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In Memoriam: Alwyn H. Gentry, 1945-1993 |
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Al Gentry
Photo by Robin Foster |
The tragic death of Alwyn Gentry in 1993 was a tremendous loss to tropical botany and to neotropical conservation. Gentry, a field botanist and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, was famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of tropical plants, and for his unwavering, boundless energy. During his 25-year research career, Gentry published close to 200 scientific papers and collected nearly 80,000 plant specimens - he amassed larger collections of plant specimens, from more countries, than had any botanist to this day. And he applied his extensive knowledge to urgent conservation problems.
A specialist on the tropical family Bignoniaceae, Gentry was also an excellent generalist, making him an invaluable contributor to the understanding of plant distributions and of the composition of natural communities in the American tropics.
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Alwyn H. Gentry pressing plants with colleagues
Photo by John Maier, Jr.
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One of Gentry's major feats was the completion of his 900-page Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America. This comprehensive guide is especially important because Gentry highlights vegetative characteristics (such as leaves, bark and odor) for identification, rather than relying on fruits and flowers alone. Gentry's exhaustive reference work will continue to serve as an invaluable tool for field researchers and conservationists. And his independent spirit will continue to inspire generations of botanists and conservationists. |
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