From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 1
By Warren Wagner
José Cuatrecasas (1903–1996) is widely considered to be one of the great botanical explorers of the South American páramo. Cuatrecasas was born on 19 March 1903, in Camprodón, Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. He studied in Barcelona and Madrid (1924–1931) and later in Berlin (1932–1938). His first publication was in 1924, when he was 21 years old. By 1932 he was an internationally recognized botanist and was invited by the Colombian government to the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of José Celestino Mutis (1732–1808). In 1938 he returned to Colombia and while there was warned about the tragic political situation unfolding in Spain; the growing power of Franco had made it unsafe for him to return home. In the years that followed, he worked in Colombia (1939–1947), in Chicago at the Field Museum (1947–1955), and in Washington here in the Department of Botany (1955–1996).
From his very first trip to South America in 1932, Cuatrecasas began working on the subtribe Espeletiinae of the Compositae family. The Espeletiinae, commonly known as “frailejones,” are not just one of the most fascinating radiations of the Neotropics, but also one of the most challenging plant groups to study because of the complex variation patterns and extensive hybridization present in an evolutionary radiation of young age. More than six decades later, after describing dozens of new species and most of the genera, he was still refining the text, analyses, illustrations, and photographs for his growing and already very large monographic manuscript.
During expeditions to South America (1932–1979) José Cuatrecasas made more than 28,000 plant collections. He compiled an astounding photographic archive with more than 20,000 images, accompanied by detailed descriptions. He published more than 250 research papers, including 3,308 new taxa of plants. His field collection books, journals, and images are housed in the Botany Department and are being digitized and organized for wide access via a web site that has been developed by Mauricio Diazgranados and Vicki Funk, which will launch in 2013.
Cuatrecasas died at age 93 on 23 May 1996, only about ten days after his last working visit to the U.S. National Herbarium. Don José worked energetically right up until the end of his life, even continuing to talk about preparations for the publication of his manuscript on the Espeletiinae while in the hospital. During the days he was in the hospital I made sure he knew that we were committed to help prepare his manuscript for publication and publish it. It has been far longer than I hoped and the manuscript has been streamlined editorially and the illustrations and photographic plates processed for publication over a number of years. Two biographies of his life were published shortly after his death (Compositae Newsletter 29: 1-30. 1996; Taxon 46: 132-134. 1997).
While it has taken far longer than I hoped to edit the text, revise illustrations, and process photographic plates, it was finally submitted for publication to the Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden under a publication agreement made in 2008. The book-length monograph, A Systematic Study of the Subtribe Espeletiinae (Heliantheae, Asteraceae), is nearly 700 pages with 269 illustrations and 68 photographic plates providing detailed and illustrated descriptions of all of the genera consisting of 105 species (one small group of the lineage was not finished) along with analyses of the taxonomy, morphology, evolution and biogeography. Recently I have received have word from Jim Miller, Dean and Vice President for Science, at New York Botanical Garden that Cuatrecasas’ career masterpiece will be published by the end of January or early February 2013. It will be wonderful to see José’s magnum opus brought to completion, made available to all, and forming the basis for continued study of this fascinating group of plants.
Comments