"Ein Sammler von unermüdlicher Ausdauer". Impatiens sodenii, Shrub Balsam, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In the Spring of 1894, well-known German botanist Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler (1844-1930) held forth enthusiastically in a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. His topic was the botany of German Africa, and in the printed version of his paper, he gives a daunting list of newly discovered and described African plants. Among these is this Impatiens sodenii. It belongs, of course, to the same family as 'our' Creeping Lizzie; but in Africa this is a shrub and its flowers are really huge.
This Impatiens is named for Julius, Freiherr von Soden (1846-1921). The Freiherr had earned his stripes as governor of several German colonies in Africa; moreover, he was an indefatigable organiser of German interest in African botany and one of the founders of the Botanischer Zentralstelle für die deutschen Kolonien (1891/1899) of the Botanical Garden in Berlin. This work was centred on the development of agriculture and the commerce of agrarian plants and products between Africa and Germany. But in the margins of that kind of activity, scientific work of discovery was also encouraged. Thus Engler was able to describe and catalogue botanical discoveries.
Such work was built upon the great labors of men such as Carl Hugo Ehrenfried Wilhelm Holst (1865-1894), who lay dying of a variety of tropical diseases in what is today Tanzania just as Engler was holding forth in Berlin. Holst - a missionary botanist - had been stationed at remote Mlalo in the Usambara Mountains, and he had also traveled extensively and collected thousands of plants. It is from his specimen that Engler describes Impatiens sodenii, and he remarks specifically that it has been found only in the Mlalo area. The local name for our plant is 'Tuanange'.
Soon after Holst's death, a German colleague described him as 'a collector with incredible endurance', "Ein Sammler von unermüdlicher Ausdauer".
This particular plant is in the section of plants from southern Africa in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
"Ein Sammler von unermüdlicher Ausdauer". Impatiens sodenii, Shrub Balsam, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In the Spring of 1894, well-known German botanist Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler (1844-1930) held forth enthusiastically in a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. His topic was the botany of German Africa, and in the printed version of his paper, he gives a daunting list of newly discovered and described African plants. Among these is this Impatiens sodenii. It belongs, of course, to the same family as 'our' Creeping Lizzie; but in Africa this is a shrub and its flowers are really huge.
This Impatiens is named for Julius, Freiherr von Soden (1846-1921). The Freiherr had earned his stripes as governor of several German colonies in Africa; moreover, he was an indefatigable organiser of German interest in African botany and one of the founders of the Botanischer Zentralstelle für die deutschen Kolonien (1891/1899) of the Botanical Garden in Berlin. This work was centred on the development of agriculture and the commerce of agrarian plants and products between Africa and Germany. But in the margins of that kind of activity, scientific work of discovery was also encouraged. Thus Engler was able to describe and catalogue botanical discoveries.
Such work was built upon the great labors of men such as Carl Hugo Ehrenfried Wilhelm Holst (1865-1894), who lay dying of a variety of tropical diseases in what is today Tanzania just as Engler was holding forth in Berlin. Holst - a missionary botanist - had been stationed at remote Mlalo in the Usambara Mountains, and he had also traveled extensively and collected thousands of plants. It is from his specimen that Engler describes Impatiens sodenii, and he remarks specifically that it has been found only in the Mlalo area. The local name for our plant is 'Tuanange'.
Soon after Holst's death, a German colleague described him as 'a collector with incredible endurance', "Ein Sammler von unermüdlicher Ausdauer".
This particular plant is in the section of plants from southern Africa in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.