Nelson Zamora

Nelson Zamora is currently a Professor at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. He is a leading authority in Tropical Dendrology, Botany, and Plant Systematics of Tropical Plants. He has worked on projects with Kew, the Missouri Botanic Garden and the Edinburgh Botanical Garden amongst others. Though most of his work has been on the flora of Costa Rica, he has also conducted fieldwork in Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Ecuador. He has also imparted and coordinated courses on Tropical Dendrology and Systematics of Tropical Plants in Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We first met Nelson on a tour for the International Dendrology Society and were immediately impressed not just by his knowledge – he seemed to be able to identify every plant – but by his desire to educate. We were soon saying timidly ‘could it by Myrsinaceae..?’ to be greeted by Nelson’s beaming smile when we’d got it right – not that we did much to start with! Nelson is currently putting the majority of Costa Rica’s 12,000 plant species on plant.net, he’s well on the way…