Named for Joseph (José) Pavón Jiménez (1754–1840), the Spanish pharmacist/botanist who accompanied Hipólito Ruiz and Joseph Dombey on their epic botanising in Peru and Chile (1777–88) in search of quinine and medicinal plants. On 8 April 1777, King Carlos III of Spain gave permission for the botanists and two artists to travel from Spain to America to study the flora of Peru and Chile, then Spanish dominions. Initially around Lima, and then further afield, they collected plants which their artists painted; they wrote descriptions and pressed herbarium specimens. Apart from a year in Chile (1782–3), about which we know little because all their specimens, diaries, descriptions and paintings for this period were destroyed in a fire, Ruiz and Pavón stayed in Peru until 31 March 1788, when they returned to Spain, landing in Cadiz on 12 September 1788. Thereafter, they spent years cataloguing their herbarium collection and preparing manuscripts for publication. The Florae Peruvianae, et Chilensis, Prodromus (1794), Systema vegetabilium Florae Peruvianae et Chilensis (1798), and Flora Peruviana et Chilensis (volumes 1–3, 1798–1802) were their completed works, but even before the death of Ruiz (aged 62 in 1816), the project lapsed into chaos. Pavón died in poverty in 1840 at the age of 86. Two of the remaining volumes, volume four in 1954 and volume fi ve (part only) in 1959, were compiled from their manuscript notes. Volumes six and seven await publication.