AA History (p. VII-XXVI) - The Global Orchid Taxonomic Network

Orchidology in Costa Rica
Gustav Reichenbach of Hamburg (Reichenbach 1852, 1854,
1855, 1866). Thus, the official beginning of botany in Costa
Rica also coincides with the first scientific steps in the research
of Costa Rican orchids.
Although the botanical expedition to Mexico by Sessé and
Mociño (1787-1803) apparently extended southward along the
Central American isthmus to Panama, passing through the
town of Cartago (McVaugh 1977, Taracena 1983, León 2002),
Costa Rica remained substantially outside the routes of scientific exploration carried out by the Spanish Crown to explore
the botanical treasures of the New World. Because Costa Rica
was located on the border of the political divisions established
for the new Spanish possessions, too far south from the centers of political power of the recently constituted Vice-kingdom of New Spain (in Mexico) and the General Captaincy of
Guatemala, and far away from the capital of the Vice-kingdom
of New Granada established in Santa Fe de Bogotá (Colombia),
it also remained separate from the excited growth of Spanish
botany during the second half of the eighteenth century
(Ossenbach Sauter 2003, in prep.).
However, the aim of our reconstruction is to shed light on the
history of orchidology in Costa Rica, or the sum of events which
frame the relations between humans and orchids, as well as the
humans’ thoughts about orchids, as they occurred in Costa Rica.
This can lead us somewhat astray from the “official” cornerstones of orchid science, revealing some different aspects of the
intimate orchid culture that pervades Costa Rican life.
In no other part of the American isthmus, and perhaps of the
entire American continent, can one find such generalized,
commonplace, passionate orchid-mania as can be observed in
Costa Rica. Not only do Costa Ricans now massively attend the
many orchid shows organized yearly by eleven different orchid
societies (in a country little larger than Switzerland), not only
did Costa Rica select an orchid, Guarianthe skinneri, the
Guaria morada, as the national flower, but the practice of
growing orchids at home, in gardens and terraces - mainly species of Acineta, Cattleya, Guarianthe, Oncidium, Psyschopsis,
and Stanhopea -is common around the country, from the
most sumptuous residences in the capital city to simple huts
in the remotest rural areas.
The work of Linné’s pupil Pehr Löfling was devoted to exploring Venezuela, where he died in 1756 (Steele 1964). Ruiz and
Pavón landed in Peru in 1777, and their expedition ranged
north to Guayaquil in Ecuador (Steele 1964). In 1799 José
Celestino Mutis was committed to shedding light on the flora
of New Granada (which included modern-day Colombia as
well as Ecuador and Panama), where his expedition labored
for almost three decades to produce more than 6,000 botanical illustrations. The corvettes of Alessandro Malaspina, with
the botanists in charge of revealing new plants from the
Americas, sailed along the coast of Costa Rica in 1791, on their
way to Acapulco (Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid 1989). From
an official perspective, botany began in Costa Rica only after
the independence of the Central American republics, almost a
century after the great scientific expeditions to the New World
and, in essence, it was not a Spanish matter.
The visits (around 1839-1840) by Emmanuel Ritter von
Friedrichstall, a Bohemian, and the Danish naturalist Anders
Sandoe Oersted in 1846-47 mark the initiation of botanical
exploration in Costa Rica. Spain had already lost its political
supremacy in the American lands, and the life of the young
nations recently born in the isthmus was open to the cultural
influence of other European countries. In the first decades of
the eighteenth century, a new phenomenon, known as
“Orchido-Mania” or orchid fever (Berliocchi 2000), swept
through Europe, nourished by a general fascination for the
exotic flora. Friedrichstal’s collections at Kew include orchids
collected at Chontales, Nicaragua, and along the San Juan
River, on the border with Costa Rica, but they are all labeled
“Guatemala,” and their relevance to the orchidology of Costa
Rica is, therefore, dubious. Among the collections made by
Oersted, forty-one orchid species found in Costa Rica were
represented (including the pretty Odontoglossum oerstedii,
discovered at an altitude of almost 3000 meters on the slopes
of the Irazú volcano), and they were revealed to science and
humanity during the following 20 years by Professor Heinrich
This very particular Costa Rican orchid-way of life, which simply disappears when one crosses the border to Nicaragua or
Panama, perhaps has an ancient history.
ORCHIDS BEFORE COLUMBUS
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Flying Oncidiums. With the exception of the Nicoya peninsula in the northern Pacific, pre-Hispanic Costa Rica was under
the influence of the Chibcha culture, which extended from
Colombia to the North to include Panama, the Caribbean coast
of Nicaragua, and Honduras. Although the Chibcha culture left
no written documents to explain the relationship of the indigenous populations with native flora, in the southern Valley of
El General, Costa Rica, archaeologists found interesting pieces
of golden jewelry, dated around the 7th century A.D., which
show a surprising resemblance to the flower of an orchid.
These pieces, commonly known in Costa Rica as aguilas,
eagles, have a general shape consistent with the flower of
Oncidium cebolleta (Jacq.) Sw. (treated in this book as a
member of the genus Cohniella): the eagle’s wings and tail
strongly resemble the three-lobed lip of the orchid, whereas
the legs correspond to the callus at the base of the lip, and the
head with the beak to the small column and the hooked
anther of the orchid flower. The similarity of the ancient golden eagles to the orchid flower was first noticed by Costa
Rican naturalist Anastasio Alfaro (1935), and it was supported
by further observations from John T. Atwood and Dora Emilia
Mora-Retana, who in their treatment of Oncidium for the
FRANCO PUPULIN and CARLOS OSSENBACH. Jardín Botánico Lankester, Universidad de Costa Rica.
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2
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1-3. Source: Collection Museo del Oro Precolombino, Museos Banco Central de Costa Rica
Flora Costaricensis (Atwood & Mora-Retana 1999) recorded
the use of O. cebolleta as a hallucinogenic drug in preColumbian cultures in Mexico.
The alkaloid-containing orchid is a substitute for peyote
(Lophophora williamsii, a well-known cactus with hallucinogenic properties) among the Taraumaras of Mexico (Bye 1979,
Schultes & Hofman 1980, Lawler 1984, Ossenbach Sauter, in
prep.). The crushed, boiled leaves of O. cebolleta, or the
sülerkili, are still used in traditional Bribri medicine in Costa
Rica against heartache (García Segura 1994). The Colombian
Sinú culture (1200-1600 A.C.), close to the Chibchas, yielded
similar gold pectorals with mushroom-like, winged representations, seemingly in reference to magic cults using intoxicating
fungi (Schultes et al. 1992). In Costa Rican indigenous rituals,
the association of the Oncidium preparation with the shamanic experience of “magic fly,” a frequent consequence of hallucinogenic intoxication, and the source of the sacred value
associated with the orchid flower, are perhaps convincing
arguments to reconsider the significance of these golden artifacts.
