Tantoco's Protection. Victoria amazonica, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The Czech traveler Thaddeus Xaverius Peregrinus Haenke's (1761-1816) first, baptismal names were clearly auspicious for his life to come: brave-hearted, destined for a new home - in Amazonia -, and a pelgrim as a naturalist and anthropologist.
Haenke was a member of a number of naturalist expeditions in the service of the crown of Spain, and later he settled in the remote regions of the warlike Yurakaré people in Bolivia, in the town of Cochabamba on the Mamoré River, a tributary of the Amazon. Here he served as the town's physician and cultivated his own botanical garden.
He befriended a local Franciscan missionary, Francisco la Cueva, and the two of them explored the wilds and also wrote notes on the anthropology of the tribes there. Haenke waxes quite eloquent on Yurakaré religion, stresssing their belief in a good God, Tantoco, who wards off an evil spirit, Limpelite. But Haenke didn't get around to describing everything he saw....
It seems he and La Cueva had come upon the amazing waterlily we today know as Victoria amazonica in the Mamoré River (1801). La Cueva tells a later explorer that Haenke had fallen on his knees and praised the Creator of such a marvellous plant. Haenke didn't live to give the lily a name - he was inadvertently poisoned by his maid. But soon European botanists devised a series of names of which the present one has survived.
Here at the top is a floating leaf of this majestic flower. it can sustain a weight of perhaps some 20 kilos. The upturned edge and bottom are studded with those sharp spines (see bottom inset). It's unclear what their purpose is, but it's conjectured they protect the plant from hungry fish and manatees; the strife of Tantoco and Limpelite in a nutshell.
Tantoco's Protection. Victoria amazonica, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The Czech traveler Thaddeus Xaverius Peregrinus Haenke's (1761-1816) first, baptismal names were clearly auspicious for his life to come: brave-hearted, destined for a new home - in Amazonia -, and a pelgrim as a naturalist and anthropologist.
Haenke was a member of a number of naturalist expeditions in the service of the crown of Spain, and later he settled in the remote regions of the warlike Yurakaré people in Bolivia, in the town of Cochabamba on the Mamoré River, a tributary of the Amazon. Here he served as the town's physician and cultivated his own botanical garden.
He befriended a local Franciscan missionary, Francisco la Cueva, and the two of them explored the wilds and also wrote notes on the anthropology of the tribes there. Haenke waxes quite eloquent on Yurakaré religion, stresssing their belief in a good God, Tantoco, who wards off an evil spirit, Limpelite. But Haenke didn't get around to describing everything he saw....
It seems he and La Cueva had come upon the amazing waterlily we today know as Victoria amazonica in the Mamoré River (1801). La Cueva tells a later explorer that Haenke had fallen on his knees and praised the Creator of such a marvellous plant. Haenke didn't live to give the lily a name - he was inadvertently poisoned by his maid. But soon European botanists devised a series of names of which the present one has survived.
Here at the top is a floating leaf of this majestic flower. it can sustain a weight of perhaps some 20 kilos. The upturned edge and bottom are studded with those sharp spines (see bottom inset). It's unclear what their purpose is, but it's conjectured they protect the plant from hungry fish and manatees; the strife of Tantoco and Limpelite in a nutshell.