Percy Wilson records

Percy Wilson (1879-1944) first worked at the New York Botanical Garden as a museum aide. Nathaniel Lord Britton, NYBG Director-in-Chief, perceived a particularly effective employee and dispatched Wilson on several of the earliest NYBG botanical expeditions. One of these was the "Total Eclipse Expedition" to the East Indies where he was commissioned to establish official ties with certain botanic gardens of Asia. His success in this endeavor resulted in the procurement of specimens for the garden's young and growing herbarium. In 1902 Wilson joined Dr. and Mrs. Britton on their initial botanical explorations of the island of Puerto Rico.

Soon afterwards Britton appointed Wilson as his personal assistant, a relationship that lasted from 1905 to Britton's retirement in 1929. In 1914 Wilson became an Associate Curator. Three years later he published The Vegetation of Vieques Island, among the studies which originated from the Scientific Survey of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Britton and Wilson's chief collaboration in the survey was Part 7, Descriptive Flora, Spermatophyta. After Britton's retirement Wilson provided continuity in the collaborative relationships established with the Puerto Rican scientific and governmental communities. He retired from the NYBG in 1939 and died in 1944 following a long struggle with a degenerative illness.