Swiss botanist and horticulturalist who spent many years living in S⟣o Paulo. Usteri spent his early life in Zurich and gained his doctorate at the University of Basel in 1905. In 1903-1904 he visited the Philippines, basing his doctoral thesis on his studies of the islands' vegetation. Shortly after gaining his doctorate he moved to Brazil, where he was appointed professor of botany at the S⟣o Paulo Polytechnic. While there he produced a flora of the town's surroundings, Flora der Umgebung der Stadt S⟣o Paulo, in Brasilien (1911), containing some 800 species. As well as his botanical works he produced a number of anthropological texts, and in his later years several works on the relationship of botany to anthroposophy (the spiritual philosophy based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner), such as Mensch und Pflanze (Humans and Plants), published in 1937. He moved back to Switzerland in the early 1920s, where he became more and more involved in the anthroposophical movement at its headquarters in Dornach, near Basel.

Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 3: 418
D.G. Frodin, 2001, Guide to the Standard Floras of the World: 312, 314
E. Quisumbing, 1964, ✢Botanical Explorations in the Philippines✢, Philippine Geographical Journal, 8(1/2): 35.