Paul H. Allen

Who was Paul H. Allen?

Paul Hamilton Allen was an American botanist noted for his work on the ecology of Central America, orchid systematics and economically important species including bananas. He was married to the former Dorothy Osdieck of Kirkwood, Missouri.

Allen was born in Enid, Oklahoma. With only a secondary school education, he became a student apprentice at the Missouri Botanical Garden. In 1934 he accompanied Carroll William Dodge and Julian Steyermark on a 6-month collecting expedition to Panama. Two years later, he returned to Panama to manage the Missouri Botanical Garden's field station and later served as superintendent at the Canal Zone Experimental Station. He served as manager of the station from 1936–1939.

During World War II, Allen was one of the few American botanists with extensive tropical experience. He prepared a paper on the "poisonous and injurious plants of Panama" which was published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine in 1943. He joined the United States Rubber Development Corporation and worked on the collection of rubber from wild Hevea trees in the Colombian Amazon.

After the end of the World War II Allen completed an account of the Orchidaceae for the Flora of Panama before joining the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica. This led to the production of his book The Rain Forests of Golfo Dulce. He served as the director of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden from 1953–1954, before returning to Central America to teach at the United Fruit Company's Escuela Agricola Panamericana near Tegucigalpa in Honduras. Allen then conducted a survey of the forest resources of El Salvador and established the Paul C. Stanley Herbarium. In 1959 he returned to the United Fruit Company's research department, where he served as the director of the Lancetilla Experimental Station.