botany which lasted to his last days (Alfaro, 1888). Alfaro wrote, a few months after the inauguration of the Museo Nacional: “And in no way can this void [the absence of studies about the vegetation of the country] be filled if not with the formation of collections in which day by day the material accumulates that is indispensable to achieve a correct scientific knowledge” (cited in Viales & Clare, 2006: 12). He paid great attention to orchids, ferns, mosses and cacti, making important discoveries in each of these groups. The list published by Alfaro was an extract of the botanical part of the Biologia Centrali-Americana of W. B. Hemsley (from the Botanic Gardens at Kew), edited by the British naturalists Godman and Salvin some years earlier. LANKESTERIANA LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. Unfortunately, Alfaro and Pittier, the two major scientific entrepreneurs in the small country, never could agree on how to organize their operations. In 1889 the government consolidated the Museum and the Meteorological Institute into one center, the ‘Instituto Físico-Geográfico Nacional de Costa Rica’. This was a temporary triumph for Pittier, who was named director. However, integration only lasted a few months and the Museum was again separated from the rest of the Institute. In 1890, Pittier became part of the staff of the recently founded School of Agriculture, where he as in charge of the practical instruction. In 1898, a severe economic crisis led the government to cut expenses and to eliminate entire agencies and departments. One of them was the Instituto Físico-Geográfico. “The small staff of the Museum took custodial care of the collections that Pittier and Alfaro had amassed over the previous decade (especially the Herbario Nacional)” (Eakin, 1999: 133). But Pittier continued fighting. In 1901 he apparently persuaded politicians of the practical benefits that his research in economic botany could bring. The government, at a time when the nation was feeling the worst consequences of coffee monoculture, revived the IFG, which absorbed the Museo Nacional as one of its divisions. However, constant intrigues and lack of funds led to Pittier’s final falling out with the government. In 1905 he left the country to work in the United States and on to a long and distinguished career in Venezuela until his death in 1950. With his departure, the Instituto lost its creator and engine, and Costa Rica a dynamic and prolific scientist. “Within a month, Anastasio Alfaro became the new director of the Instituto. The government assigned an assistant to care for the collections in each of the three sections: the Museo, the observatory, and the herbarium. In effect, the Instituto was reduced to a collection of plants and an assistant who made daily meteorological observations. In 1910 the observatory became an official division of the Museo Nacional, and the Instituto essentially ceased to exist in name as well as fact” (Eakin, 1999: 135-136). Alfaro was not really a botanist and even less an orchidologist. In Pittier’s opinion, “Alfaro is hardly a collector, botanically speaking… He is before everything a native lawyer and his work in natural history is of the amateur kind” (Häsler & Baumann, 2000: 145). Notwithstanding,
ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America he collected many specimens that were described as new species of Orchidaceae, and many others were dedicated to him: Epidendrum alfaroi Ames & Schweinf. (A. Alfaro, 174), Epidendrum anastasioi E. Hágsater, Maxillaria alfaroi Ames & Schweinf. (A. Alfaro, 284), Stelis alfaroi Ames & Schweinf. (A. Alfaro, s.n.). Lankester and Ames had great respect of him: “Some interesting, and baffling specimens have just arrived from your hacienda. Also a few good things from Alfaro…” (Letter from Ames to Lankester, Jan. 23rd, 1926). From the beginning, Pittier had considered the botanical exploration of Costa Rica as one of the main activities of the Instituto Físico-Geográfico. “Pittier began sampling plants for the herbarium in the vicinity of San José and eighteen months later had collected 2,500 specimens” (León, 2002: 147). Pittier collected in Costa Rica until his departure in 1905. During the same year he visited and collected in Guatemala. Between 1906 and 1907 he was again briefly in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica. Finally, he traveled to Panama employed by the United States Department and collected there intensively between 1910 and 1917. In 1908, with the support of the United States government, he published his important work Plantas Usuales de Costa Rica (Pittier, 1908). In Costa Rica, Pittier had researched in geology, meteorology, ethnology, botany, cartography and archeology. In Panama, without forgetting his other interests, he dedicated himself almost exclusively to the botany. From 1910 to 1912 he took part in the ‘Biological Exploration of Panama’ of the Smithsonian Institution, collecting over 4.000 specimens (Fig. 43E). “With these words he described his first encounter with the astounding biodiversity of the isthmus: ‘I set everything up Friday night and yesterday, December 31, 1910, I began collecting. From the beginning I convinced myself of the impossibility of finishing the task alone, confronted with a profusion of plants flowering in these first months of the summer or dry season.’[...] He asked to be assisted by William R. Maxon, from the New York Botanical Garden, to study the mosses, cacti, orchids and bromeliads. [...] He had tried to get Adolphe Tonduz as his assistant, but his countryman had already departed from Costa Rica to Guatemala (Heckadon-Moreno, 1998: 81).” Upon 131 returning to Washington, he set himself to analyze and publish the scientific information of his vast collection of plants from Panama, many of them new to science. In this research he was assisted by a young botanist who would later become famous in the history of the botanical exploration of Central America: Paul C. Standley. “Pittier was the driving force behind the decision of [Panamanian] president Porras to establish within the Ministry for Development… the Agricultural Service [...] The ‘Estación Experimental de Matías Hernández’, the first agricultural research center in Panama, was established in 1916. Pittier was its first director” (Heckadon-Moreno, 1998: 87). He was always interested in orchids. While working on his Primitiae Flora Costaricensis he sent a great number of specimens to his friend Théophile Durand in Brussels, who passed them on to Schlechter in Berlin for identification. The orchids collected in Panama during his work for the United States government went the same way. “In Panama he had obtained specimens from the collections of David D. Gaillard and Mrs. Harry Harwood Rousseau and had formed, during the botanical exploration of the Smithsonian (together with Maxon) a large collection of orchids in the Canal Zone and Chiriquí” (Standley, 1925: 357-358). Among the latter 18 new species were found. After initial differences (Schlechter during some time refused to return the material sent by Pittier), Pittier worked together with Schlechter until the death of the German scientist in 1925. In 1906, Schlechter dedicated a new genus of Orchidaceae to Pittier: Pittierella (today a synonym of Cryptocentrum). Among the types of new species discovered by Pittier are: Cranichis pittieri Schltr., Epidendrum cardiophorum Schltr. (Pittier 9519, Costa Rica), Epidendrum henrici Schltr. (Pittier 2176, Costa Rica), Epidendrum insulanum Schltr. (Pittier 16350 Herb. Nac., Costa Rica), Kefersteinia costaricensis Schltr. (Pittier 16058, Costa Rica), Lockhartia pittieri Schltr. (Pittier 3401, Panama), Microstylis (= Malaxis) carpinterae Schltr. (Pittier & Tonduz 4394 Herb. Nac., Costa Rica), Notylia pittieri Schltr. (Pittier 6850, Costa Rica), Oncidium pittieri Schltr. (Pittier 10310, Costa Rica), Oncidium salvadorense Schltr. (Pittier 5753, El Salvador)., Prosthechea abbreviata (Schltr.) W. E. Higgins (Pittier & Tonduz s.n., Costa Rica), Sauroglossum nigricans Schltr. (Pittier s.n., LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.
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LANKESTERIANA 9(1-2): 1-268. 2009.
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In Belize, the Botanical Station wa
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despotism penetrated the social sec
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ut we believe that they resemble th
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Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco (Gómez-Po
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