Amazon Plant Collectors and their Lost Collections: Botanica amazonius perdicum

Manaus, Amazonas - In the Russell Crowe epic, Master & Commander, Captain Jack Aubrey’s companion, the ship’s surgeon and naturalist, Stephen Maturin (played by Paul Bettany), makes a quick collection of local fauna during a walk across an island in the Galapagos Archipelago. After stumbling across the hideaway of the French frigate they have been pursuing, and aggravated by the pains of recent surgery to remove a bullet from his belly, Dr. Maturin is forced to abandon his one-of-a-kind collection and beat a hasty retreat back to the mother-ship.

Fact? Fiction? Perhaps a bit of both. In any case, the scene is entirely believable if you know something of the history of natural history collection - never an easy task even without a war going on to spoil the fun.

You may know that the early natural history collections made by such greats as Alexander Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Richard Spruce and Richard Schultes form the backbone of collections at Kew Gardens, The British Museum, The Natural History Museum at New York and other venerable scientific institutions around the world. But did you ever stop to wonder what happened to the collections of other lesser known naturalists who surely collected just as much as those big names? You might even be interested to know that some of the greats themselves suffered monumental setbacks when their hard earned collections were lost, stolen, destroyed or simply left behind.

Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira was one of the very first naturalists to collect along Brazil’s Amazon and Negro Rivers (circa 1780s). On a regular basis crates jammed with pickled and stuffed specimens, bulging notebooks and coarse water-colour pads were thrown together and sent back to royal patrons in Portugal where the material was to be catalogued by his superiors. The task eventually proved daunting even for Ferreira and his all-encompassing mind; after his return to Portugal the process dragged on for years. Finally the enterprise - Ferreira’s lifework - was interrupted for good by the invasion of Portugal by Napoleon’s Grand Army. Ferreira’s collections were sacked and plundered and ultimately confiscated by the French and handed over to the Museum of Paris run by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. Ferreira was devastated and died soon afterwards, penniless and forgotten.

In recent years Ferreira has blessedly been rediscovered. An impressive representation of his scattered collections was gathered together in 1995 and mounted in shows around the world. A number of books about the man and his collections have been published, and his rightful place in the annals of Amazon history has finally been established. Perhaps all that remains to be done for poor Ferreira is to rename some of the many specimens he first described but which were officially christened by St-Hilaire and other French academics; Inia geoffrensis (the pink river dolphin) and Saguinus geoffroyi, (a species of tamarin monkey), for instance.

Alfred Russell Wallace is best remembered as the co-developer of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection as first published by Charles Darwin in The Origin of the Species (circa 1859). After several years study in the Malay Peninsular (today Indonesia, Borneo and Sumatra) Wallace developed his theory independently of Darwin. But Wallace cut his teeth, so to say, collecting in the Amazon. And he did so alongside two other renowned British naturalists, Richard Spruce and Henry Bates. Bates stuck mostly to the main Amazon River and in particular the area around Ega (today Tefé, Brazil). Spruce ventured to Brazil’s upper Negro River and later the Peruvian Amazon, Wallace, himself, explored the middle ground up and down the Negro River between 1848 and 1852.

Wallace too had wealthy patrons back home in England who would buy duplicates of his collections. Whenever necessary he sent small shipments home in return for small sums to continue his collecting. Finally the day came when Wallace had had enough of the Amazon and decided to head home. He traveled with one last, huge collection of plants and specimens. Half way home his ship caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic. Wallace could do nothing more than save his journals and watch his priceless collections being consumed first by fire then by cold ocean waters. After ten days lost at sea Wallace and his fellow shipmates were rescued and some 60 days later he finally arrived back to England. Undaunted by his losses and suffering he made immediate plans to travel to Oceania. The rest is history.

Theodore Koch-Grunberg led a colorful life. He was a highly respected ethnologist and led numerous expeditions into the little-known Northwest Amazon. In Manaus he was a great friend of the photographer George Huebner. His pioneering work chronicled the lives and cultures of the indigenous peoples of Brazil’s Northwest Amazon. Collections made from these expeditions were sent back to patrons in Berlin. Grunberg’s final expedition was led by the American scientist Hamilton Rice and the filmmaker Silvino Santos. Its purpose was to chart the headwaters of the Branco River between Brazil and Venezuela and seek possible links between the Negro and Orinoco River systems. Tragically Grunberg died of malaria during this trip and was buried on the banks of the Branco River. His ethnographic collections were destroyed by the Allied bombing of Berlin at the close of the Second World War. The same fate befell a vast quantity of Huebner’s photographs in Dresden, including what may have been the first serious collections of Amazon botanical photographs ever taken. Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade’s classic novel Macunaíma owes a large debt to the native legends collected and published in German by Koch-Grunberg.

João Barbosa Rodrigues is best remembered as one of the most important directors of the Botanical Gardens at Rio de Janeiro. Yet few know that he too cut his teeth in the Amazon collecting and was creator of the first Museum of Natural History in Amazonas at Manaus. While plenty remains of Rodrigues’s contributions to Amazonian Botany in Rio de Janeiro, nothing remains of his work in Manaus. Apparently after accepting the post in Rio what he left behind in Manaus was neglected and ultimately abandoned. Today it is lost, though the botanically rich grounds of his museum may still be seen at the Instituto Benjamin Constant on Avenida Ramos Ferreira…right opposite this writer’s humble home in Manaus. And with that I leave you.

Lost Amazon Plants

Order the DVD of Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World (Widescreen Edition) on Amazon.com.

Order the book Memory of Amazonia: Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira and the Viagem Philosophica in the captaincies of Grão-Pará, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso and Cuyabá, 1783-1792, published by Portugal’s University of Coimbra, on Amazon.com.

Order Alfred Russel Wallace : A Life by Peter Raby on Amazon.com.

Order My Life A Record Of Events And Opinions by Alfred Russell Wallace on Amazon.com.

Order Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology on Amazon.com.

Order Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade on Amazon.com.

BrazilMax Pledge Drive

Did you like this article? Consider making a contribution to BrazilMax.

Text Ads by AdBrite