Biography

North American botanist who collected plants in Central America. Donnell Smith was born in Baltimore and graduated from Yale University in 1847. After beginning a career as a lawyer and businessman, he served as a Confederate captain of the artillery in the U.S. Civil War (1864-1865). After the war he retired from business and dedicated himself to botany. He carried out much collecting in the southern states in the 1870s and in the 1880s developed a special interest in the flora of Central America. He made several trips to this region, collecting in Guatemala and Costa Rica in particular, and built up a sizeable herbarium which he gave to the Smithsonian Institution in 1905. As well as this collection of more than 100,000 specimens, he donated his botanical library of more than 1,600 volumes, and was in that year elected an honorary associate of the U.S. National Herbarium. Donnell Smith stimulated much interest in the botany of Central America and subsidised the work of Hans von Türckheim, with whom he collected. His own and Türckheim's collections formed the basis of his Enumeratio plantarum guatemalensium (1889-1907), which covered 3,736 species. He was also a great friend of Harvard botanist Sereno Watson and corresponded with many European botanists. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and at the time of his death in 1928 was the oldest living graduate of Yale University.

Sources:
J.M. Coulter, 1908, "Library of John Donnell Smith", Botanical Gazette, 46(4): 310
D.G. Frodin, 2001, Guide to Standard Floras of the World: 274
G. Sayre, 1975, "Cryptogamae Exsiccatae: an annotated bibliography of exsiccatae of algae, lichens, hepaticae, and music. V. Unpublished Exsiccatae: I. Collectors", Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 19(3): 400
P.C. Standley, 1929, "John Donnell Smith", Tropical Woods, 18: 55-56.