Costa Rican gold eagles should be interpreted as the first
American representation of an orchid species, predating by
eight centuries the illustration of Vanilla in the Codex
Badianus from 1552 (Ospina 1997), considered to be the first
reference to tropical orchids in the western hemisphere
(Reinikka 1995), along with the Aztec wood-cuts which used
Encyclia pastoris, Bletia campanulata, Stanhopea tigrina
and Vanilla planifolia, prepared between 1547 and 1577 for
friar Bernardino de Sahagún’s manuscript History of theThings
of New Spain, a copy of which is preserved in Florence under
the name of Florentine Codex.
The ancient history of Vanilla. The ancient history of vanilla deserves special mention. Besides orchid species and
hybrids cultivated for their horticultural value, Vanilla planifolia is the only member of the family Orchidaceae to have economic relevance. Vanilla fruits (or “beans,” as they are commonly known) are still used worldwide as a high quality spice
to flavor chocolate and baked goods, and their commerce is an
important part of the export balance in some islands of the
Indian Ocean.
Arico aromatico - tlilxóchitl. One of the early representations of Vanilla, from the
Historia Natural de la Nueva España by F. Hernández (1651).
Vanilla had medicinal and ritual uses among the native population of Belize (Balick et al. 2000), but apparently vanilla was
not utilized in southern Central America before the Spanish
conquest of Mexico, and Fernández de Oviedo (1526) does
not mention vanilla among the recipes used to prepare chocolate in Nicaragua and Nicoya (Costa Rica) during the sixteenth
century. In his A New Voyage Round the World, William
Dampier observed vanilla plants growing in Bocas del Toro,
Panama, in 1681, and he noted that the natives sold vanilla to
the Spaniards to perfume chocolate and tobacco (Dampier
1998).
The origin of the use of vanilla to perfume the beverage produced from the seeds of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) goes back to
the early Mayans of Mexico, who were familiar with the fruits of
vanilla and called it sisbic (Bruman 1948, Reinikka 1995). In early
Yucatec Mayan dictionaries, vanilla is mentioned as chocolate flavoring (Coe 1996), and the use of Vanilla planifolia is recorded
during the Aztec kingdom of Itzcoatl (1427-1440). Vanilla plants
were used as payment for tributes during the kingdoms of
Moctezuma Ilhuiacamina and Axacayatl, from 1440 to 1482
(García Peña & Peña 1981). At the time of the conquest, the
Spanish chroniclers Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Bernardino de
Sahagún noted that the Emperor Moctezuma flavored his chocolatle beverage with the ripe fruit of the orchid and with honey,
and the Mendoza Codex (written in Mexico around 1545) mentions vanilla among the tributes that the Lord of Xoxonochco had
to pay to the Aztecs (Ossenbach Sauter, in prep.).
The Miskito Indians from the coasts of Nicaragua and
Honduras used diti bainia, or vanilla, to flavor their beverage
made of cocoa and maize (Conzemius 1984), and it is possible
that Miskitos brought their knowledge of the uses of vanilla
from Yucatan to Panama in the seventeenth century. Since the
Atlantic regions of Costa Rica were included within the range
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Gathering vanilla. In his A New Voyage Round the World (1676) William Dampier described the method followed by the Indians of Bocas del Toro to cure the fruits.
The new republics had no resources to devote to the development of natural sciences, and the discovery of the natural richness of the region was left in the hands of foreign scientists.
Costa Rican botany went practically untouched through the
long period of the Spanish empire in the Americas, and the
new course of its biology developed from the flow of a very
different group of European naturalists and adventurers.
of the frequent incursions by the Miskitos along the Caribbean
to the territories south of their dominions, it is also possible
that Costa Rican natives also learned about the properties of
the viny orchid during the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.
ORCHID-HUNTING IN COSTA RICA
Science and Spanish botany. “According to present rules,
the terminology of orchids starts on May 1, 1753” (Jacquet
1994), when Carl von Linné (or Linnaeus), a Swede, set the
foundation for modern biological nomenclature. It was a fertile
time for tropical botany, and in the following fifty years, the
revival of Spanish interest in knowing (and exploiting) the products of the new territories was responsible for the greatest
biological expeditions that ever set out to the American hemisphere.
Botany comes to Costa Rica. In 1846, A.S. Oersted, a Dane
who entered the country at the port of Puntarenas on the
Pacific (León 2002), started the official history of our orchidology. In a period of ten years, other important orchid collections were made in Costa Rica by Josef Ritter von Rawicz
Warszewicz, a Pole, and by Hermann Wendland, a German.
They were followed in the second half of the nineteenth
century by Moritz Wagner and Carl Ritter von Scherzer, the
former German and the latter Austrian, by Carl Hoffman,
Alexander von Frantzius and the Carmiol brothers (all
Germans), then by Richard Pfau, who was Swiss, Gottlieb
Zahn, a German, and the mysterious A.R. Endres (probably
Austrian). They were mostly explorers and gardeners, more
rarely scientists and botanists, coming to Costa Rica from a
Europe under the effects of the “fever” for tropical flora,
both from the scientific and the horticultural points of view.
Although not all of these collectors are relevant in order to
understand Costa Rican orchidology, some of them spent
enough time in Costa Rica, or made such extraordinary
discoveries, to deserve a special place in this account.
The expeditions of Sessé, Mociño and Malaspina revealed
almost 150 orchid species from Central America, but the scientific results of their work were buried or dispersed upon their
arrival at Spain during days of great political convulsion (for
the dispersal of the Spanish botanical collections, see the interesting reconstruction by Ossenbach Sauter, in prep.), and
most of the collected specimens are still waiting for identification. In Mexico, the work started by Sessé and Mociño was
continued until 1820 by Juan Martínez de Lexarza Lexarza and
Pablo de La Llave, whose explorations were the last example of
“Spanish botany” in Central America. With defeat in the long
war against England and the independence of the Central
American republics in 1821, Spain lost both its supremacy in
world sea trade and its American empire.
Around the time when the Spanish guardians of the treasures
brought from America by the botanical expeditions of the latter eighteenth century were dispersing the dried samples and
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Costa Rica. Hermann Wendland was the last heir to a dynasty
of gardeners and botanists of enormous prestige, initiated by
his grandfather Johann Christian (Wendland I) and continued
by his father Heinrich (Wendland II).
the beautiful illustrations prepared for revealing the richest floras of the world, enthusiasm for exotic plants and orchids
increased in Europe. England’s victory in the long war against
Spain and France gave the British crown a monopoly over
world trade, opening to other European countries new relationships and direct contacts with Central America. The exploration of possible alternative routes for the construction of a
transisthmic canal, mainly the route of Panama and the route
of the San Juan River between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, brought a new generation of scientists and naturalists to Central
America.
At the time of his Central American journey, Hermann
(Wendland III) was considered the world’s leading expert in
palms (Arecaceae) and had only a secondary interest in
orchids. He reached Costa Rica in 1857, entering the country along the route of the “Mountain of the Englishman,”
navigating the Sarapiquí river up to San Miguel (where he
collected the type of Dichaea brachypoda), and following
by mule on the route to Varablanca and the Central Valley.
