Alwyn Gentry

Alwyn Howard Gentry (6 January 1945–3 August 1993) was an American botanist and plant collector, who made major contributions to the understanding of the vegetation of tropical forests.

Education

Gentry was born on 6 January 1945 in Clay Center, Kansas, and received his schooling at the Clay Center Community High School, from which he graduated in 1963. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1967 with a B.A. in physical science and a B.S. in botany and zoology. He earned his masters degree in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with a thesis on the genus Tabebuia (Bignoniaceae) of central America, a subject which he continued to study at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, from which he received his doctorate in 1972, with a Ph.D. thesis entitled An Eco-evolutionary Study of the Bignoniaceae of South Central America.

Career

As a field botanist and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Gentry was famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of tropical plants. Gentry published close to 200 scientific papers and collected nearly 80,000 plant specimens - he amassed larger collections of plant specimens, from more countries, than had any botanist to this day. He applied his extensive knowledge to urgent conservation problems through the Rapid Assessment Program he pioneered with colleagues from the Field Museum of Natural History and Conservation International.

One of Gentry's major feats was his 900-page Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America. This comprehensive guide highlights vegetative characteristics (such as leaves, bark and odor) for identification, rather than relying on fruits and flowers alone.

Death

On 3 August 1993, Alwyn Gentry was on a research mission to western Ecuador, when the light aircraft in which he was travelling crashed into a mountain ridge near Guayaquil. Four people—the pilot, Gentry, American ornithologist Theodore A. Parker III, and Ecuadorian ecologist Eduardo Aspiazu—died in the crash; three other researchers survived. Parker and Gentry are memorialized in the annual Parker/Gentry Award for Conservation Biology of the Field Museum of Natural History.

Several plant species have been named after Gentry, including: Acidocroton gentryi, Citharexylum gentryi, Crossothamnus gentryi, Eleutherodactylus gentryi, Herpsilochmus gentryi, Metalepis gentryi, Palicourea gentryi, Phyllanthus gentryi and Zamia gentryi. In several instances, Gentry had been involved in the collection of the type specimens of these plants.