By Amy Weiss

Dec 24 2019

Bassett Maguire (1904–1991), a botanist who spent the majority of his career at the New York Botanical Garden, led many expeditions to the Guiana Highlands in South America. These plateau mountains, called tepuis, are difficult for humans to access, but hold a great diversity of plants and animals found nowhere else. Maguire and his colleagues would actually be the first white explorers to visit and map a tepui in Venezuela they would name Cerro de la Neblina (mountain of the mist).¹

For botanists in the tropics, travel is easier during the period with lighter rainfall called the "dry season", and optimum flowering often coincides with the transition from the wet season to dry.¹ For Maguire and his expeditions to the Guiana Highlands, that meant the months of December and January collecting plants.¹ Christmas day in 1957 finds Maguire and his colleagues on a return trip to Cerro de la Neblina, exploring the large canyon that nearly bisects the tepui. Of the many collections made on that day, eight would later be described as new species (six are shown here).