Flowers of evil: potent chemicals lurk behind some of South America's most alluring blossoms

Natural History, Feb, 2002 by Rob Nicholson

Schultes's devotion to students was legendary, his teaching style unique. In all the years I knew him, we never had an intellectual conversation. He was a man of deeds, who would pass along thoughts that were both gifts and challenges. "There is one river that I would very much like you to see," he would say, knowing that the experiences involved in getting there would ensure that, were you able to reach the destination alive, you would emerge from the forest a wiser, more knowledgeable human being.

Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, has written a biography of Richard Evans Schultes, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (Simon and Schuster, 1997).

"To dream of such plants as Brugmansia in a foreign land and then to go there and search for them is an adult's version of a treasure hunt," says Rob Nicholson ("Naturalist at Large," page 20). Pictured here with his research partner Melvin Shemluck (right) and Colombian herbalist Marcelino Juajibioy (center), Nicholson was one of the many students at Harvard in the 1970s who took courses with botanist Richard Evans Schultes, whose explorations of Amazonia were by then legendary. Nicholson now manages the extensive conservatory collections at the Botanic Garden of Smith College (www.smith.edu/garden/).