Alfred Byrd Count
Alfred Byrd Graf , originally Alfred Graefe , (born November 23, 1901 in Nuremberg ; † December 14, 2001 in Düsseldorf ) was a German-American botanist who discovered more than 100 plant species and varieties on his travels around the world. He photographed and documented his discoveries in a number of richly illustrated books that he wrote. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " AB Graf ".
Life
Alfred Byrd Graf was the oldest of eight children of the gardener Richard Graefe from Beulbar / Thuringia. His father had received his education in Lyon and Kew Gardens in London. After founding a family, the father became the manager of the Weigelshof manor near Nuremberg. Alfred spent his childhood and youth there.
When the family grew, his father bought his own nursery in Weißenburg in Bavaria in 1917 . As Alfred, the eldest son, was supposed to take over his father's business one day, he completed an apprenticeship as a gardener with his father after school. For further training he went to Bielefeld, Hanover, Uerdingen, Lower Austria, Bulgaria and in 1924 to Richard Wettstein at the Belvedere Garden in Vienna . He studied horticulture, botany, languages and photography.
However, after Alfred's younger brother was seriously injured in a horse and cart accident, the father changed his plans to ensure a future for this child. Thereupon Alfred decided to emigrate to the United States of America.
On March 29, 1925, he arrived with the "President Roosevelt" in New York City and took the name Alfred Byrd Graf when he was naturalized as an American citizen. For two years he worked as a cowboy on a farm in Sutton , Nebraska, in order to be able to repay the borrowed money for his ship passage to America and to save some money for the purchase of his own nursery. However, the success of this company in Council Bluffs, Iowa was only brief. A massive hailstorm destroyed all greenhouses and with it his livelihood.
He went to Los Angeles , continued his studies and worked for the renowned company Armacost & Royston, where he was able to profitably apply the knowledge he had acquired in Europe about plant tissue cultures and the reproduction of orchids. This earned him a reputation as an orchid specialist. In 1931 he started working for the Julius Roehrs Company in New Jersey, a horticultural company that specialized in tropical and subtropical plants. At the same time he took courses in botany at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, New Jersey. When the Julius Roehrs Company was on the verge of bankruptcy, he took out a loan and bought the company together with William Hoffbauer, Roehrs' cousin. In Manhattan Beach and Vista / California, he also acquired land to grow cacti and succulents for shipping, thus contributing to the company's economic success.
In 1928 he married Mildred Heft from California. In 1936 his daughter Doris was born. This first marriage was divorced in 1943 due to the geographical distance between California and New Jersey and his expedition trips, which often lasted for months.
In 1967 he married Lieselotte Vorwerk from Düsseldorf, who was a great help in his work. In 1978 he, the humble self-made man, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, New Jersey , for his services . His will to work remained unbroken even in old age. In 1992, at the age of 91, he published a new book, Hortica: Color Cyclopedia of Garden Flora and Exotic Plants Indoors with 150,000 color photos, actively supported by his wife Lieselotte and his daughter Doris. However, macular degeneration and glaucoma led to a progressive deterioration in his eyesight. In 1998 he returned to Germany completely blind and lived in isolation with his wife in Düsseldorf. But even in old age, his thirst for knowledge was insatiable: He was still interested in the possibilities of digitizing photos and databases. On December 14, 2001, he died in Düsseldorf after a femoral neck fracture.
Research areas and travel
As a plant researcher, Graf traveled all over the world on expedition journeys lasting for months, researching the vegetation e.g. B. on Kilimanjaro in Africa, the tropical and subtropical flora of South America, China, India, Indonesia or Australia. In 1960 he took part in an expedition into the then unexplored interior of Papua New Guinea, inhabited by cannibals . He always had his camera and notepad on hand. On an 8-month expedition through Africa in 1962 he was infected with an unknown tropical disease that even the New York Tropical Institute was unable to diagnose and which could not be completely cured.
He created a huge photo archive and documented and cataloged thousands of plants, including more than 120 new ones. On his travels, however, he was not only interested in the plants, but also in the art, culture and way of life of foreign countries. In botany, he regularly brought home with him previously unknown plants and examined them for their suitability as indoor plants, e.g. B. Dieffenbachia maculata 'Rudolf Roehrs' or the white Usambara violet Saintpaulia ionantha H. Wendl. from Africa.
Publications
The great interest shown by customers in the illustrated catalogs with care instructions gave Graf in 1953 the idea of cataloging the plants and flowers he photographed and publishing them in book form. This is how his first work, Exotic House Plants Illustrated , came about . Since specialist publishers saw its publication as too great a risk, the small, richly illustrated work was brought out by his Julius Roehrs Company. With 10 editions, this first book was a tremendous success.
- 1953 Exotic House Plants Illustrated.
- 1958 Exotica: Pictorial Cyclopedia of Indoor Plants. Julius Roehrs, ISBN 0911266127
- 1978 Tropica: Color Cyclopedia of Exotic Plants and Trees from the Tropics and Subtropics. Julius Roehrs, ISBN 0911266267
- 1992 Hortica: Color Cyclopedia of Garden Flora and Exotic Plants Indoors. Julius Roehrs, ISBN 0911266259
Awards
- Dr. hc - Honorary Doctorate from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, New Jersey
- Tercentenary Medallion from Gov. Rich Hughes of the State of New Jersey
- Citation Award from the American Society for Horticultural Science
- Large Gold Medal from the New Jersey State Florists Association
- Large Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Boston
- Distinguished Service Award from the Horticultural Society of New York
- Certificate of Merit from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in Philadelphia
- Award of Merit and Silver Medal from the New York Florists Club
- Sarah Chapman Francis Medal from the Garden Clubs of America
- Induction into the Floriculture Hall of Fame by the Society of American Florists
- Florida Hall of Fame Award by the Foliage Association in Orlando
- Liberty Hyde Bailey Medal from the American Horticultural Society 1979
Web links
- New York Times: Newcomers for the bookshelves; Colorful Issues Provide Wise Words for All Plant Fanciers , March 30, 1958
- New York Times: Around the World in Pursuit of Tropical Plants , February 9, 1986
- New York Times: Alfred Byrd Graf 100 - Botanist and Author of Plant Books , Jan. 21, 2002
- Alfred Byrd Graf: House Plants in Encyclopedia Britannica
- Biography at Roehrs Company
Individual evidence
- ^ Liberty-Ellis Foundation: Passenger Records
- ^ Society of American Florists: Hall of Fame
- ^ American Horticultural Society: Liberty Hyde Bailey Medal - previous winners
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Graf, Alfred Byrd |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Count, Alfred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American botanist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 23, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nuremberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 14, 2001 |
| Place of death | Dusseldorf |