American agricultural explorer. Wilson Popenoe was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1892. When he was nine years old, he lived for a year in Costa Rica, where his father owned a gold-mining venture that failed. Afterwards the family moved to Altadena, in southern California, and operated a commercial nursery specialising in tropical and subtropical plants.

While still a high school student, Popenoe propagated Mexican avocado budwood for his father and corresponded with botanical authorities in the West Indies and elsewhere. His only formal training in botany was a year at Pomona College as a special student under Charles Fuller Baker, who encouraged him to pursue a career in tropical agriculture. In 1912-1913 he and his older brother, Paul, were sent by their father on a journey to the Middle East and Africa to obtain and ship back date palm offshoots for the nursery. On his return, he rejected the offer of a four-year scholarship to Cornell University and joined the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), in the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction under D.G. Fairchild, as an agricultural explorer. His first assignment, in 1913-1914, with A.D. Shamel and P.H. Dorsett, was to study navel oranges and other horticultural possibilities in Brazil. He then went to Florida and Cuba on the Mango Project in 1915, to Guatemala in 1916-1917 and Mexico in 1918-1919 on the Avocado Project, and finally on extensive plant explorations of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia in 1920 and of Ecuador, Peru, and Chile in 1921.

In 1925, after being delegated for several years to bureaucratic work which he was not cut out for, he left the government service and landed a job as an agronomist with the United Fruit Company. He chose the site of the Lancetilla Agricultural Experiment Station at Tela, on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras, and from 1933 to 1940 served as the company's chief agronomist and director of tropical agricultural research.

The station at Lancetilla, which developed into a famous 800-acre botanical garden of introduced plants, was transferred to the Honduran government in 1974 and renamed Jardin Botánico Dr Wilson Popenoe. During this period Popenoe was frequently detached for special missions, often as an expert consultant to Latin American governments or on projects for the USDA, including assisting on an agricultural survey of Cuba.

In 1940 he was borrowed by Merck and Company to survey and label trees of Cinchona ledgeriana Bern. Moens ex Trimen in Guatemala, selecting individual high-quinine trees for propagation as part of the war effort. In 1941 the president of the United Fruit Company, Samuel Zemurray, decided to establish a school of agriculture where Latin Americans could receive up-to-date training. Popenoe was appointed founding director, a position he held until 1957. The Pan American School of Agriculture was built on a large tract of land near Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and had its official opening on Columbus Day 1944.

Popenoe's major publication is The Manual of Tropical and Subtropical Fruits (1924), which is still a standard reference. He received honorary doctorates from Pomona College, the University of Florida, and the University of San Marcos, and orders of merit from the governments of Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Cuba, and Guatemala, as well as the Frank N. Meyer Medal for plant exploration and plant introduction. His home in Guatemala, a magnificent 17th century colonial mansion which he restored with his first wife, Dorothy, is a tourist attraction and the subject of Louis Adamic's book The House in Antigua (1937). Some of his botanical discoveries have been named after him such as Begonia popenoei Standl. and Dahlia popneovii Saff. from Guatemala, and including Macleania popenoei S.F. Blake and Passiflora popenovii Killip from Ecuador.

Sources:
Anon, 1942, "Wilson Popenoe: In Appreciation", California Avocado Society 1942 Yearbook, 27: 11-12
J. Moran, 1999, "Popenoe did much to change Banana Republic image of Honduras", Honduras This Week, 27 September 1999, 176: 1-4
F. Rosengarten Jr, 1991, Wilson Popenoe: Agricultral Explorer, Educator, and Friend of Latin America.