Contributions Toward a Flora of Panama. II. Miscellaneous Collections During 1936-1938

Abstract

Among the most interesting botanical collections made in Panama during the year 1937 is a series of approximately seventy-five numbers sent the Missouri Botanical Garden by Gene and Peggy White. Although a part of these specimens is from the Canal Zone, the majority was secured from the neighborhood of the upper Rio Chiriqui Viejo watershed in the Province of Chiriqui, a locality visited in the summer of 1935 by B. E. Woodson, Jr. and R. J. Seibert (cf. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard.-24: 175-210. 1937). A surprising proportion of this collection consists of novelties or additions to the known flora of Panama. The present report also includes miscellaneous collections made in various localities in Panama by P. H. Allen, Manager of the Missouri Botanical Garden Tropical Station, Balboa, C. Z. Of these, perhaps greatest interest is attached to a representative series of plants collected in the valleys of Rio Tuyra and Rio Yape, in the Province of Darien. An interesting account of Allen's experiences during this trip is printed in Missouri Bot. Gard. Bull. 25: 114-122. 1937. Unfortunately a portionof this collection, together with the great majority of a collection of some 1,200 numbers secured during the summer of 1937 by Woodson, Allen, and Seibert, was destroyed by a fire which badly damaged the administration building of the Tropical Station in Balboa the night of September 1, 1937.