page_title: Abel A. Hunter
section_title: Hunting with Powell
hierarchical_section_title: Abel A. Hunter / All about orchids / Hunting with Powell
caption_attribution_description: Sarcoglottis sceptrodes. One of my favorite terrestrial orchids! Easy to grow, with really pretty green and silver striped leaves. And these flowers ain't half bad neither.
context_page_description: Abel Aken Hunter was an American botanist notable for his contributions to science primarily in the collection of the orchids of Panama. From 1915-1935, he was a team member on scientifically significant orchid hunting expeditions with many of the collectors and researchers of the day: Charles Powell, George Pring, Carroll Dodge, Julian Steyermark, and Paul Allen. He earned his reputation in field work as an outgrowth of his friendship with Charles Powell. In a unique period in Panama's history, his first orchid collecting adventure took place with Powell during a fishing trip on the newly man-created Gatun Lake in 1912. By 1915, both Hunter and Powell were living and working in Balboa, Panama. As a hobby, Powell started an orchid garden. Beginning in 1918, the two men would spend leave periods from their employment on extended collecting expeditions: their mission morphing over the years from that of hobby collecting to systematic scientific collecting.
context_section_description: Hunter and Powell coordinated their leave periods to hunt in localities beyond the local area; they made collecting trips to the Chiriquí Province in 1918, 1920, and 1922. In 1918, Powell started submitting pressed, mounted, documented orchid specimens to researchers: first to R. Allen Rolfe in England and then to Rudolf Schlechter in Germany. Rolfe died before completing his study of Powell's specimens and Schlechter took up their taxonomy. In 1922, Schlechter published Orchidaceae Powellianae Panamenses a 95-page study of Powell's orchids, naming five species after Hunter (see "Legacy" below). About Hunter, Schlechter noted: "[Hunter] der sich oft an den Sammelexkursionen beteiligte" which loosely translates to "Hunter often took part in the collecting field trips." In 1924 (after visiting Panama in 1923), The Smithsonian Institution's Paul Standley reported: "For the past ten years Mr. Powell, very often in company with Mr. A. A. Hunter, has conducted systematic exploration in many parts of the country, visiting distant localities, especially the high mountains of Chiriquí. In March 1925, Hunter and Powell went on a collecting trip to the Santa Fe in Veraguas Province.
caption: Sarcoglottis hunteriana
   Schlechter dedicated to Hunter
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