IANKESTERIANA2 9 2001


DORA EMILIA MORA DE RETANA, A REMEMBRANCE


 JOHN T. ATWOOD

 Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
 Missouri Botanical Garden


 It was with severe regrets that I learned of the
untimely death of Dora Emilia Mora de Retana. In
1985 while completing the Orchidaceae for Flora
of La Selva Biological Station, I started a search for
a Costa Rican with whom to collaborate on a larger
project. After Robert Dressler suggested
approaching Dora Emilia Mora, I visited the
Universidad de Costa Rica where I found her work-
ing patiently with a student over herbarium speci-
mens. I introduced myself forwardly proposing to
collaborate on treatments of Costa Rican orchids,
an approach that visibly overwhelmed this reserved
Costa Rican professor. But I vowed to develop a
project that would benefit her and Costa Rica as
much as myself and Selby Gardens. We made a
pact-I would push her and she would push me.
This led over several years to mutually beneficial
interactions resulting in three hundred Costa Rican
orchids illustrated under Icones Plantarum
Tropicarum. This activity culminated in a volume
with the Field Museum of Natural History featuring
subtribes Maxillariinae and Oncidiinae with help
from Franco Pupulin, German Carnevali, and
Joaquin Garcia.
 Dora Emilia invited me frequently to visit
Lankester Gardens to share a garden visibly thriv-
ing despite dauntingly severe budget constraints.
She kept a vision of Lankester Gardens not only as
a tourist garden for generating revenues but as a
garden dedicated to Costa Rican orchid research.
The living collection of Costa Rican native orchids
served as a basis for most of her descriptions and
line drawings.


 In later years I learned that much of her success
maintaining Lankester Gardens lay in creating a
positive working atmosphere for fostering students,
employees, and orchid enthusiasts. Garden
Manager Oscar Rodriguez would proudly show his
inspired landscapes-the cactus garden, the water-
fall, even a Japanese garden; Jorge Warner his
propagation lab; Carlos Quir6s the exquisitely
curated orchid collection. Carlos, Jorge, and Oscar
would soon visit Selby Gardens with Dora Emilia's
help. Their enthusiastic interaction and good cheer
proved them to be the best of ambassadors. Dora
Emilia also introduced Costa Rican orchid society
member and collaborator Joaquin Garcia to me, a
man of prodigious memory. One evening he
brought me a spidery flowered maxillaria to my
hotel. I identified the maxillaria as Maxillaria
arachnitiflora, but the plant was odd in that it was
somewhat miniature for the species. I was telling
him nothing new, but for that moment the plant
would remain M. arachnitiflora. Dora Emilia made
several visits to Selby Gardens finalizing treat-
ments of Costa Rican orchids, once bringing her
husband Marco who volunteered his time complet-
ing the organization of the spirit collection.
 Beyond her professional accomplishments, her
greatest legacy is to rise above personal ambitions
to foster efforts of those around her. Because of
her, Lankester Gardens is blessed with a talented,
imaginative, and altruistic staff continuing the tra-
dition of fostering others, a tradition that will carry
this garden to a higher level of international recog-
nition. In a very real sense her spirit lives on.