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

ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America
collections from Ecuador to Dr. Calaway Dodson at
Selby, but without any collection data, which made
Dodson furious, since this made them worthless. In a
letter to Hágsater from December 1975 he complains
that he was not allowed to take 5,000 plants out of
Colombia. Three of Kennedy’s collections became the
types for new orchids species: Pleurothallis kennedy
Luer and Oncidium kennedy Stacy, both collected in
Ecuador, and Epidendrum kennedy Fowlie & Withner,
frequent in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Nayarit,
somewhat to the North of our are of study. He had
large greenhouses in Los Angeles, and normally did
not number his plants until they flowered and he had
been able to photograph them. Therefore, Kennedy’s
numbers correspond to his slides.
Heller and Hawkes: a Nicaraguan interlude. “In
May 1973, while watering the garden of his large estate
high up the hills overlooking Managua, Alphonse
Henry Heller (1894-1973) died of a coronary. He was
nearly 79 years old. Born an American, he studied
mining engineering, worked for the Atlantic-Richfield
Company, lived in San Marino near Los Angeles,
founded his own company and became very wealthy.
In 1956, at the age of 62, he retired from business, left
the United States and took up residence in Nicaragua,
where, as a hobby, he first worked on butterflies and
then started collecting orchids as a very enthusiastic
amateur” (Hamer, 1982-85: 1). Heller had already a
large orchid collection in California. In a letter to
Dressler, Ruth Oberg writes: “Did I tell you that the
Hellers of San Marino and Managua, Nic. came to
visit me on their way south? He moved all his orchid
plants from Calif. (what a job that must have been!),
and now has them planted on trees on the coffee finca
he bought about 8 miles from Managua” (Letter to
Dressler, November 5, 1957). Heller became a good
friend of Oberg and visited her frequently, on his trips
from California to Nicaragua.
Dr. Calaway Dodson first met him in 1955 in San
Marino, and he later visited him several times in
Managua. This is how Dodson characterizes him:
“Al Heller was an extreme intense individual. His
interests were varied and when he became interested
in a particular subject such as orchids, he did so in
a profound manner. He consulted all experts in the
field, he prepared bibliographies, lists and compiled
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libraries covering the total range of the subject. He was
untiring and worked 16 to 20 hours per day. [...] The
results of his efforts are immense. He filled more than
150 notebooks, each two to three inches thick, with
notes on orchids alone. He made more than 12,000
collections of Nicaraguan orchids and illustrated
most of them in color along with extensive notes on
each collection, concerning size, shape, habitat, etc.
[...] Unfortunately, his zeal, enthusiasm, and lack of
patience allowed little room for constructive criticism
from scientific collaborators with the result that in most
cases, communication was lost. He was particularly
lax in making herbarium specimens to document his
citations of species. [...] His illustrations were certainly
adequate, though even he did not consider them works
of art. Al Heller’s contribution to the knowledge of the
orchids of Nicaragua was major even though flawed
by the lack of corroborating specimens in some cases”.
(Hamer, 1982-85: 1) “The enormous increase in known
orchids in Nicaragua from 1956 to 1973 indicates
clearly what may happen in a tropical region when an
astute and dedicated person takes up the study of a major
component of that flora” (Williams, 1973: 987). When
A. Heller died, he left a truckload full of information
on local orchids with drawings, descriptions, color
slides and specimens of dried plants of Orchidaceae,
as well as a large and valuable library, which were
donated by his widow Christiane Heller to the Marie
Selby Botanical Gardens, then under the directorship
of Dr. Calaway H. Dodson. It was this material
which formed the nucleus of the rapidly growing
research department of that institution. The donation
was made with the understanding that arrangements
would be made to use Heller’s work for a publication
and Dodson invited Hamer, who still resided in El
Salvador, to have a look at Heller’s material, which was
the base for the fascicles on Nicaragua of the Icones
Plantarum Tropicarum series, written by Hamer and
edited by Dodson, and later for the Orchidaceae of
the Flora of Nicaragua, published by the Missouri
Botanical Garden (Hamer, 2001). The opinions about
Heller’s work were contradictory. As Hamer writes,
“unfortunately the Heller material turned out not to be
too useful; I had been warned that “... it would be a
mistake to get mixed up with that project, as I feel sure
the sketches must be inaccurate (Dr. Fowlie) or “Yes,
it is true, Heller sent us a lot of scraps, much of which
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.