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By NTBG Staff
NTBG senior research botanist Dr. David Lorence was selected as the 2026 recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Botany presented the medal, named for an influential Spanish botanist, to honor Dr. Lorence’s significant contributions to advancing tropical botany as a research scientist and plant explorer.
Over nearly four decades since he joined NTBG as a systematic botanist and curator of the PTBG herbarium, Dr. Lorence has been instrumental in guiding scientific research, conservation, and field work throughout Hawai‘i and across the Pacific. His career has been marked by important plant discoveries, collections, and taxonomic descriptions of more than 160 taxa representing at least 25 botanical families and two new flowering plant genera (Kanaloa and Glossostipula). In addition to leading botanical expeditions in Micronesia (Kosrae and Pohnpei), Palau, Samoa, and the Marquesas Islands, he has collected more than 11,000 herbarium specimens.
Dr. Lorence has conducted extensive research on plant species in the Rubiaceae (coffee family), Zingiberales (heliconias, gingers, etc.), Monimiaceae, and other families. He has co-authored and contributed to the publication of the floras of Madagascar, Mexico, Mesoamerica, the Mascarenes, the Marquesas Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa, and forthcoming flora of Micronesia. The José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany, first awarded in 2001, was presented on May 29 at the 23rd National Botanical Symposium in Washington, DC.
