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STANDLEY¨S FLORA OF COSTA RICA |
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Photography by Javier Martín |
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Sometimes I wonder what to publish in this web site, I let my mind develop all kind of strategies, some are to difficult to be done yet, like visiting and writing about Durika or Matama mountains at Talamanca range, some trips and articles are been planed now, but in the meanwhile, I kept surfing the net in order to find historical documents about Costa Rica and related topics when suddenly I found the Flora of Costa Rica by Paul C. Standley, this is a classical priceless scientific document published in 1937. I started checking this PDF´s document from my botanical point of view, realizing this Flora of Costa Rica was going to produce a lot of fun in me, and it did, after some minutes reading about species, I checked the introduction of this work and found a really interesting one that shows openly and frantically the high esteem the Paul had for our country, I felt flattered by the good things that he wrote bout Costa Rica.
That´s why we proudly present the Introduction to the ¨Flora of Costa Rica¨ by Paul Carpenter Standley, brilliant botanist who did a great job for Costa Rica and therefore, this publication is for sure a small, a tiny recognition for the huge service he did for us. |
| Javier Martín |
| Costa Rica Info Travel´s Editor |
For downloading full text of Standley´s Flora of Costa Rica (PDF)... |
| Reference at Wikipedia: |
| Paul Carpenter Standley (1884 in Avalon, Missouri – June 2, 1963) was an American botanist. Standley was born in Avalon, Missouri. He attended Drury College in Springfield, Massachusetts 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, where he remained as an assistant from 1908-1909. He took a position at the United States National Museum from 1909 to 1928. In the spring of 1928 he took a position at the Field Museum of Natural History, where he worked until 1950. 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, Honduras, where he died on the afternoon of June 2, 1963. He contributed to the Trees and Shrubs of Mexico, Flora of Guatemala, and Flora of Costa Rica. |
FLORA OF COSTA RICA
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PAUL C. STANDLEY
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INTRODUCTION
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Preparation of manuscript for the Flora of Costa Rica has been the most agreeable botanical work that the writer ever has undertaken, for two reasons. No other area of equal size anywhere in America possesses so rich and varied a flora, and none in North America is at all comparable in these respects. It is improbable that in any part of the earth there can be found an equal area of greater botanical interest. In the second place, work upon the flora has enabled the writer to relive many happy days spent in Costa Rica in 1924 and 1925-26, while making collections and becoming acquainted with several separated and representative regions: the Meseta Central; the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; the Province of Guanacaste, so unlike and yet in some respects so similar to central Costa Rica; the volcanoes; the Canton de Dota; and even the alpine paramos of Dota, the only ones, even if small and insignificant in comparison with those of the Andes, that exist in North America. |
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| Working over these collections revived a host of memories of inspiring days spent in mountain and lowland forests, memories of the most varied kinds, all happy and pleasant ones. It is truly remarkable that in traveling so many miles, afoot, on horseback, and by other, often primitive means of transportation, there should have occurred no unpleasant incidents, nothing more embarrassing than minor failures of modern rather than primitive machines of transport. In few countries of the world, I believe, would it be possible to travel so much and find only pleasant and ever varied scenes, and be received everywhere with simple and sincere hospitality. Elsewhere in Central America the writer has always received most sympathetic treatment and most kindly hospitality from rich and poor, but in Costa Rica even the customary and expected courtesies have been exceeded. |
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It is unnecessary to expand this theme, for the writer has always been extremely enthusiastic in speaking of Costa Rica, and it would be difficult to develop the subject adequately. Suffice it to say that the country possesses a peculiar charm, in part based upon its great natural beauty, with scenes that vary from densest tropical rain forest and jungle to semi-desert, the wildest mountain scenery, with steep scarps, majestic volcanoes, often with smoke issuing from their summits, lovely lakes, swift streams of clear, cold water; and alder-encircled pastures that recall the hillsides of New England. Costa Rica never has seemed to me a foreign country at all. Its atmosphere is homelike, and one feels immediately at home in any part of it. |
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Costa Rica's greatest resource is its people. Ask any Central American outside Costa Rica what is the best part of Central America, and the answer is always the same: Costa Rica. This is not only because of the great beauty of the land, but on account of its inhabitants, who are celebrated for their good schools and stable and truly democratic government. It is a land where no one is very rich and no one hungry. The term that best describes the Costa Ricans is the Spanish word humildes. In its best sense this expresses their naturalness, their dignity without affectation, their contentment, and their happiness. One can not fail to be impressed with the intelligence of the mass of Costa Ricans, and the high learning of many of them, which always is combined with a lack of affectation that compels the respect that well-based education always deserves and receives. |
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