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

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It was so that Ferdinand Deppe (1794-1861) came
to Mexico for the first time in 1824, in the company
of the Count von Sack. However, as soon as they
reached Mexico, the difficult character of the Count
made Deppe go his own way, beginning a series of
travels through the country, collecting birds for the
Zoological Museum and plants for the Botanical
Garden of Berlin. In 1828 he traveled to Mexico again,
this time in the company of doctor Christian Julius
Wilhelm Schiede (1789-1836), who was a physician
and a passionate botanist. “They expected to make a
living in Mexico by selling zoological and botanical
specimens to European Museums and dealers. [...] But
they were soon disappointed [...] and although part of
the material which the two friends had collected up to
May 7, 1829, had been acquired by the museums of
Berlin and Vienna, the financial result of their efforts
was far from what they had expected” (Streseman,
1954: 88). Both were guests of Sartorius and explored
in depth the environs of El Mirador and the states of
Veracruz and Tabasco. Deppe had collected earlier
in Guatemala, although no collections by him in this
country have been identified.
Despite the short time they spent in Mexico, Deppe
and Schiede discovered a great number of new orchid
species. Worthy of mention are: Gongora galeata
(Lindl.) Rchb. f. (Deppe s.n ), Lycaste deppei (Lodd.)
Lindl. (Deppe s.n.), Stanhopea oculata (Lodd.) Lindl.
(Deppe s.n.), Vanilla pompona Schiede (Schiede &
Deppe s.n.), Vanilla sativa Schiede (Schiede & Deppe
s.n.), Vanilla sylvestris Schiede (Schiede & Deppe s.n.),
Isochilus major Schltdl. & Cham. (Schiede & Deppe
1046), Vanilla pompona Schiede (Schiede 1043),
Campylocentrum schiedei (Rchb. f.) Benth. & Hemsl.
(Schiede s.n.), Dichaea neglecta Schltr. (Schiede
1053), Pleurothallis schiedei Rchb. f.. (Schiede, W
25687), and Lepanthes schiedei Rchb. f. (Schiede s.n.)
Many species were dedicated to them and Schiede
was honored with a new genus created by Schlechter:
Schiedeella (Fig. 30A). Aside from their botanical
interests, Deppe and Schiede were important
contributors to the study of Mexican fauna and
collaborated with the German zoologist Wiegmann,
an important investigator of tropical amphibians and
reptiles. Schiede made also interesting observations on
general aspects of the vegetation in the regions which
21 Lavater was Swiss consul in Mexico from 1827 to 1832.
LANKESTERIANA
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.
he visited (Schiede, 1829-1830). While Deppe returned
to Germany in 1829, Schiede settled in Mexico, where
he died in 1836, a victim of typhus.
Carl Christian Sartorius (1796-1872) was a German
traveler who arrived in the region of Veracruz shortly
after the independence of Mexico. Son of a protestant
priest, he had been in jail and had lost his position as a
teacher in Germany for political reasons, and decided
to emigrate to Mexico. The majority of the Spanish
residents in the region of Veracruz had emigrated to
Cuba after Mexico’s independence and so Sartorius,
in company with the Swiss Carl Lavater 21 , was able
to purchase in 1826 a large part of the ‘Hacienda
Amazónica’, an estate that had been the property of
Francisco Arrillaga, with a total area of 12,000 acres.
Sartorius established his residence in a place called
‘Paso de los Monos’ (= ‘pass of the monkeys’) , which
he called ‘El Mirador’ (= ‘the look-out point’). El
Mirador soon became a place of refuge for all naturalists
who visited the area and is perhaps the most frequently
cited Mexican locality of collection during the whole
XIX century. Sartorius’ political ideals were soon put
into practice in Mexico. His “ideal city”, as he called
her, was to be a German city. He built a community
house, a library, and rooms for research and teaching.
He publicized his project in Germany and, in 1833,
the first group of settlers came to Mexico. After one
year, 45 settlers lived in Sartorius ‘Monte Libre’ (=
‘free mountain’). But the conditions were very harsh
and Sartorius’ was soon left alone with his plans. A
passionate botanist and generous host, Sartorius
took into his house many of the travelers, especially
Germans, who explored the Mexican Southeast
during a good part of the century. Among them were
Karwinski, Schiede, Deppe, Hartweg, Heller, Galeotti,
Leibold, Linden, Liebmann and Purpus. Many of them,
like Sartorius, had left Europe for political reasons.
Florentin, Sartorius’ son, continued his father’s
tradition. El Mirador was a meeting place for
naturalists and botanists until the first years of the
XX century. Sartorius herbarium is now at the
Smithsonian Institution and contains specimens
collected mainly at El Mirador, among which we can
find Epidendrum viridipurpureum Lindl., Pleurothallis
tenuissima Rchb. f., Lepanthes pristidis Rchb. f.,
Epidendrum cochleatum L., Epidendrum polybulbon