FromPlant Press, Vol. 8, No. 3 from July 2005.
Drs. Jerzy Rzedowski and Graciela Calderón de Rzedowski of the Instituto de Ecología del Bajío in Michoacán, Mexico are the joint recipients of the 2005 José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany presented at the 5th Annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium. The medal is in honor of José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist and taxonomist who spent nearly a half-century working in Botany at the Smithsonian Institution. Cuatrecasas’ research, especially in the flowering plant family Asteraceae, was devoted to the classification, biogeography, exploration, and ecology of plants of the paramo and subparamo regions of Andean South America. Out of enduring respect and admiration, the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany was established. This medal is presented annually to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award serves to keep vibrant the accomplishments and memory of this outstanding scientist.
The recipient of the Cuatrecasas Medal is selected by a committee made up of botanists on the staff at the National Museum of Natural History, in consultation with other local plant scientists in the Washington area. This year the Committee was composed of Laurence Dorr (Chair), Pedro Acevedo, Alan Whittemore, and Pat Herendeen. Nominations for the Medal are accepted from all scientists in Botany at the Museum. The award consists of a bronze medal bearing an image of José Cuatrecasas on the front with the recipient’s name and date of presentation on the back.
This year selection committee broke with tradition of honoring a single botanist and offered the award jointly to the Rzedowskis. While their individual contributions are meritorious, the committee could not overlook the enormous contribution their joint efforts have made to tropical botany. Every student of Mexican botany is proud to own a copy of Vegetación de México (1971); the Flora Fanerogámica del Valle de México (1979; 2001, 2nd edition) is an impressive catalog of the flora of one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas; and the Flora del Bajío y de Regiones Adyacentes (1991-x) is a monument to scholarship, organization, and dedication. The award committee also was impressed with their many papers and monographs dealing with diverse flowering plant families, but most notably the work leading to a monograph of the genus Bursera (Burseraceae) in Mexico.
Dorr made the award presentation noting the Rzedowski's contributions to tropical botany. He then introduced Victoria Sosa from the Instituto de Ecología in Xalapa, who read a message from the Rzedowskis expressing their appreciation for the honor and their regret at not being able to attend the ceremony. The Rzedowskis expressed the following sentiment:
“The knowledge of the plant universe of intertropical regions of our Planet is still far from being complete, in spite of the efforts of numerous generations of botanists. It is our belief that the elaboration of reliable and critical floristic inventories constitutes one of the fundamental priorities of the biological research in our countries. Consequently we dedicated more than 40 years to such an activity. Hopefully, the results of this Symposium will propitiate and contribute to expand and render more efficient similar efforts, looking forward toward the production of a reasonably complete World Flora.”
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