This collection consists of Williams’s correspondence (1936–1954], ca.150 pieces) at the United Fruit Company’s Escuela Agrícola Panamericana at Zamorano near Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with Elmer Drew Merrill (1876–1956) at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. These letters concern the following topics:

Honduran specimens Williams sent Merrill as part of an exchange with the Arboretum.

Development of the herbarium and scientific program at the Escuela, with references to Frederick Wilson Popenoe (1892–1975), the school’s director, and visits by Paul Carpenter Standley (1884–1963).

Merrill’s work on Index Rafinesquianus (Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Arnold Arboretum, 1949; HI call no. D20 M571I) and his last work, The Botany of Cook’s Voyages (Waltham, Massachusetts, Chronica Botanica Co., 1954; HI call no. MB C771M).

The establishment by Williams and Popenoe and subsequent publication of Ceiba, a journal covering natural sciences in Central America, the first issue of which contains a foreword by Merrill; discussion of an article he contributed to that issue is also included.

Popenoe’s proposal (1949 for the George Robert White Medal of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (see especially Williams’s letter to Merrill, 7 December 1949, describing the value of Popenoe’s work).

Merrill’s failing health in the 1950s.

A number of Merrill’s letters, beginning 1950, concern the Harvard University–Arnold Arboretum controversy*, as well as the botanical errors of anthropologists and geographers relating to the dissemination of weeds and economic species between Old and New World tropics; he especially criticized the theories of Edgar Anderson (1897–1969), George Francis Carter (1912–2004), Orator Fuller Cook (1867–1949), and Carl Ortwin Sauer (1887–1975).

Also found here is a manuscript (18 pages, n.d., mainly handwritten) concerning the Bignoniaceous genus Amphitecna, which became part of a paper published as “Bignoniaceae of Tropical North America” (Fieldiana Botany 36:4, 30 April 1973). A reprint of this paper is included.

See also Collection 77, P. C. Standley and L. O. Williams.

* In which the Association for the Arnold Arboretum, Inc., brought the Harvard Corporation to court, alleging breach of trusteeship in the Corporation’s plans to remove most of the Arboretum herbarium and library to Cambridge. For more information, see Archives 40, George Lewis Slate: Arnold Arboretum Papers (ca.1954–1957)–1967.