By Kenneth Reginald Otero-Walker

Feb 15 2024

The preface to the Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Belize (Balick et al. 2000) is dedicated to a botanist remembered as “Belize’s most prolific native-born collector, Percival Hildebert Gentle (1890-1958), whose botanical efforts during the years 1931-1958 made possible subsequent botanical studies involving the Belizean flora.”

Working first collecting for Harley Harris Bartlett and later as field assistant and collector for Cyrus Longworth Lundell, Gentle was well traveled throughout Guatemala and Belize. His efforts would contribute over 9000 collections, many of which were determined by Paul C. Stanley. A prodigious collector of Fabaceae, Poaceae and Orchidaceae, as well as of 230 other plant families, his name has been immortalized by the genus Gentlea as well as by countless specimen which bear the specific epithet gentlei.

Gentle’s collections are known to include Mayan common names as well as other ethnobotanical information (McCormick 2022; Univ. of Michigan; Reis & Lipp 1985). Linguistic, cultural, and geographical data is often crucial to studies of ethnobotany and biocultural diversity; aiding scholars in determining changes in land use and resources management. As such, the collections made by Gentle were crucial to the composition of the Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Belize: With Common Names and Uses.

During his career, Gentle would make many plant-collecting excursions throughout Cayo, Corozal, Stan Creek, and Toledo. Gentle would spend the last years of his life in Stann Creek, an area known for its Garifuna and Mayan cultural heritages. Stann Creek is also home to the first Jaguar preserve.

Though it can be difficult to bring to light the personal histories of “hidden figures” who have made great contributions the botanical world, digitization efforts have provided interesting documentary evidence for contextualizing the story of Percy H. Gentle. Take, for example, a letter written by Gentle to W.E.B. Du Bois asking the sociologist to review a manuscript entitled American Negroes from Bondage to Freedom (Gentle 1950).

Although most of his work is held by other institutions, the New York Botanical Garden does curate over 1000 specimens collected by him, such as a specimen of a rare Vanilla orchid which New York Botanical Garden patron Oakes Ames credited Gentle with rediscovering (McCormick 2022).

Here are a number of botanical specimens in the Herbarium which were collected by, and named for, Percy H. Gentle.