United States botanist. Charlotte Taylor is a curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden who specialises in the floristics of neotropical Rubiaceae and the systematics of the genera Palicourea, Psychotria, Faramea and Coussarea. She is the author of the Rubiaceae treatment for the Flora of Venezuelan Guyana (2004), and is currently preparing treatments for Flora Mesoamericana, the English-language Flora of China, and the floras of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia (Antioquia Department). Other major publications include her overview of Notopleura (2001) and her conspectus of Palicourea (1997), both published in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. She is also involved in floristic inventories for Bajo Calima and the Escalerete Reserve in Pacific coastal Colombia. Dr Taylor was trained in botany at the University of Michigan (BS 1978) and at Duke University (MS 1982; PhD 1987), and as a result of her graduate research produced revisions of Monnina (Polygaceae) in Central America and of Palicourea (Rubiaceae) in Central America and Mexico. She taught at Colegio Universitario de Cayey in Puerto Rico while working on her PhD and afterwards at the University of Puerto Rico for three years. Since 1990 she has worked at Missouri Botanical Garden. She is also a research associate of the National Tropical Botanical Garden and teaches at the University of Missouri-St Louis. The specimens from her collections reflect her research in general floristics as well as her special interest in the Rubiaceae. Additional data from Puerto Rico and Colombia was collected from transects and plots. Charlotte Taylor is commemorated in the botanical species Rudgea tayloriae Aymard, Dorr & N. Cuello, Rondeletia tayloriae Lorence, Breonia tayloriana Razafim. and Lepidium tayloriae Al-Shehbaz.

Sources:
Personal communication, March 2008.