Mudhand

If you want to see this newly described (1993) Alchemilla taernaensis you have to go up quite far north, to Lyckelse Lappmark in northern Sweden, the only region in the world where it grow. Alchemilla is a genus with several hundred species mostly in Eurasian temperate and subarctic regions. Many of these species are apomictic (“asexual”) and have a very restricted distribution. Despite its green and reduced flowers, it is closely related to the strawberry genus Fragaria.

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Cuban mahogany, the “original” mahogany introduced to Europe five centuries ago, before it was almost extinct in the wild (wherever that is; since it has been introduced to many areas it is now difficult to know where it is natural). The remaining populations are now of poor quality, through “genetic erosion”, that is after selection for the best plants for felling. It is listed as Endangered by IUCN.

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Wanted! More collections! And recent ones, please! But I doubt it ever will be collected again; according to the IUCN Red List it has only been collected once (in 1904), in an area now mostly turned into agriculture land… For the time being, it is listed as Critically Endangered, but can probably be moved to Extinct… (as is the Holotype, burnt down in the bombings of the Berlin Herbarium in March 1943). It’s South American relatives in genus Acioa have edible seeds (oil seeds) that are locally important. Who knows what uses this species might have had?!

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Is it the great Linnaean disciple Daniel Solander’s (1733-1782) hair that is stuck under the frond? Or even Linnaeus’?! This Pityrogramma calomelanos was collected on Jamaica in the 18C, perhaps by Patrick Browne (1720-1790). It is a widely cultivated and naturalized species (“first colonizer of erupted volcanoes in Mex.”), used as ornamental. Mabberley (The Plant Book) also says “spore-prints used as face-paint in NG, local medic. incl. malaria”.

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On the last major exploration voyage made entirely under sail, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) collected this Acaena lucida on the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in the early 1840’s. J.D. Hooker was later to become one of Charles Darwin’s closest friends, and he was the one who made the formal presentation of Darwin’s and Wallace’s theory on natural selection on the Linnaean Society in 1848. Needless to say, Hooker was one of the first (if not the first!) to officially support the theory.

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Nothing particular with this South American grass (what I know), more than a pretty plant collected by Nils Johan Andersson (1821-80), professor at our department (1856-79). The grass was collected when he took part in the first Swedish circumnavigation (with Eugénie, 1851-53).

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WW1 broke out shortly after Erik Ekman arrived to the Swedish colony in Bayate, bringing chaos to the world. Ekman was quite happy to spend his time in a remote place on Cuba. Together with Johan August Nyström he summited Pico Turquino (1974 masl), the highest peak on Cuba, and there he collected, among other, a species of Henriettella that was later named efter him by his German collaborator Ignatz Urban (1848-1931).

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Ekman had to be persuaded to make a brief stop at Cuba on his travel to Brazil via Hispaniola, and he didn’t have high expactations on this island, said to be thoroughly explored by botanists from USA. For various reasons his travel from Cuba was delayed (for 10 years!), and it didn’t take long before he realized that the vegetation on Cuba was enormously rich on undescribed and uncollected plant species, among them Acalypha cubensis collected less than a month after his arrival on April 13, 1914.

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February 1914 Erik L Ekman received his Ph.D., and just a few months later, in April, he saw Cuba for the first time. Among the first plants he collected was this Cissus, but he would collect many, many more from Cuba and Hispaniola (he was heading for Brazil, never to arrive there; and never to return to Sweden). (Cissus verticillata, princess vine, is a widespred and cultivated species from tropical America.)

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Erik Ekman (1883-1931) travelled early to South America, and visited the Swedish Misionary Colony in Misiones, Argentina, for three months 1907-1908, where he collected this new variety of Acalypha communis. While in Misiones he was offered a position as Regnellian Amanuensis here at the museum. This was far from the end of his South American travels; after defending his Ph.D. thesis in 1914 he returned to South America the same year, a trip that would last until his premature death in 1931.

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