The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million specimens, is the second largest in North America, behind that of the New York Botanical Garden. The Index Herbariorum code assigned to the herbarium is MO and it is used when citing housed specimens.
Costaceae, known as the Costus family or spiral gingers, is a family of pantropical monocots. It belongs to the order Zingiberales, which contains horticulturally and economically important plants such as the banana (Musaceae), bird-of-paradise (Strelitziaceae), and edible ginger (Zingiberaceae). The seven genera in Costaceae together contain about 143 known species. They are native to tropical climates of Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Several species are frequently found in cultivation.
Siparunaceae is a family of flowering plants in the magnoliid order Laurales. It consists of two genera of woody plants, with essential oils: Glossocalyx in West Africa and Siparuna in the neotropics. Glossocalyx is monospecific and Siparuna has about 74 known species.
Costus is a group of herbaceous perennial plants in the family Costaceae, described by Linnaeus as a genus in 1753. It was formerly known as Hellenia after the Finnish botanist Carl Niclas von Hellens. It is widespread through tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Dracontium is a genus of flowering plants similar to those of Amorphophallus. Unlike Amorphophallus which is found in the Old World, this genus has a New World distribution and is native to South America, Central America, southern Mexico, and the West Indies.
Phaedranassa is a genus of South American and Central American plants in Amaryllis family, subfamily Amaryllidoideae.
Thoracocarpus is a genus of plants first described as a genus in 1958. It contains only one known species, Thoracocarpus bissectus a hemiepiphytic vine. It is native to Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and South America.
Welfia is a genus of palms found in Central America and northwestern South America. Only two species are currently recognized: Welfia regia and Welfia alfredii.
Atractocarpus chartaceus, commonly known as the narrow-leaved gardenia, is a species of evergreen flowering plant in the madder and coffee family Rubiaceae. It is mostly found in subtropical rainforest of eastern Australia, and it is cultivated for its fragrant flowers and colourful fruit.
Guzmania bracteosa is a plant species of flowering plant in the Bromeliaceae family. It is endemic to Ecuador.
Josemania truncata is a species of flowering plant in the family Bromeliaceae, native to Colombia and Ecuador. It was first described by Lyman Bradford Smith in 1954 as Tillandsia truncata. Plants of the World Online sinks the genus Josemania into Cipuropsis, treating this species as Cipuropsis truncata.
Alwyn Howard Gentry was an American botanist and plant collector, who made major contributions to the understanding of the vegetation of tropical forests.
Costus spicatus, also known as spiked spiralflag ginger or Indian head ginger, is a species of herbaceous plant in the Costaceae family.
Cucurbita ecuadorensis is a species of squash, described in 1965 as growing wild in Ecuador. Like most wild gourds and squashes, it is a creeping vine and is often found climbing over other vegetation. It has been found only in the western provinces of Guayas and Manabí. There is evidence that it was domesticated in Ecuador around 10,000 years ago, likely for its seeds, but no direct records exist and it is no longer cultivated. It is resistant to many diseases of cultivated Cucurbita species, and has been used to breed resistance to several diseases into common squashes. For example, researchers at Cornell University used Cucurbita ecuadorensis to breed resistance to papaya ringspot virus, watermelon mosaic virus, and powdery mildew, into common Cucurbita maxima cultivars. Cucurbita ecuadorensis is listed on the IUCN Red List as vulnerable, and is found protected in the Machalilla National Park.
Passiflora viridescens is a plant species native to Perú and Ecuador.
Excremis is a genus of herbs in the family Asphodelaceae, first described as a genus in 1829. There is only one known species, Excremis coarctata, native to South America.
Evodianthus is a genus of plants first described as a genus in 1857. It contains only one known species, Evodianthus funifer, native to Trinidad & Tobago, Central America and northern South America.
Costus curvibracteatus is a tropical rhizomatous perennial native to Costa Rica and Panama. A member of the spiral ginger family of plants, its common name is orange tulip ginger. It is also sometimes referred to as spiral ginger; however, this common name is better associated with Costus barbatus, a more widely cultivated and very similar species. Despite the name and its relation to the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), the rhizomes of the orange tulip ginger are not edible.
Goniothalamus chartaceus is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Vietnam. Hui-lin Li, the Chinese botanist who first formally described the species, named it after its papery leaves.
Thomas Bernard Croat is an American botanist and plant collector, noteworthy as one of botanical history's "most prolific plant collectors". He has collected and described numerous species of plants, particularly in the family Araceae, in his career at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