In the Sarapiquí valley Wendland made important collections
at La Virgen, Cariblanco [where he discovered the type of
Catasetum (= Dressleria) dilectum], and on the slopes of
Cerro Congo. He traveled to the Tilarán range, collecting
around San Ramón and Naranjo (type locality of Maxillaria
inaudita), and explored the main volcanoes of the Central
range. From the Barva volcano he collected one of the first
Lepanthes to be described from Costa Rica, the large-flowered L. wendlandii Rchb.f., and on the slopes of the Irazú
volcano he collected Odontoglossum (= Rossioglossum) schlieperianum Rchb.f. and the beautiful Zygopetalum wendlandii Rchb.f. (= Cochleanthes aromatica). Through
Cartago, Wendland reached Turrialba on the Caribbean
watershed of the continental divide, where the largest
Lepanthes of Costa Rican flora, L. elata Rchb.f., was collected. When he returned to Hanover, Germany, Wendland
On his way to Nicaragua to explore the route along the San
Juan River, A.S. Oersted (1816-1872) collected intensively in
Costa Rica from 1846 to 1848. Starting from the Pacific coast,
he visited the Aguacate mountain chain and the cordilleras of
Guanacaste and Tilarán, collected on the slopes of the high
Irazú and Barba volcanoes and all around the Central Valley,
traveled to the Cerros de Escazú and along the Talamanca
range, reaching Turrialba on the Caribbean watershed of the
continental divide. Through his Costa Rican collections,
Spiranthes aguacatensis (from the Aguacate mountains),
Spiranthes costaricensis (Naranjo), Odontoglossum oerstedii
and Epidendrum pentadactylum (Irazú volcano), Lockhartia
oerstedii (Barva volcano), Lepanthes erinacea and L. turialvae
(Turrialba), among others, were discovered (Reichenbach
1866).
Hermann Wendland (1825-1903) came to Central America in
1856, where he collected plants in Guatemala, El Salvador and
Lockhartia oerstedii Rchb.f. (left) and Odontoglossum (= Ticoglossum) oerstedii Rchb.f. (right), from Curtis’ Botanical Magazine.
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brought with him a collection of orchids which included 134
species. A special greenhouse, called “Costa Rica-Haus,” was
inaugurated exclusively for this collection in the renowned
gardens of Herrenhausen, created by the Duke Johann
Friedrich von Calenberg (Jenny 2002, Ossenbach 2003).
Guatemala: “Cattleya dowiana surpasses all the Cattleyas yet
known... we must get a batch of it... I was never beat.
Dowiana forever”. But Cattleya dowiana was not the only
treasure Warszewicz discovered in Costa Rica. He climbed the
Irazú and Barva volcanoes, where he collected Oncidium warszewiczii, and explored the central region of the country,
discovering Odontoglossum warszewiczii (now Miltoniopsis).
Some years later, the great orchidologist A.R. Endrés went to
Costa Rica, hired by the Veitch firm to collect the rare
Odontoglossum warszewiczii, which had previously resisted
all attempts to introduce its cultivation. From Costa Rica,
Warszewicz traveled to the mountains of Chiriquí and then to
Veraguas, Panama, and in the following year he collected in
several South American countries. He passed through Costa
Rica again in 1850, on the way to Europe, where he spent
several months working as an assistant to Prof. Reichenbach in
Hamburg, who described his collections in 1866 and named
the orchid genus Warszewiczella in his honor. In his
Orchideae Warscewiczianae, Reichenbach wrote: “The name
of von Warszewicz shines among those who have considerably
increased knowledge about orchids.”
Carl Hoffmann (1833-1859) and Alexander von Frantzius
(1821-1877) came to Costa Rica in 1853. Hoffmann served as
a physician in the Costa Rican army during the war against
W. Walker, who was pro-slavery, and finally retired to
Puntarenas, where he died when he was only 26 years old.
Von Frantzius established his business in Costa Rica and
until 1865, when he returned to Germany, managed the
Botica Francesa, a pharmacy which became a meeting place
for foreign and national naturalists and which played a significant role in the development of natural sciences in Costa
Rica during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both Hoffmann and Frantzius were interested in the
exploration of the country and the study of the natural
distribution of plants, as well as mammals and birds (León
2002). Hoffmann collected mainly in the Central Valley,
around San José and Alajuela, and it is curious that the type
specimen of his Epidendrum (= Prosthechea) ionophlebium Rchb.f. was collected at Curridabat, which is currently
part of San José, the capital city of Costa Rica. The collections of Carl Hoffmann were sent to Prof. H. G. Reichenbach
at Hamburg, who described them in his Orchideae
Hoffmannianae in 1866, and are now kept in Reichenbach’s
Herbarium in Vienna.
The fever for Cattleya dowiana was responsible for the arrival
of Karl Kramer, a German, from Panama in Costa Rica in1866,
supposedly to replace Enrique Arce, the Guatemalan collector
sent to Costa Rica by G. Ure Skinner in his obsessive search for
However, not all the explorers who went to Costa Rica in the
second half of the nineteenth century were primarily interested in science. European growers had succeeded in cultivating “air-plants” (mostly epiphytic orchids) in hot greenhouses, and the newly established horticultural exhibitions contributed to spreading the passion for tropical flora. Through
its rich collection of exotic plants, the Royal Horticultural
Society of London was instrumental in introducing orchid
culture among the wealthy classes. Soon some of the commercial nurseries in Europe, mainly in England and Belgium,
discovered that meeting the increasing demand for new species was highly profitable. They hired their own collectors to
travel to tropical countries in search of new plants to stimulate the hobby of orchid collecting.
Trained by the botanic garden of the University of Vilnius and
by Dr. Regel at the Berlin Botanical Gardens, Joseph Ritter
von Rawicz Warszewicz, a Pole, was sponsored by the Royal
Nurseries of Ghent, Belgium, to visit Central America and collect orchids and hummingbirds. Warszewicz came to
Guatemala in 1845 and from there traveled to El Salvador and
to Nicaragua, where he met Oersted. Together they collected
more than 2,000 orchids in the forests of Nueva Segovia. He
reached Costa Rica in 1848 . That same year, Warszewicz
discovered Cattleya dowiana Batem., one of the orchids destined to immortalize Costa Rica in the minds of orchid growers
as one of the richest orchid countries in the world. Pursuing
the collection of the flamboyant “Guaria de Turrialba” almost
obsessively, businessman, diplomat, and amateur botanist
George Ure Skinner wrote in 1866, from his headquarters in
Odontoglossum (= Miltoniopsis) warszewiczii Rchb.f. From H.G. Reichenbach,
Xenia Orchidacea.
Left. Zygopetalum wendlandii Rchb.f. (= Cochleanthes aromatica). A watercolour prepared by an artist employed by Prof. Oakes Ames, copy of an original
painting in Reichenbach’s Herbarium in Vienna. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Director, Harvard University Herbaria.
