Karl Theodore Hartweg ( 1812 - 1871 )

Central and South America were easily the " Treasure Troves " of the orchid world in the 1800 s and the areas most frequented by orchid seekers attempting to supply the voracious " orchid mania " then current in England . Many intrepid collectors entered teh field either in the service of commercial nurseries or on their own , both with a view toward ready profit. The competition was fierce indeed, for having once located and collected the plants , it was often a race to get them shipped back to the salesrooms of England by the most expedient means . As a scientific organization , however ,the London Horticultural Society was interested in new plants for the sake of study , not profit ; thus they had no great urgency to acquire large qualitities of single species. And so , by sending out a young German collector named Karl Hartweg to Mexico and tropical America, there resulted the most variable and comprehensive collection of New World orchids made by a single individual in the first half of the century.

Karl Theodor Hartweg , a descendant of a long line of gardeners ,was born 18 June 1812, at Karlsruhe , Germany . He received an excellent education in botany and at an early age was employed by the Paris Jardin des Plantes and afterward by the London Horticultural Society ,where his aptitude and intelligence soon attracted attention and led to his being sent to Mexico in 1836 to collect seeds and plants for introduction into English Gardens .William Jackson Hooker , director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at at Kew ,confidently anticipated that Hartweg would do great justice to British plant study and wrote in The Companion to the Botanical Magazine in January 1837:

.....Mr. Theodore Hartweg embarked for Mexico in the service of the Horticultural Society ,to whom therefore all living plants , roots ,and seeds will be sent : but that useful Institution has genorously allowed him to dispose of dried specimens of plants on his own account ,which he will do at the rate of pound 2 the hundred species. All applications, however , for shares must be made through the Horticultural Society , by letters addressed either to Mr. Bentham , or to Mr. Lindley .From the capital of Mexico, Mr. Hartweg will go to Guanaxato and proceed northward ....Keeping as much as he can to the Tierra fria. He will remain in the country two or three years, that is , if the state of it will admit of botanizing ; but it is so disturbed , that he may probably have to take another direction and visit Bolvia , which presents a yet more interesting field. Which ever way he goes ,we are authorized in anticipating great things from him.

For seven years Hartweg roamed Mexico ,Central America, northern South America , and Jamaica , making important discoveries , including numerous coniferous trees of the Mexican highland and large numbers of new orchids which he successfully introduced into cultivation. In his own journals he described in detail the botany of the regions explored . George Bentham described the Hartweg collections under the title of Plantae Hartwegianae ,the publication of which commenced in 1839 and extended over several years .

Hartweg returned to England in 1843 and the society was so pleased with his his work that they send him on a second mission to Mexico and California , with the same objectives and under the same auspices ,in 1845. This mission was completed in 1848. Arriving at Vera Cruz in November 1845, he crossed Mexico to Mazatlan,on the Pacific Coast . There it was , on his first journey to Zaquapan , on the eastern side of the snowclad Orizabas , that he found the orchid Hartwegia purpurea , so named in acknowledgment of his success as a collector by Dr. John Lindley.

Because of political difficulties between the United States and England over possession of Alta California , Hartweg was unable to obtain passage to California until May 1846, arriving in Monterey on 7 June. From there he journeyed to San Francisco , the Sacramento Valley as far north as Chico, and into the Sierra foothills. Other trips took him southward to Soledad and San Antonio and the Santa Lucia Mountains. The many plants introduced in the course of these journeys, especially hardy plants, trees, and orchids,were of great satisfaction to the Horticultural Society.

Because of political difficulties between the United States and England over possession of Alta California , Hartweg was unable to obtain passage to California until May 1846, arriving in Monterey on 7 June . From there he journeyed to San Francisco , the Sacramento Valley as far north as Chico, and into the Sierra foothills . Other trips took him southward to Soledad and San Antonio and the Santa Lucia Mountains . The many plants introduced in the course of these journeys,especially hardy plants, trees,and orchids, were of great satisfaction to the Horticultural Society .

Following the California expedition , Hartweg was appointed director of the Grand Ducal Gardens of Swetzingen , in Baden , Germany ,where he died on 3 February 1871, leaving several sons and a legacy of worthy and important achievement in plant discovery and introduction.

References

Alden, Roland H., and Ifft, John D. 1943 . Early naturalists in the Far West . San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.

Gardeners' Chronicle . 1871. Obituary . No. 10.

Journal of Botany . 1871. Botanical News .Vol. 9.

Mckelvey ,Susan Delano. 1955.Botanical Explorations of teh Trans-Missisippi West 1790-1850. Jamaica Plain , Massachusetts: Arnols Arboretum of Harvard University.