Our work on the Lecythidaceae would not have been possible without support from The New York Botanical Garden. NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, the Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory, and the Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics Studies which together make NYBG one of the best places in the world to study systematic botany. Financial support for our studies of Lecythidaceae has been provided by the Beneficia Foundation, the Eppley Foundation for Research, the Harriet Ford Dickenson Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and especially the National Science Foundation for three grants dedicated to the study of Lecythidaceae, the most recent of which was an NSF/OPUS grant that contributed to the synthesis of our research gathered over nearly 50 years. Mapping of neotropical received support from a collaborative grant called the Dimensions US-Biota-São Paulo: Assembly and evolution of the Amazon biota and its environment: an integrated approach) provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). Another source of funds has come from the Fund for Neotropical Plant Research of NYBG. This fund, established by J. D. Mitchell and S. A. Mori in 1981, has supported studies of Lecythidaceae and other Neotropical plants since then and we are extremely grateful to John Mitchell for all he has done to make this possible. We also want to thank Carol Gracie who has organized the ecotour program of The Institute of Systematic Botany at NYBG from which we have received funds for field work, student fellowships, and botanical art, among many other things. Individual support has come from our friends Sheila and Shane Ash, Susan Fredericks, Gerhard Haas, Anne Hubbard, Katie Lee, Carol Levine, John D. Mitchell, Naomi Pitcairn, and Hazel Tuttle. We also thank Susan Fredericks and Ernie Hartley for their encouragement and support to Mori over the years. We have been fortunate to have Bobbi Angell and Carol Gracie as the artist and photographer for the use of their images. Bobbi has prepared almost all of our illustrations of Lecythidaceae and Carol contributed many of her wonderful photographic images. Carol has also helped in countless other ways but especially as a wonderful field companion to her husband Scott Mori. We are grateful to Patricia Holmgren and Barbara Thiers, the Director Emerita and current Director of the Steere Herbarium, for all they have done to make our work easier. We thank Barbara Thiers and the Information Managers of the Steere Herbarium, Emily Ashley, Tony Kirchgessner, Néstor Perez-Molière, and Melissa Tulig, for making it possible to produce a database-driven web site. Mori is especially grateful to Melissa Tulig for entering all of the scientific names and specimen data in the database, for designing the web pages, and for patiently answering all of his questions about data entry. We thank the designers of KE Emu for developing an information system that lends itself so well to presenting taxonomic data. Mori thanks John Janovec, his former post-doc, for opening his eyes to the need to utilize computers in systematic botany. Through him, the Andes to Amazon Botanical Program of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas provided a grant that allowed Mori to purchase the scanners needed to make images and PDF files and to hire help to add the images and data into the system. We are grateful to Don Black for his help in anatomical studies of Lecythidaceae, the late Carl de Zeeuw for his collaborative work on wood anatomy, and Cynthia Morton and Arne Anderberg for their contributions to molecular studies. Mori thanks Eileen Whalen for all the work that she has done since 1992 typing labels and managing my collections and to Ed Hecklau for carefully proofing these and other publications. Mori is also grateful to Tom Zanoni and William R. Buck for bringing his attention to Lecythidaceae literature over the course of many years. Finally, Mori is grateful to his three students of Lecythidaceae, Dr. Chih-Hua Tsou, Dr. Amy Berkov, and Ya-Yi Huang for all they have done to increase his knowledge of Lecythidaceae.