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the yellow Cattleya from Turrialba. Kramer was equally unsuccessful with this plant, but he discovered a new, delicate oncidioid orchid, later named by H.G. Reichenbach in his honor as
Odontoglossum (= Ticoglossum) krameri. Kramer’s “affair”
with orchids continued in Brazil, where he lived in Manaos for
many years, assuming the role of botanical trainer to Eric
Bungeroth, who would become a famous orchid collector in
Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Apparently, the destiny of orchidology in Costa Rica during the
second half of the nineteenth century was intimately related to
Cattleya dowiana. Around 1865, G. Ure Skinner employed a
collector in Guatemala to search for unusual orchids for James
Bateman, an eccentric, liberal patron of orchid studies and
author of one of the most magnificent books ever published
about orchids: the gargantuan The Orchidaceae of Mexico and
Guatemala. In 1865 or 1866, according to the dates of his first
collections kept in the herbarium of the Natural History
Museum in Vienna, the collector moved to Costa Rica, and in
1871 he was hired by the Veitch firm, mainly to search for
Cattleya dowiana and Odontoglossum warszewiczii. Almost
nothing is known about A.R. Endrés’ origins and life, but in the
following ten years he played a leading role in the botanical
exploration of Costa Rica and the discovery of hundreds of new
orchid species. According to Veitch’s staff records, Endrés was
a “half-caste” (Veitch 1906), an expression that indicates the offspring of a European or North American and a Latin American.
Endrés signed his correspondence with an accent on the
second letter “e,” following Latin American usage, but his last
name is rather common in Switzerland and Austria. What is
perhaps more surprising is his precise, cultivated use of the
English language, as well as the quality and precision of the
botanical descriptions and the illustrations which were attached
to his herbarium specimens. This suggests that he received
solid botanical training, probably in England. Endrés’ interest in
orchids was obviously botanical, rather than horticultural, as
demonstrated by the fact that he directed his main efforts to
elucidating the miniature orchid flora of the country. Due to
his general preference for collecting small plants and minute
flowers, his mission for the Veitch firm ended as soon as 1873,
and the British orchid firm considered it “expensive and scarcely a success” (Veitch 1906).
We do not know where Endrés settled and lived in Costa Rica,
and information about the collecting localities of his fieldtrips
is scant. Around 1871, he collected together with George
Downton, a British citizen also hired by Veitch. Some of
Endrés’ specimens in the Reichenbach Herbarium in Vienna
show that he also collected with the Swiss Richard Pfau, who
established an orchid firm in Costa Rica around 1870. Endrés
probably traveled extensively throughout the country, visiting
the rich orchid regions of the Caribbean watershed along the
Pejivalle and Pacuare rivers, collecting in the northern San
Carlos plains and in the valley of the Sarapiquí River, as well in
the region of Dota. Most of his specimens, however, bear no
locality data.
Odontoglossum (= Ticoglossum) krameri Rchb.f., from Curtis’ Botanical
Magazine.
Left. Cattleya dowiana Batem., from Curtis’ Botanical Magazine
nishing precision. He paid attention to minute structures of
taxonomic relevance, like the microscopic appendices of the
lip in the species of the genus Lepanthes, which he often
drew from below in order to avoid dissecting the lip, or the
shape and structure of gynostemium, rostellum, anther and
pollinaria, which he usually illustrated at a very high enlargement ratio. Taking into account the zygomorphic symmetry
of orchid flowers, he often drew only the right half of the
flower organs, folding the drawing paper to simulate an ideal
longitudinal mid-line. In many cases he also prepared different views of the flowers, adding some renderings in pencil
when needed in order to improve three-dimensional appreciation of the finest structures. Most of the sketches were
completed with a detailed drawing of the plant habitat. Each
sketch was numbered consecutively, and referenced in the
description leaflets. Endrés was a fine observer who
employed a methodical approach to the study of orchids.
Looking at the dates of his notes and sketches, it appears
that he worked within the frame of a systematic project.
Each species described and depicted bears a consecutive
number referred as “Nº X of gen! coll. Orch.”, which probably corresponds to Endrés’ collecting number, followed by
the cross-reference to the sketches and the genus name.
Different species within the same genus were numbered fol-
Even today, it is difficult to understand what kind of technical equipment he used to enlarge critical details of flowers
only a few millimeters big, which were illustrated with asto-
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Sketch by A.R. Endrés Nº 192. Zygopetalum nº 11. The species was described as Chaubardiella pacuarensis Jenny in 1989. Reproduced with the kind permission of the
Keeper of the herbarium, Natural History Museum, Vienna.
English, with precise knowledge of technical botanical jargon. They include descriptions of shapes and measurements
of each organ, their ornamentation and characteristics of the
indumentum, as well as accurate notes on flower colors.
The descriptions were improved at different stages, and in
some cases as many as four different versions are provided.
In many of the descriptions, the name of the genus is followed by a reference to the page and figure number of
something like a year-book, i.e., “see fig. p. 95, below, vol.
1869-70”. Unfortunately, we have no information about the
project Endrés was working on.
lowing their own consecutive numeration. In many cases,
the name of the genus is followed by the proposed label for
the taxa Endrés considered still undescribed, and some of
his new Pleurothallid orchids were effectively published by
Dr. Carlyle Luer on the basis of the sketches prepared by
Endrés more than 120 years before their formal scientific
description.
His notes often have scant information about the collecting
localities, but in some cases he also noted the name of the
host tree and the relative position of the epiphytic orchid on
the canopy. The botanical descriptions are written in fluent
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During his Costa Rican journey, he maintained a strong relationship with Prof. Reichenbach in Hamburg, to whom he sent
dried materials, notes, and drawings. Their relations were not
always cordial, probably due to Reichenbach’s difficult and
egocentric character. Endrés was not simply a collector, but a
trained botanist with his own ideas about the flora he was
discovering in Costa Rica. In many cases the materials he sent
to Reichenbach were intended for the publication of new
orchid species and also new genera in the family, but the
German orchidologist let them languish untouched in his herbarium for the rest of his life. To complicate the matter, when
H.G. Reichenbach died in 1889, he left his herbarium, including all the materials to which other botanists had contributed, to the Imperial Museum of Vienna. Most of the material
was unmounted, and most of the sheets of Endrés’ specimens
were not associated with the corresponding drawings, field
notes, and descriptions provided by the collector. The scientific heritage of one of the most noteworthy orchid botanists in
Costa Rican history was thus diluted. In 1875 Endrés left Costa
Rica and traveled to Colombia, where he was murdered in
Riohacha. His legacy is still waiting to be revealed in the cabinets of the Natural History Museum of Vienna.
At the time Endrés was describing and illustrating his scientific discoveries in Costa Rica, Richard Pfau, a Swiss, founded a
nursery in San José which sold a great variety of ornamental
plants. Through his collections we know that he was also in
Panama, and at least one of the new species described from
plants sent to Europe by Pfau, Vanilla pfaviana Rchb. f.,
came from Mexico. In Costa Rica Pfau discovered the endemic Epidendrum pfavii, described by R.A. Rolfe at Kew, and
in Chiriquí (on the border between Costa Rica and Panamá)
he collected Trichocentrum pfavii, described by H.G.
Reichenbach in 1881. From material sent by him to Prof.
Reichenbach, Rudolf Schlechter described the Costa Rican
Sobralia pfavii and Telipogon pfavii in 1923.
Richard Pfau combined the genius of a talented writer with
his ability as a collector. He wrote the first work published in
Costa Rica about the orchids of this country, New, Rare and
Beautiful Orchids of Costa Rica (ca. 1895), a book of greater
interest for horticulture than for botany, but with some interesting notes about the ecology of some species.
