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

ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America
the Altamirano-Harrison Treaty of 1905. [...] English
pressure on Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador to
secure rights on lands in the proximity of the future
canal and on the sites which would help to defend
it was enormous; they pretended from Nicaragua
the mouth of the San Juan River and the port of San
Juan del Norte; from Honduras the Bay Islands in
the Caribbean and the Island of Tigre in the Gulf of
Fonseca and to have economical control on all three”
(Obregón Quesada, 1993: 75).
“[In 1840] ....began a decade of relative tranquility
and colorless governments, during which the most
relevant fact was the arrival in San José of the English
seaman William LeLacheur, who harbored in Caldera
to repair his ship and to find cargo, since he had lost
the load of skins that he brought from the north during
a storm. A coffee grower, Nicaraguan of Guatemalan
origin, who had established himself in San José, called
Mariano Montealegre, entrusted him his harvest, with
instructions to try to sell it in London, based solely
on LeLacheur’s word of honor. The first shipment of
coffee to Europe passed through Chile [...] and then,
via Cape Horn, found its way to London. Over a year
later, the English seaman returned and handed to
Montealegre the hefty product of the sale. The London
market was open” (Cañas, 2000).
The expedition of H.M.S. Sulphur (1836 to 1842),
was the third of a series of voyages organized by
the British Navy for the exploration, mainly for
cartographic purposes of the American Pacific coast
and the islands of the South Pacific. It was commanded
by Sir Edward Belcher (1799-1877) and had been
preceded in 1822 by the H.M.S. Conway and in 1827
by the H.M.S. Blossom at the command of Captain
F. W. Beechey, who explored the Mexican Pacific
coast (San Blas, Mazatlán and Acapulco, with Lay as
naturalist). The botanists of the expedition, Andrew
Sinclair (1796-1861), George Barclay and Richard
B. Hinds (1812-1847), made important collections in
Panama, Nicoya (Costa Rica), El Realejo (Nicaragua)
(Fig. 28B) and the Gulf of Fonseca (Honduras),
whose botanical descriptions where written by George
Bentham. The collections of this expedition are kept in
London (BM), for instance Oncidium ampliatum Lindl.
(Barclay 2769, Costa Rica). Botanical collections were
not the priority for the expedition. The orders of the
Sulphur (Belcher, 1843), read, “Great collections of
natural history cannot be expected, but ... the medical
officers must, undoubtedly, be anxious to contribute
their part to the scientific character of the expedition”
(Jörgensen, 2003).
However, Hinds and Barclay found little to interest
them: “Our visits to the Gulfs of Nicoya and Fonseca
were not productive, indeed the sameness of an
unbroken but dreary and profitless forest was nowhere
more forcibly felt” (Hinds, 1844: 62).
At least five specimens collected by the expedition
of the Sulphur were determined as new species by
Lindley: Epidendrum chinense (Lindl.) Ames (Hinds
s.n. Guatemala), Ornithocephalus bicornis Lindl.
(Sinclair s.n., Panama), Scaphyglottis fasciculata
Hook. (Sinclair s.n., Nicaragua), Oncidium stipitatum
Lindl. (G.W. Barclay 958, Panama), and Encyclia
trachycarpa (Lindl.) Schltr. Among the collections
by Barclay we find Catasetum viridiflavum Hook.
and Maxillaria acutipetala Hook. with the indication
‘Central America, Pacific side’. “Belcher (1843),
Captain during most of the voyage, described the
journey but put little emphasis on the scientific aspects
and hardly mentioned the botanists of the expedition.
The last third of Belcher’s second volume (1843) is
an article written by Hinds in which he resumes The
regions of vegetation” (Jörgensen, 2003: 5).
George Bentham (1800-1884) (Fig. 29B) described
the collections of Hartweg in Mexico and Guatemala
in Plantae Hartwegianae (1839-1857) and also
many of the species of the journey around the world
of H.M.S. Sulphur. In Kew, Bentham maintained a
close relationship with Joseph Hooker, son of the
director and also an excellent botanist, with whom he
began the publication of Genera Plantarum, a joint
effort to resume all genera of flowering plants and
gymnosperms. As an author, Bentham probably wrote
more descriptions of plants – new to science – than any
other person in his day.
Another English collector, William Lobb (1809-
1863), traveled through the Caribbean, Panama and
South America, employed by the firm of Veitch in
Chelsea. Veitch sent Lobb on a collecting expedition
to South America, and he became the first commercial
orchid hunter (Black, 1973: 61). Later, he spent several
months in the neighborhood of Panama and Chagres,
but according to Hemsley, appears to have dried very
few plants (Hemsley, 1887: 134).
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.
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