Paper short abstract:

The botanical collections and journals of José Cuatrecasas, a renowned botanist in Colombian history, hold valuable ethnobotanical knowledge of indigenous tribes for this country. To safeguard this information, we have been digitising his archives and present here some poorly documented plant uses.

Paper long abstract:

José Cuatrecasas Arumí (1903-1996) was one of the most important botanists in the history of Colombia. He published 2,936 names of plants, including 939 basionyms, 24 genera and 2 tribes, in a total of 89 families. In addition to his 263 publications, Cuatrecasas left as a legacy more than 30,000 plant specimens and 20,000 photographs, the product of his expeditions between 1932 and 1981 to numerous places in all regions of the country. He was one of the pioneers in exploring the flora of the Andean páramos, and he became one of the greatest experts in this ecosystem. His proposal for a general classification of Colombian vegetation is still used as a reference. In his travels, Cuatrecasas also met various indigenous ethnic groups, named by him as Carijonas, Cholos, Cochas (Kametzá), Cofanes, Cubeos, Emberas, Guananos, Guayaberos, Inganos, Kogis, Paeces, Tucanos, Tunebos, Uitotos and Yurutíes. His explorations were carefully described in his 37 travel diaries and notebooks, in which he meticulously jotted down details from day to day, such as the indigenous names of plants he collected, and their ethnobotanical uses. This knowledge, however, only rests on these documents. Since 2005, a biographical study of Cuatrecasas has been carried out based on the archives of the Smithsonian Institution and an exhaustive review of data repositories and their publications. This information is being included in the Useful Plants of Colombia's database. Some of the unpublished contributions of Cuatrecasas to the Ethnobotany of the indigenous peoples of Colombia are presented here.