A good businessman, Pfau gives advice on how to grow and
pack orchids for exportation, and includes a list of the species he had for sale in his nursery. Pfau also wrote about
Central America and its orchids for the most prestigious horticultural journals of the Europe at the time, like The
Gardener’s Chronicle and The Orchid Review, with articles
ranging from the relationship between tropical climate and
orchid culture (Pfau 1883), to the fertilization of orchids in
the Tropics (Pfau 1894), to the orchid flora of Costa Rica
(Pfau 1896).
Top. Sketch by A.R. Endrés of Trichocentrum pfavii, which Reichenbach intended to publish with the name of Trichocentrum zonale.
Bottom. Copy of Schlechter’s sketch of Telipogon pfavii. The original drawing
was burned during the fire that destroyed the herbarium of Berlin in 1943.
Both reproduced with the kind permission of the Director, Harvard University
Herbaria.
Interestingly, the voice of Richard Pfau is also the first to
address the rising concern about the destruction of Costa
Rican orchid habitats, when he describes one of the most
beautiful native orchids: “Cattleya skinneri, some ten years
ago, was a common orchid all over Central America; but in
the last few years it has been exported by shiploads; and
today – at least in Costa Rica – it has almost become rare”
(Pfau 1895).
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XXII
THE ERA OF LIBERALISM AND THE BORN
A “NATIONAL SCIENCE”
that was unparalleled at the time in any country of tropical
America. Although hired to teach in secondary schools, Pittier
had more ambitious programs and wide scientific interests,
ranging from botany to geology, meteorology, ethnology, cartography and archeology. In 1887, just a few months after his
arrival, he was named to the board of directors of the newly
established National Museum, and in 1888 he founded the
Meteorological Institute. The following year, the government
consolidated the Museum and the Institute into one center,
the “Instituto Físico-Geográfico Nacional de Costa Rica,” and
Pittier was appointed as its director for a few months. That
merger later broke up and the Museum was again separated
under the direction of Anastasio Alfaro. At the Instituto FísicoGeográfico, thanks to the joint efforts of Alfaro, Tonduz,
Biolley, Wercklé and Brenes, Pittier formed the National
Herbarium, which initially had more than 5000 species, and
which was still unequalled in Latin America at the beginning of
the twentieth century (Standley 1937). The Institute was dissolved in 1898, and the plant collections amassed by Pittier
over the previous decade were put in custody of the staff at
the National Museum. After a last attempt to revive the
Institute in 1901, Pittier left Costa Rica to work in the United
States and to pursue a distinguished career in Venezuela until
his death in 1950.
Order and progress. Aside from its scientific achievements,
the cultural renaissance fostered by the Age of Reason at the
end of the eighteenth century, which produced the flow of
great botanical expeditions to the New World, also influenced
the social environment of the countries that came into contact
with the new ideas. As a result of Enlightenment, a Cabinet of
Natural History was founded in Guatemala in 1796, but it was
an exception. In most of the republics of Central America, official interest in the natural world was not established until the
end of the nineteenth century, when national governments
began to pursue the goals of “order and progress”: seeing
science as a powerful tool to modernize state and society.
They included the need for botanical inventories and national
floras in their agendas, reviving botanical gardens and natural
history museums and opening the first public schools and universities in the region. The “extractive botany” practiced by
foreign naturalists began to be replaced by a more concerned
botanical exploration, aimed at obtaining better knowledge of
the local natural resources and their possible economic uses.
The scientific collector, often based at a local institution or
sponsored by liberal elites, replaced the legendary orchid hunter.
The Instituto Físico-Geográfico was reduced to a collection of
plants and an assistant who made daily meteorological observations, under the direction of Anastasio Alfaro. In 1910 the
observatory became an official division of the Museo Nacional,
and the Institute eventually ceased to exist. Since the beginning of the activities carried out by the Instituto FísicoGeográfico, botanical exploration was one of the main interests of Pittier, resulting in the publication of a volume on the
first flora of Costa Rica, Primitiae Florae Costaricensis, a work
that unfortunately was not concluded. He was always interested in orchids and sent a number of specimens to his friend
Théophile Durand in Brussels, who passed them on for identification to Rudolf Schlechter in Berlin. The fascicle of the
Primitiae Florae Costaricensis, to be devoted to orchids,
which Pittier expected Schlecther to write, was never prepared. Nevertheless, the German botanist described many new
species based on Pittier’s collections, among them Kefersteinia
costaricensis, Microstylis (= Malaxis) carpinterae, Notylia
pittieri, Epidendrum cardiophorum, E. (= Prosthechea)
abbreviatum, and in 1906 he dedicated the orchid genus
Pittierella (= Cryptocentrum) to Pittier.
In Costa Rica, the era of positivism and its associated reforms
were initiated in the 1840s by President Braulio Carrillo and
continued by President José Maria Castro Madriz, who fought
for public education. As part of a reform aimed at secularizing
education, President Bernardo Soto’s administration (18851889) hired a group of European teachers to establish public
high schools in the capital, San José. The arrival of these scholars marks the beginning of a scientific renaissance in Costa
Rica and the birth of a “national science,” of which the
National Museum and the Instituto Físico-Geográfico (founded
in 1886 and 1888 respectively) are the institutional symbols.
The Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. The National Museum
was the product of the visionary effort of a young, self-taught
Costa Rican naturalist and archeologist, Anastasio Alfaro, who
at the age of twenty-one persuaded the government to scientifically organize a systematic collection of the natural and cultural heritage of the country. On behalf of the Ministry of
Development, Alfaro visited the United States to learn about
the latest techniques in museum organization, and on his
return, in May 1887, the government funded the creation of
the National Museum and named Alfaro its first director.
Alfaro had a special interest in the study of botany, which
lasted throughout his life, and paid special attention to
orchids, ferns, mosses, and cacti, making important discoveries in each of these groups. Harvard botanists Oakes Ames
and Charles Schweinfurth dedicated Epidendrum alfaroi,
Maxillaria alfaroi and Stelis alfaroi to him.
Among the teachers who came to Costa Rica to take part in
the new model of national education were Pablo Biolley, who
was Swiss, and Henry Francois Pittier. The latter arrived in
Costa Rica in 1887 and lived there until 1904, during which
time he conducted a systematic exploration of the local flora
In 1889 Pittier hired a young assistant who was at the time
working at the botanical garden of Lausanne, Switzerland, in
charge of the botanical work at the Instituto Físico-Geográfico.
Adolphe Tonduz was a laborious collector, responsible for
most of the specimens kept at the herbarium of the Institute
under the direction of Pittier. When Pittier left Costa Rica,
Tonduz accepted a position with the United Fruit Company,
and from 1908 to 1911 he again held the position of curator at
the National Herbarium. Tonduz contributed the type collections of Bulbophyllum vinosum, Camaridium dendrobioides,
Epidendrum majale, and Stelis aemula, among others, to the
orchid flora of Costa Rica.
