orchids and orchidology in central america. 500 ... - lankesteriana.org

ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America
retirement in 1940. Maxillaria thienii Dodson (Kupper
374) is one of his orchid specimens and Mansfeld
described a new species, Kegeliella kupperi based on
one of his collections near Tilarán, in Costa Rica. In
a narrative about his collecting experiences in Costa
Rica, Kupper compares the size of the country (“not
even as large as Bavaria”) with the number of orchid
species that can be found, “larger than in any other
tropical country” (Kupper, 1938: 2). During the same
journey Kupper visited Christian Halbinger, in Mexico.
They became close friends and Kupper sent years later
his collection of Vandas to Halbinger, fearing that they
could be destroyed during World War II.
Fernando Solís Rojas collected some orchids
between 1935 and 1949: Pleurothallis amparoana
Schltr. (Solís 345), Xylobium powellii (Solís 354),
and Pleurothallis dolichopus Schltr. (Solís 473).
“In 1943, a visiting American team, led by C. A.
Merker and including fellow forester William R. Barbour
and botanists Elbert Luther Little Jr. (1907— ) and
Wiliam Adams Dayton (1885-1958), surveyed Costa
Rican forest resources in connection with the U.S. war
effort, producing, among other things, an annotated list
of important forest trees and a crude vegetation map of
the country” (Grayum et al., 2004: 23). Among their
orchid collections were Nidema boothii (Lindl.) Schltr.
(Barbour 1037), and Arpophyllum giganteum Hartw. ex
Lindl. (Barbour 1035).
Richard W. Holm (1895-1987) and Hugh H. Iltis
(1925-), botanized in various neglected corners of
Costa Rica in 1949, including the northern plains of
the Guatusos. Their painstaking collections include
Corymborkys forcipigera (Rchb. f. & Warsz.) L.O.
Williams (Holm & Iltis 104), Govenia Lindl. sp.
(Holm & Iltis 136), Pleurothallis phyllocardioides
Schltr. (Holm & Iltis 195), Elleanthus cynarocephalus
(Rchb. f.) Rchb. f. (Holm & Iltis 406), and Oncidium
bryolophotum Rchb. f. (Holm & Iltis 631).
Although the harvest of those years was meager,
not everything was lost. Alexander F. Skutch
(1904-2004) (Fig. 56A), who lived in Costa Rica
from 1935 until his recent death, soon became
one of the country’s most respected leaders in the
study of natural sciences and in the development
of a new relationship between mankind and its
natural environment. At the age of 16, after reading
Shelley’s poetry and essays, he decided to become a
191
vegetarian. Although love and affection for animals
were his initial reasons, he later found scientific
arguments and often stated that one of the main
causes for the destruction of tropical forests was the
need to clear great extensions of land for grazing.
After graduating as a Bachelor of Botany at John
Hopkins University, in Baltimore (1925), he traveled
in 1926 to Jamaica, to study the leaf anatomy of
bananas at a plantation of the United Fruit Company
(UFC), which was the base for his doctoral theses
Anatomy of the Leaf of Banana, Musa sapientum L.
var. Hort. Gros Michel, in 1928. The same year he
received a grant to continue his research on banana
in another of the UFC experiment stations near
Almirante, in Panama. These were his first contacts
with tropical nature. In the early 1930s he traveled
to Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Venezuela and
Costa Rica. As a result, he published many papers
on tropical flora and fauna and became soon one of
the world’s leading ornithologists.
“In 1933-34, Alexander F. Skutch obtained a
small but excellently prepared collection from
several departments [of Guatemala], mainly in
Huehuetenango and Quiché” (Ames & Correll, 1985:
viii). Among his orchid collections from Guatemala
we find Habenaria entomantha (Llave & Lex.) Lindl.
(Skutch 519), Habenaria monorrhiza (Sw.) Rchb. f.
(Skutch 1377), Triphora trianthophora (Sw.) Rydb.
(Skutch 494), Cranichis apiculata Lindl. (Skutch
923) and a new species, Epidendrum skutchii Ames,
Hubb. & C. Schweinf. (Skutch 1715).
He came to Costa Rica in 1935, to the valley of El
General, with contracts to collect plants for museums
and botanical gardens in the United States and Europe.
This income was sufficient for Skutch to continue
with his scientific studies on birds. His collections of
orchids from Costa Rica include Masdevallia nidifica
Rchb. f. (Skutch 171), Xylobium foveatum (Lindl.)
G. Nicholson (Skutch 2147), Ponthieva racemosa
(Walter) C. Mohr (Skutch 2198), and again a new
species, Stelis skutchii Ames (Skutch 3126). Several
years later (1941) he bought a small farm on the Peñas
Blancas river, that he called “Los Cusingos”, the local
name for the orange beaked toucanet (Pteroglossus
frantzii) where he lived for over 60 years until his
death in 2004. In 1950 he married one of Charles H.
Lankester’s daughters, Pamela, who died in 2001.
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.