Paul Carpenter Standley (March 21, 1884 – June 2, 1963) was an American botanist known for his work on neotropical plants. __TOC__ Standley was born on March 21, 1884 in

Avalon, Missouri Avalon is an unincorporated community in southern Livingston County, Missouri, United States. It is located on Missouri Route H, approximately one mile east of U.S. Route 65 and ten miles southeast of Chillicothe. Avalon was platted in 1869. The ...

. He attended

Drury College Drury University, formerly Drury College and originally Springfield College, is a private university in Springfield, Missouri. The university's mission statement describes itself as "church-related". It enrolls about 1,700 undergraduate and grad ...

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estima ...

and New Mexico State College, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1907, and received a master's degree from New Mexico State College in 1908. He remained at New Mexico State College as an assistant from 1908–1909. He was the Assistant Curator of the Division of Plants at the

United States National Museum The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

from 1909 to 1922. In spring, 1928, he took a position at the

Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

in Chicago, where worked until 1950. While at the Field Museum he did fieldwork in Guatemala between 1938 and 1941. After his retirement in 1950, he moved to the '' Escuela Agricola Panamericana,'' where he worked in the library and herbarium and did field work until 1956, when he stopped doing botanical work. In 1957 he moved to

Tegucigalpa Tegucigalpa (, , ), formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District ( es, Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or ''Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.''), and colloquially referred to as ''Tegus'' or ''Teguz'', is the capital and largest city ...

, Honduras, where he died on June 2, 1963. He contributed to the ''Trees and Shrubs of Mexico, Flora of Guatemala'', and ''Flora of Costa Rica''.

Family

His sister Penelope "Nellie" Standley was also a botanical collector.

Honours

Three genera of plants have been named after him; in 1932, botanist Alexander Curt Brade published '' Standleya'', which is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...

s from Brazil, belonging to the family

Rubiaceae The Rubiaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the coffee, madder, or bedstraw family. It consists of terrestrial trees, shrubs, lianas, or herbs that are recognizable by simple, opposite leaves with interpetiolar stipules ...

. Then in 1971, botanists R.M. King & H. Rob. published '' Standleyanthus'', which is a genus of

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

n plants in the boneset tribe within the sunflower family. Lastly in 1993, botanist Frank Almeda published ''

Stanmarkia ''Stanmarkia'' is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Melastomataceae. It is native to south-eastern Mexico and Guatemala. The genus name of ''Stanmarkia'' is in honour of 2 American botanists; Paul Carpenter Standley (1884–196 ...

'', which is a genus of

s from Mexico and Guatemala, belonging to the family

Melastomataceae Melastomataceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants found mostly in the tropics (two-thirds of the genera are from the New World tropics) comprising c. 175 genera and c. 5115 known species. Melastomes are annual or perennial herbs, s ...

. The name also honours another American botanist

Julian Alfred Steyermark Julian Alfred Steyermark (January 27, 1909 – October 15, 1988) was a Venezuelan American botanist. His focus was on New World vegetation, and he specialized in the family Rubiaceae. Life and work Julian Alfred Steyermark was born in St. Louis ...

(1909–1988).

References

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External links

*
Standley's botanical collecting notebooks vol.1
in Field Museum Digital Collections
more volumes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Standley, Paul Carpenter Orchidologists 1884 births 1963 deaths Botanists active in Central America People associated with the Field Museum of Natural History New Mexico State University alumni People from Livingston County, Missouri 20th-century American botanists