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accompanied Pittier during many botanical explorations,
making important contributions to the body of knowledge on
Costa Rican flora. Among these orchids, he discovered
Masdevallia ecaudata, Ornithidium (=Maxillaria) biolleyi
and Telipogon biolleyi. Biolley was a romantic and poetic
man, and he spent his last years in solitude and poverty, victim
to the alcoholism that finally took his life in 1908, at the young
age of forty-six.
In the early years of the twentieth century, other people joined the botanists of the Museo Nacional and contributed
orchid specimens to the Herbarium. The German brothers
Alfred and Alexander Curt Brade collected mainly in the
Central Valley, and Schlechter described more than 50 orchid
species based on their exceptionally well-preserved specimens
as new to science, among them Habenaria irazuensis,
Lepanthes bradei, Liparis (= Crossoglossa) fratrum (“of the
brothers”), Lycaste bradeorum, Osmoglossum (=
Cuitlauzina) convallarioides, and Warrea costaricensis.
While Alfred Brade settled permanently in Costa Rica, where
he worked as a gardener and abandoned orchidology,
Alexander Curt moved to Brazil in 1910 and became one of the
most eminent orchidologists of that country.
Guillermo Acosta Pieper, from San Ramón, also prepared specimens to be studied by Schlechter in Berlin, among which the
German botanist found the new genus Acostaea, and new species in the genera Dichaea, Lepanthes, Maxillaria and
Pleurothallis, dedicated to their discoverer with the specific
epithet acostaei.
A brilliant student and a precocious botanist, Otón Jiménez
collected plants with the most renowned scientists and naturalists working in Costa Rica: Pittier and Tonduz, Donnel Smith
and Britton, Lankester, Maxon, Standley, and Williams and
Allen. In 1912 (when he was seventeen years old), Jiménez was
appointed director of the herbarium at the National Museum,
a post he held until 1914. Rudolf Schlechter described
Epidendrum jimenezii, Epilyna jimenezii (a new orchid
genus), Habenaria jimenezii, Lepanthes jimenezii, and
Scaphyglottis jimenezii, among others, in his honor.
The relationship of Karl (Carlos) Wercklé, an Alsatian, with the
National Museum and the Instituto Físico-Geográfico was never
very close. Nevertheless, Wercklé surely met Pittier during his
first trip to Costa Rica (around 1897) to collect plants and seeds
for the firm of John Lewis Child of Long Island, New York, and
he was good friends with Tonduz and probably with Biolley
(who often collected plants near his home in Orotina) (Gómez
1978). From 1902 on, he lived permanently in Costa Rica, and in
1911 he was hired for a few months as the curator of the
National Herbarium under Alfaro’s direction. The main botanical
interest of Wercklé was pteridology, and his name is permanently associated with the knowledge of Costa Rican ferns. Wercklé
was a prolific writer and author of almost ninety publications,
mostly devoted to economic botany, but also to cacti, gesneriads, bamboos, ferns, and fungi. In 1920 he published the first
comprehensive treatise on Costa Rican phytogeography. He
wrote two short papers on Costa Rican orchids and their culture
for the 1913 Bulletin of the Institute for Agricultural
Top, Lycaste bradeorum Schltr. Bottom, Epilyna jimenezii Schltr.
Right, Epidendrum (= Oerstedella) schumannianum Schltr. All reproduced
with the kind permission of the Director, Harvard University Herbaria,
Harvard University.
Rudolf Schlechter honored his name with the orchids
Ornithocephalus tonduzii and Pleurothallis tonduzii. Tonduz
left Costa Rica in 1911 to work in Guatemala, where he died, a
victim of alcoholism, in 1921.
Pablo Biolley came to Costa Rica in 1886 to teach at the recently founded Liceo de Costa Rica. He married a Costa Rican and
obtained Costa Rican citizenship, settling permanently in the
country. Although mainly interested in entomology, Biolley
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nothing written about his intimate knowledge of Costa Rican
plants. The scientific contributions made by Brenes to Costa
Rican orchidology were immense, and Schlechter described
more than ninety new orchid species based on his collections,
dedicating to him the new genus, Brenesia, and dozens of species that honor his name: Barbosella brenesii,
Campylocentrum brenesii, Notylia brenesii, Ponthieva brenesii, and Trichocentrum brenesii are only some examples.
Development. However, orchids were not a primary concern of
his botanical activity, and the specimens of his often unnumbered collections for the herbarium of the Instituto FísicoGeográfico were usually prepared by Otón Jiménez from plants
cultivated in the garden of Mrs. Amparo Calleja de Zeledón, of
whom he was a protégé until his death. On the basis of
Wercklé’s collections, Rudolf Schlechter described more than
eighty new orchid species, mostly collected around San José
and flowering in Mrs. Zeledón’s garden from 1920 to 1922.
However, Camaridium imbricatum (= Maxillaria schlechteriana) and Masdevallia ecaudata were described from specimens collected during Wercklé’s first Costa Rican journey in
1897, and a few other species [among them the beautiful
Epidendrum (= Oerstedella) schumannianum] from collections made by him in the first decade of the twentieth century.
The name of Carlos Wercklé is commemorated, among others,
by Dichaea wercklei, Elleanthus wercklei, Epidendrum wercklei, Eriopsis wercklei, Fregea wercklei, Kefersteinia wercklei,
Lepanthes wercklei,Oncidium wercklei, Pleurothallis wercklei,
Stelis wercklei, and Epidendrum caroli.
The Decline of the European Influence. In 1923, the greatest work ever written about the orchids of Costa Rica,
Additamenta ad Orchideologiam Costaricensem, was published in the series of Repertoria of New Species, edited in
Berlin by Prof. Friedrich Fedde. In the chapters “Orchidaceae
Amparoanae,” “Orchidaceae Bradeanae Costaricenses,”
“Orchidaceae Brenesianae,” and “Orchidaceae novae et
rariores collectorum variorum in Costa Rica collectae,”
Rudolf Schlechter revealed the results of the collective effort
made by half a dozen extraordinary botanists of the Herbario
Nacional de Costa Rica in the previous two decades to the
world. Paradoxically, this work also marks the end of the privileged relationship between Costa Rican and European botanists.
Through his collections Schlechter also paid homage to the
grand lady of Costa Rican orchidology, Mrs. Amparo de
Zeledón, with his Amparoa costaricensis, Camaridium
amparoanum, Costaricaea amparoana, Cycnoches amparoanum, Dichaea amparoana, Epidendrum amparoanum,
Habenaria amparoana, Isochilus amparoanus, Maxillaria
amparoana, Stelis amparoana, and Trigonidium amparoanum. Like many other botanists working in Costa Rica,
Wercklé died in disgrace, a victim of alcoholism in 1924. His
friend doña Amparo buried him in the family chapel in San
José.
While European countries had to resolve the social problems
and the miseries of the post-war period, facing the triumph of
communism in Russia and the rapid ascent of nazism and fascism, the United States established a new economic empire in
Latin America during the first three decades of the twentieth
century. Under the energetic policy of President Theodore
Roosevelt, the big enterprises related with the banana trade
extended the range of their interests and activities in Central
America, with increasing participation in the economic and
political decisions of Latin American countries.
