Fungal and Plant Diversity of Central French Guiana

Acknowledgments

Scott A. Mori, Georges Cremers, Carol Gracie, Jean-Jacques de Granville,
Scott V. Heald, Michel Hoff and John D. Mitchell

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Botanical exploration and the writing of a guide to vascular plants are expensive enterprises and we are appreciative of the financial support given by the following organizations. Our home institutions, the Institut Français pour le Développement - Cayenne (formerly ORSTOM) and The New York Botanical Garden, have provided us with the opportunity to pursue our studies of tropical plants.

We are grateful to the National Science Foundation (BSR-9024530) for supporting part of our work on this project from August 15, 1991 to January 31, 1995. This award gave partial salary support to Scott Mori, provided funds for managing collections, paid for about 30% of the line illustrations, and furnished a publication subsidy for Part 1 of the Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided support to Scott Mori from December 1, 1990 to June 1, 1991 through a Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for study at the United States National Herbarium. At this time, he was able to dedicate part of his research efforts toward the production of the guide to vascular plants. We thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their long-standing support of botanical studies.

Funds for field work come from a variety of sources. In the first place, we thank The Fund for Neotropical Plant Research of The New York Botanical Garden for supporting much of the field work and many of the incidental costs of all aspects of this project. Without the support of the Beneficia Foundation, our studies of the fungi and plants of central French Guiana would not have been possible.

Another source of funding has been the profit from Neotropical tours organized by Carol Gracie and led by Mori, Gracie, and J. D. Mitchell to various destinations in the New World tropics. We are grateful to all those who have travelled with us and thank them for their indirect support of our research on central French Guianan plants. We are especially thankful to Sheila and Thane Asch, Robert Erler, John and Mary Feltmose, Susan Fredericks, Anne Hubbard, Hazel Tuttle, Katie Lee, Carol Levine, Anne MacNaughton, Sewell Moore, Alan and May Rolle, and Robert and Carol Russell for their additional financial contributions.

Our spring 1991 expedition was supported by the Program for Economic Botany in Latin America and the Caribbean of The New York Botanical Garden (PREBALAC) through funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, and our February 1993 (grant to S. A. Mori), September 1994 (grant to William R. Buck), October/November 1997 (grant to S. A. Mori), and September 2001 (grant to William R. Buck) expeditions received support by the National Geographic Society. We are extremely grateful to both of these organizations for providing the money that allowed us to take numerous specialists working on treatments of various plant families into the field with us. Their contributions have enhanced the treatments of 19 families appearing in the guide to vascular plants as well as improving the ongoing studies of the non-vascular plants.

We gratefully acknowledge the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation (computerization), the Oliver S. and Jennie R. Donaldson Charitable Trust (botanical illustration), the Eppley Foundation for Research (salary support on three occasions), the Dorothy Salant and the G.A.G. Charitable Coorporation (general support), and the Rhulen Family Foundation (botanical illustration) for their generous support. We are particularly appreciative of the support of the Beneficia Foundation, the Eppley Foundation for Research, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the support that made it possible for us to carry the Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana through to completion after funds from the initial National Science Foundation grant were depleted.