The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 29, No. 1, January 2026.

Retirements

Pedro Acevedo-Rodríguez retired in July 2025 after 36 years of service at the Smithsonian Institution. He joined the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in March 1989, first as an Assistant Curator and then promoted to Associate and full Curator. His work at the Smithsonian focused on three main, often-interconnected themes: (1) taxonomy and systematics of Neotropical Sapindaceae, (2) floristic diversity and biogeography of the West Indies, and (3) Neotropical climbing plants. He is the author or coauthor of 77 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, in addition to 7 books. Within those publications he is the taxonomic author of 80 new taxa, mostly of Sapindaceae, including two new genera Alatococcus and Allophylastrum. For two of those larger publications—"Melicocceae (Sapindaceae) Melicoccus and Talisia," Flora Neotropica, 87: 1-179, 2003; and Bejucos y plantas trepadoras de Puerto Rico e Islas Virgenes, Smithsonian Institution, 2003—he won the 2003 NMNH Science Achievement Award. 

Acevedo received a B.S. from the University of Puerto Rico in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1989, with the New York Botanical Garden curator and renowned tropical botanist Scott Mori as his advisor. His dissertation on Serjania (published in the Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 67: 1-96, 1993) set the stage for a lifelong passion for neotropical Sapindaceae and tropical climbers more broadly. One of his most significant recent projects has been synthesizing this knowledge with collaborators in the book-length monograph, “Families and genera of climbing plants in the Neotropics” (A Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge, 2025) which covers 109 families and 735 genera. 

Besides using traditional systematics approaches to document climbing plants, Acevedo has been interested in the evolution of climbing mechanisms and stem structure adaptations that are potentially correlates of diversification, especially for species-rich clades within Sapindaceae. Those adaptations include specialized climbing structures like hooks and tendrils, as well as stems with many types of anomalous secondary growth. Collecting woody stem sections of lianas and illustrating their structure in publications became important aspects of Acevedo’s research. 

In addition to his work on climbers, Acevedo is deeply interested in Caribbean botany including its floristics, complex biogeography, evolution, and history of its botanists. Especially important to the botanical community is his “Catalogue of seed plants of the West Indies” (Acevedo-Rodríguez & M.T. Strong, Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98: 1-1192, 2012), which has been continued as an updated and searchable online compendium (https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/botany/WestIndies/catalog.htm) and provides an authoritative list of accepted species, synonymy, distributions, and common names for the over accepted 12,000 taxa in the flora and over 30,000 names treated.

Acevedo has been a mentor of graduate students and post-docs and a strong supporter of visitors to the U.S. National Herbarium, especially for the past 15 years as chair or co-chair of the Botany Travel Award Committee, which awards fellowships to do research in the herbarium. He was a long-time member of the boards guiding major floristics projects, including Flora Neotropica Organization and Flora of the Guianas Consortium. 

He has widely collected throughout the Neotropics from Central America (Mexico, Panama), the Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico), and South America (Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname), and Africa (Madagascar). He also has significantly added to the U.S. National Herbarium wood collection. Acevedo has seven species named for him in six different families (but no Sapindaceae) for which he made the type collections.

Acevedo’s interest in wood extends to a hobby of fine woodworking and building furniture from exotic tropical woods. In retirement, while continuing as a Research Associate and finishing the Sapindaceae for Flora Mesoamericana, he is moving back to Puerto Rico where he plans to grow tropical plants and continue studying Caribbean botany to produce a practical manual and account of the botanical history for the flora of Puerto Rico. His famous sangria will be much missed at social events. Also see his prior curator profile in The Plant Press 6(1): 1, 11; 2003.