Likewise, European explorers and scientists, who dominated
the history of orchids in Costa Rica during the eighteenth century, were replaced by a new generation of North American
botanists. From this time on, the development of Costa Rican
orchidology would mainly occur in English.
Alberto Manuel Brenes, born in San Ramón, Alajuela in 1870,
was the youngest member of the staff associated with the
National Herbarium. In 1890, after completing his high school
studies in Costa Rica, Brenes moved to Europe, where he studied botany and natural history at the universities of Lausanne
and Geneva. In 1898, Brenes returned to his home country to
work as a teacher in San José. During his spare time, he joined
the botanists working with Pittier, collecting plants for the collections of the Instituto Físico-Geográfico. In 1911, Brenes
moved to his hometown, San Ramón, where he lectured in
secondary schools until 1920, when Alfaro appointed him head
of the Botany section at the National Museum, a position he
held until 1935 (Barringer 1986). It was during this time that
Brenes began a systematic collection of orchids, mainly from
San Ramón and nearby areas, which would eventually reach the
astonishing number of 23,000 specimens, probably the largest
collection of its kind ever produced by a single botanist. Rudolf
Schlechter based one third of the almost three hundred new
Costa Rican orchids he described in 1923 on Brenes’ material,
reflecting an affiliation and friendship with Brenes that began
around 1900 and lasted until Schlechter’s death. At this time, at
Paul C. Standley’s suggestion, Brenes sent his orchid specimens
to Prof. Oakes Ames at Harvard University. During the last years
of his life, Brenes planned to retire to Switzerland to write a
book on the general flora of Costa Rica. Unfortunately this
work was never written, and at his death in 1948, Brenes left
Oakes Ames graduated from Harvard University in 1899 and
was shortly afterwards appointed director of the Botanical
Museum of the University. He was Schlechter’s main competitor during the great German scientist’s last two decades, and
at the same time his friend and admirer. After Schlechter’s
death, he became the world’s foremost authority in orchidology. In 1905 Ames began the publication of Orchidaceae:
Illustrations and Studies of the Family Orchidaceae, in seven
volumes. He published his first species of Central America in
the second volume of the series(1908), only two years after
Schlechter had described the first orchids from this region. His
studies on the orchids of Central America were always overshadowed by his competition with Schlechter and the urgent
need to receive new collections, in a tireless effort to surpass
the great German in the description of new species. Numerous
expressions of this rivalry can be found in the correspondence
between Ames and Lankester, from which the following
excerpt serves as an example: “We must work fast if we hope
to keep abreast of the Germans. I was surprised to see how
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far-reaching their efforts have been to secure a monopoly of
tropical American species” (Ames to Lankester, Sept. 17, 1922).
In 1922 he began his relationship with Charles H. Lankester,
an English naturalist who lived in Costa Rica, which bore many
fruits and lasted until Ames’ death. Most of Lankester’s collections were described in Schedulae Orchidianae, a work that
Ames published in ten fascicles between 1922 and 1930 in collaboration with Charles Schweinfurth (who was his disciple
and friend for over thirty-five years). In 1937 Ames published
the first formal treatment of the family Orchidaceae for the
Flora of Costa Rica by Paul C. Standley, recording 979 orchid
species. Several new genera and many species of orchids were
dedicated to Ames, among them Amesia A. Nelson & J. F.
Macbr. Amesiella Schlechter ex Garay, Oakes-amesia C.
Schweinf. & P.H. Allen, Bulbophyllum amesianum J.J. Smith,
Dendrobium amesianum Schltr., and Epidendrum amesianum Correll.
(1879-1969), arrived at Puerto Limón in December, 1900 and
went on by train to the capital of Costa Rica, arriving just in
time to take part in the “Ball of the New Century” offered by
Costa Rica’s President Rafael Yglesias in the National Theater
of San José. Better known as “don Carlos,” Lankester was born
in Southampton, England, and came to Costa Rica to occupy a
position as assistant in the “Sarapiquí Coffee Estates
Company.” Don Carlos Lankester arrived at the right place at
the right time to join in the active biological exploration of
Costa Rica, perhaps the most exciting place, biologically
speaking, on our continent. He had the opportunity to meet
Professor Pittier when he visited this interesting region, beginning a friendship that lasted throughout his life. When his contract expired, Lankester returned to England, but came back to
Costa Rica a few months later, called by Pittier to take over the
experimental station which the United Fruit Company planned
to establish in Zent. In 1908 he accepted management of a coffee farm in Cachí, where he lived for nine years with his wife
Dorothea Hawker and his young family. It was during those
years that don Carlos began his collections, which in many
cases proved to be new species, in the nearby woods. He sent
his first specimens for identification to Rolfe, at Kew. One of
them (Lankester 021, “1915, neighborhood of Cachí”) is probably the first new species of Orchidaceae discovered by
Lankester: Pleurothallis costaricensis Rolfe.
After a brief interlude in England and Africa (1920–1922),
Lankester returned to Costa Rica and later moved (1924) to
live at “Las Cóncavas,” a coffee farm that he had acquired in
the vicinity of Cartago. The year 1922 was a turning point in
Lankester’s career as an orchidologist: it first brought him in
contact with Oakes Ames, with whom he would develop a
deep friendship. Ames, after returning from a trip to Europe,
wrote to Lankester: “At Kew I saw many specimens collected
by you in Costa Rica, the greater part unnamed. As it will take
some time for Kew to recover from the loss of Rolfe and as the
Germans are making great efforts to assemble Costa Rican
material through Wercklé, Jimenez and Tonduz, it seemed to
me that you might be willing to co-operate with me by stimulating orchidological interest among your neighbors.” Lankester
answered immediately and became Ames’ favorite collector for
the next twenty-five years, during which time Ames discovered, among the specimens received from Las Cóncavas, more
than one hundred new species. Many were dedicated to
Lankester, such as: Campylocentrum lankesteri, Cranichis
lankesteri, Dichaea lankesteri, Epidendrum lankesteri,
Habenaria lankesteri, Stelis lankesteri, Telipogon lankesteri,
and Trigonidium lankesteri. Ames also found a new genus
amongst Lankester’s collections: “There seems to be a new
genus among your specimens. Lankesterella would be a good
name.” (Ames to Lankester, April 18, 1923). In Las Cóncavas,
during the following thirty-three years and while he continued
sending plants to Ames, Lankester created the orchid garden
which would become the Mecca of all botanists who passed
through Costa Rica, not only because of the plants, but also
because of don Carlos’ vast knowledge of the country and its
nature. In 1956, when Lankester could no longer manage his
farm because of his age, he sold “Las Cóncavas” and moved his
garden to a nearby property know as “Silvestre,” where, years
On December 19, 1921, at the port city of La Libertad, El
Salvador, Paul Carpenter Standley, botanist of the U. S.
National Museum, arrived at Central America for the first time.
He was probably the most important figure in the history of
the botanical exploration of the region during the first half of
the twentieth century. He was a friend of all the Central
American scientists of the time and contributed more than any
other to furthering study and research among the local naturalists and collectors, contributing to the development of the
existing herbaria and to the creation of many new ones.
