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

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78 five years, collecting mainly in Veracruz, Mexico and Oaxaca. Like many others, he was a guest of Sartorius in El Mirador. He established botanical stations both there and in Zacualpán. In 1838 he climbed Mount Orizaba in the company of Ghiesbreght, Funck and Linden (Galeotti, 1861: 271-73). Galeotti’s herbarium was estimated at 7,000 to 8,000 specimens, containing many new species, that were later described by himself in conjunction with the French botanist Achille Richard. In May of 1836 he wrote from Mexico: “I have gathered already a great number of vegetables, many of which still lack a scientific denomination; they will fill the greenhouses from Messieurs Vandermaelen with infinity of beautiful and curious plants” (Diagre, 2004: 36). After his return to Belgium in 1840, Galeotti was elected correspondent of the recently founded ‘Société Royale d’Horticulture de Belgique’, a position he held until his death in 1858 (Quetelet, 1859: 143). “[Galeotti] trusted the description of the orchids to Achille Richard, the cacti to Lemaire, the Gramineans to Trinius and the ferns to Martens” (Crépin, 1800-1883: 434) (Fig. 31A). His herbarium was acquired by the Society and remains in Brussels. “[...] He went into business in Schaerbeck, but his efforts failed in the wake of the economic crisis of 1848; he appears to have possessed little commercial acumen” (Ceulemans et al., 2006: 55). Some of the species of Orchidaceae collected by Galeotti in Mexico are: Barkeria melanocaulon A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 5069), Bletia adenocarpa Rchb. f. (Galeotti 5345), Cyclopogon luteo-albus (A. Rich. & Gal.) Schltr. (Galeotti s.n.), Cyclopogon saccatus A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 9124), Epidendrum galeottianum A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 5194), Epidendrum longipetalum A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 5238), Epidendrum propinquum A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 5265), Masdevallia galeottiana A. Rich. & Gal. (Galeotti 5075), Pleurothallis violacea A. Rich & Gal. (Galeotti s.n.), Prosthechea chondylobulbon (A. Rich. & Gal.) W. E. Higgins (Galeotti s.n.), Schiedeella violacea (A. Rich. & Gal.) Garay (Galeotti 5120). Two orchid genera were named in honor of Galeotti: Galeottia (Fig. 31B) by his friend and colleague Richard and Galeottiella by Rudolf Schlechter. Achille Richard (1794-1852) (Fig. 31C) had studied medicine but his interests inclined soon towards Botany, and he became one of the most important botanists of his time. In 1819 he published the first LANKESTERIANA LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. edition of his Eléments de Botanique. The Orchidaceae were his favorite family, and his first important work in systematic botany was the Monographie des Orchidées des îles de France et de Bourbon, in 1828. When Galeotti returned from Mexico in 1841, Richard took charge of the study and description of the new species of Orchidaceae planning to publish, together with the former, a monograph of the Mexican species of this family. The first part was published in 1845. Richard’s death in 1852 and financial problems made the publication of the rest of this monograph an impossible task (Veyret, 1997: 17). The Austrian Carl Bartholomäus Heller (1824- 1880), professor at the famous ‘Theresianum’ academy in Vienna, left England on October 2, 1845 in the company of Hartweg (Anonymous, 1854: 117), and collected in Mexico between 1845 and 1848, becoming one of the many guests of Sartorius at El Mirador. In 1846 he sent 14 boxes of orchids to Vienna (Anonymous, 1846: 216). Among his collections we can find the types of Govenia deliciosa Rchb. f. (Heller, El Mirador, W-Rchb. 42259), Mormolyca lineolata Fenzl. (Heller s.n., El Mirador) and Epidendrum helleri Fenzl. ex Hemsl. (Heller s.n). Heller’s accounts of his travels through Mexico are of great interest, especially the phytogeographical description of the region around the Orizaba volcano (Heller, 1847). Before traveling to Mexico with Hartweg, Heller had tried to organize an expedition on his own, for which he had chosen young Benedikt Roezl as his assistant, but the project failed due to the lack of financing (Block, 1985: 1201-1202). A native of Luxembourg, Jean Jules Linden (1817- 1898) (Fig. 31D) moved as a young man to Belgium, where he became one of the first students of the recently founded University of Brussels. At the age of nineteen he was entrusted by the Belgian government (at the suggestion of Barthélemi Du Mortier, botanist and man of state) with his first scientific mission that would take him to South America (Linden, 1894: 117). Between 1835 and 1837, he explored the Brazilian provinces of Rio de Janeiro, Spiritu-Santo, Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo. “Unlike many plant hunters who went to work purely for commercial reasons, Jean Linden had a botanical interest in many species, not just the orchid. It is thanks to him that we have so many varieties of fern, palm, begonia, bromeliad, and so on” (Ceulemans et al., 2006: 7).
ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America His second expedition, in the company of his countrymen Funck and Ghiesbreght (who took part as a zoologist), departed for Havana in October of 1837 and went on to Mexico, resting at El Mirador of Carl Sartorius. Here he met Galeotti, who had arrived in Mexico three years earlier. They proceeded to the east: “Linden first went to Yucatan, and thence to the States of Chiapas and Tabasco; visiting and exploring the districts of Ciudad Real, Cacaté, San Bartolo Titotoli, Santiago de Tabasco, Teapa, Puyapatengo, etc. where he formed by far the largest collection we have seen from those parts of Mexico” (Hemsley, 1887: 126). He continued from there to northern Guatemala returning then to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. “In 1839-40, a disaster threw the smooth running of the expedition into turmoil. Jean Linden fell seriously ill, stricken by a violent attack of the vómito negro, which Europeans call yellow fever. [...] A natural haemorrhage saved his life, but it took a painful three-month recovery before he could return to his collecting” (Ceulemans et al., 2006: 57). Funck and Ghiesbreght re-embarked for Brussels in September 1840. Linden was left on the American continent and eventually returned home via Havana and the United States. A third and last expedition, between 1841 and 1844, would take him to Venezuela and Colombia (where he would meet again with Hartweg), in the company of Joseph Schlim and Funck. “No later than October 1845 - he had been home barely 11 months - he entrusted his old traveling companions, Nicholas Funck and Louis-Joseph Schlim, with a mission to Venezuela and Colombia”. “[...] Linden did not leap blindly into the horticultural trade but viewed his careers as a long-term proposition. He began with an audacious and clever stroke that proved vital in bringing himself to public attention. He wrote to eminent English botanist, John Lindley, asking him to draw up a scientific description of the orchids discovered on his recent travels. [Lindley] accepted Linden’s proposal and began his work of taxonomy which resulted in the publication of Orchidaceae Lindenianae, or Notes upon a collection of Orchids Formed in Colombia and Cuba by Mr. J. Linden (Lindley, 1846). [...] Linden’s maneuver was brilliant. [...] This scientific recognition gained him entrance to the world of professional botanists as well as winning the confidence of growers and orchid lovers” (Ceulemans et al., 2006: 105-106). After starting business in Luxembourg, he established himself in Brussels in 1851, where he found greater possibilities to commercialize his plants and where he found clients who where willing to pay considerable sums for new species, especially orchids. From 1851 to 1861 he was the director of the Royal Zoological and Botanical Gardens at Leopold Park in Brussels. In addition to the great number of species he introduced into Europe, Linden had the merit of studying closely the conditions in which the orchids grew in nature and to adapt the cultural methods in Europe to these conditions, thus creating in his greenhouses ‘real’ microclimates for the plants he imported. Linden, who maintained close relations with English horticulturists, quickly adopted the new techniques of the Industrial Revolution and built greenhouses of gigantic proportions in Ghent and Brussels, becoming soon the favorite supplier of the members of the upper classes. Among his clients he even counted the Czar of Russia. The Linden name is associated with a number of important publications: L’Illustration horticole (1854-1896), and above all Pescatorea (1860) and Lindenia (1885-1906), continued by his son Lucien), commonly ranked amongst the most magnificent and outstanding works in orchid literature. Some of the species the types of which were collected by Linden and deserve to be mentioned are: Brachystele minutiflora (A. Rich. & Gal.) Burns-Bal. (Linden 1237), Gongora truncata Lindl. (Linden s.n.), Notylia orbicularis A. Rich. & Gal. (Linden 216), Oncidium lindenii Brongn. (Linden s.n.), Prosthechea panthera (Rchb. f.) W. E. Higgins (Linden 1236), Sarcoglottis corymbosa Garay (Linden 1232), Stelis ciliaris Lindl. (Linden 203), and Stelis purpurascens A. Rich. & Gal. (Linden 211). Linden had an enormous influence on European orchidology during the last two thirds of the XIX century. His nurseries, managed by his son Lucien after his death, survived until World War I. “It can be said of Jean Linden that, in addition to his scientific merits, he also had outstanding commercial talents. In him, moreover, scientific discipline, a feeling for new discoveries, a love for botanical science and an aesthetic sense were harmoniously combined. It is these qualities that have made Linden an important historical figure” (Ceulemans et al., 2006: 7). LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. 79
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LANKESTERIANA 9(1-2): 1-268. 2009.
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despotism penetrated the social sec
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