Standley made extensive collecting trips to Costa Rica, a country that he visited during the first months of 1924 and then
again between December, 1925 and March, 1926. Here he
became acquainted with the most important naturalists of the
time: Anastasio Alfaro, Alberto M. Brenes, Amparo de Zeledón,
Otón Jiménez and Charles Lankester.
Of special importance for the success of Standley’s excursions
was the figure of Juvenal Valerio Rodríguez. Recommended initially by Otón Jiménez, Valerio was Standley’s companion
during his first visit to Costa Rica during a short tour to the
Bajo de la Hondura. When Standley returned in 1925, Valerio
never left his side as his guide to the region of Santa María de
Dota and the Cerro de las Vueltas, in an extensive tour through Guanacaste, and finally to the lowlands of the Atlantic
coast. Standley and Valerio planned to publish a flora of Costa
Rica in Spanish. Valerio argued to his superiors that a Spanish
edition was essential so that it would be accessible to naturalists, students and the general public of Costa Rica. But Valerio’s
hopes vanished after the elections in the spring of 1936, when
the new government cancelled the publications of all works of
general interest, including the Flora de Costa Rica. In Costa
Rica, Standley collected an enormous amount of material (over
15,000 plant specimens) with no fewer than thirty orchid species that were new to science. Especially noteworthy are the
following: Brachionidium pusillum Ames & Schweinf.,
Brachionidium valerioi Ames & Schweinf., Dichaea standleyi
Ames, Lepanthes acoridilabia Ames & Schweinf.,
Pleurothallis standleyi Ames, Stenorrhynchos (=
Coccineorchis) standleyi Ames and Telipogon standleyi Ames.
At the age of only twenty-one, Charles Herbert Lankester
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held a position at the Biology School of the University, lecturing on general biology and botany. In 1979, Dora Emilia was
appointed director of Lankester Botanical Garden, a position
she held until 2000, when she retired from the university.
During more than twenty years, Mora de Retana transformed
the fertile garden of Charles Lankester into a world-renowned botanical institution and the obligatory meeting point of
the most prominent orchidologists from around the world:
Calaway H. Dodson, Norris H. Williams, Robert L. Dressler,
Carlyle A. Luer, Eric Hágsater, John T. Atwood, Rudolf Jenny,
Günter Gerlach, and many others, were her friends in orchidology and in life. At Lankester Garden, she reorganized the
orchid collections, introducing many new species (mainly of
diminutive Pleurothallids) from all around Costa Rica and
arranging them systematically in special greenhouses, and
she supervised the inspired landscape design and the creation of scientifically organized outdoor collections. She
played an active role in plant conservation, serving for many
years as scientific authority in the Flora Committee of CITES
(Morales 2001).
In 1984 she offered the first course on Orchidology with the
collaboration of Robert L. Dressler, who spent six months
working at the University of Costa Rica as a guest professor.
The orchid garden that the University of Costa Rica received
as the living legacy of C.H. Lankester, and the personal
friendship with Bob Dressler, were the milestones of her
long, productive career, built around the “core business” of
orchids.
later, the Lankester Botanical Garden of the University of Costa
Rica was established. However, despite his age, he continued
collecting. One of his last specimens bears the number 1761, a
plant of Warrea costaricensis Schltr., collected in February of
1960, when Lankester was already eighty-one years old.
The Universidad de Costa Rica. The University of Costa
Rica was officially founded in August, 1940, on the foundation of the former Universidad de Santo Tomás, created in
1843 and dissolved in 1887. That same year, the first courses
offered by the Science School of the Universidad de Costa
Rica were inaugurated. One of the students in the courses of
1942 was a brilliant, restless young man from San Ramón, a
teacher of natural sciences at the Liceo de Costa Rica and
blessed by the Muse of arts: Rafael Lucas Rodríguez
Caballero. After concluding his academic program at the
University of Costa Rica in 1945, he received a scholarship to
study plant systemics at the University of California in
Berkeley (Morales 2003). Since 1953 Rodríguez was incorporated as a professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica, where
he was instrumental in the creation of a Department of
Biology and was appointed as the first director. Under his
direction, the Department assumed custody of the University
Herbarium (USJ), founded in 1943, and the José María
Orozco Botanical Garden. Orchids were the main botanic
interest of “don Rafa” (as friends and students called him),
and since the late fifties he began to illustrate, in beautiful
and botanically detailed watercolors, hundreds of species
native to Costa Rica and Mesoamerica, which eventually reached the impressive number of 1092 plates. Rodríguez published only a few papers on orchids, but his unpublished
manuscripts reveal his great scientific interest in the systemics of the family. With visionary commitment, and thirty
years in advance of the Flora Mesoamericana project, he
planned a taxonomic treatment of the Orchidaceae of the
Central American isthmus, for which he wrote a general key
and the texts of many genera, unfortunately unpublished at
his premature death. Rodríguez was a beloved, respected
friend of all the naturalists and scientists working with Costa
Rican orchids, among them Robert L. Dressler and Charles H.
Lankester. And it was Rodríguez who made the international
contacts and organized the network of institutions that eventually provided the funds to rescue Lankester’s orchid garden, when his friend died in 1969. Epidendrum rafael-lucasii, Lepanthes rafaeliana and Maxillaria rodrigueziana
were dedicated to him.
The advances made in our knowledge of Costa Rican orchid
flora under the scrutiny of Dora Emilia and her co-workers
were outstanding. Her “Lista actualizada de las orquídeas de
Costa Rica,” published in 1992 in conjunction with Joaquín
García Castro (her main collaborator and friend for over 25
years), added 46 genera and 467 species to the catalogue prepared by Ames in 1937. In collaboration with her scientific
associates, Dora Emilia published more than twenty articles on
orchids, ranging from taxonomy to pollination and fruit production, studies on the cultural requirements of threatened
species, and orchid distribution and conservation. Her interaction with other botanists resulted in three hundred Costa
Rican orchids illustrated under the series of Icones Plantarum
Tropicarum, mostly based on the living collections of
Lankester Botanical Garden (Atwood 2001). In 1999, a few
months before retirement, she submitted to the press what is
probably her main scientific legacy to the knowledge of Costa
Rican orchids taxonomy: the treatment of the subtribes
Maxillariinae and Oncidiinae for the Flora Costaricensis, prepared in collaboration with John T. Atwood. Her friends dedicated to Dora Emilia Epidendrum mora-retanae Hágsater,
Kefersteinia retanae G. Gerlach ex C.O. Morales, Sobralia
doremiliae Dressler, Stelis morae Luer and Telipogon retanarum Dodson & Escobar.
For a long time after the death of Rafael Lucas Rodríguez,
Dora Emilia Mora de Retana (1940-2001) was the only Costa
Rican orchidologist with academic and scientific formation in
botany. A student of Rodríguez’, Mora de Retana worked her
entire career at the Universidad de Costa Rica, where she
began working as a professor in 1969. From 1973 on, she
Previous page: Maxillaria rodrigueziana J.T. Atwood & Mora-Ret.
Watercolour by Rafael Lucas Rodríguez C., reproduced with
the kind permission of the Library, University of Costa Rica.
XXX