Friedrich Sello

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Friedrich Sello , renamed Friedrich Sellow by 1814 at the latest , rarely Frederick Sellow or Frederico Sellow , Latinized in botanical writings Selovius ( baptized March 12, 1789 in Potsdam ; † October 1831 in the Rio Doce in Brazil ) was a Prussian gardener , plant hunter and naturalist in South America . He was one of the first scientific explorers of the flora of Brazil. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Sellow "; earlier the abbreviation " Sello " was also in use, but it belongs to Hermann Sello .

life and work

Own work - landscape near Bahia
Lowland tapir

Friedrich Sello was a scion of the famous Prussian gardener - Dynasty Sello . He was born in Potsdam in 1789, the eldest son of the royal gardener in the Marly Gardens of Sanssouci , Carl Julius Samuel Sello and his wife Friederike Wilhelmine Albertine, née. Lüder, eldest daughter of the royal court chef Johann August Lüder.

Youth and education

First he learned the gardening profession from his relative Wilhelm Sello , head of the tree nursery of the Royal Garden Director Johann Gottlob Schulze in Potsdam-Sanssouci, and was a gardener assistant at the Botanical Garden in Berlin under Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812) .

He then studied botany in Paris and London from 1810 . He has heard lectures by Georges Cuvier and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and works on the Jardin des Plantes . In the following year he traveled to the Netherlands and England with the recommendation and financial support of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and met with the most important botanists of his time.

Research trips through Brazil

Because of the war with France , Sello was prevented from returning to mainland Europe. Therefore, he accepted an invitation from the Russian consul Baron von Langsdorff (1774-1852), then a diplomat in Rio de Janeiro , to take part in a scientific expedition in Brazil. After extensive preparations and financed by British botanists, he sailed for Rio de Janeiro in 1814 (arrival March 12th). From then on he changed his family name to "Sellow".

In Brazil he and his colleagues were welcomed benevolently by the Portuguese colonial government and soon even received a generous annual salary as a civil servant scientist. Sellow learned the Portuguese language and first carried out small excursions in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro. He initially accompanied an expedition from 1815 to 1817, which was led by the German Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867) and to which the ornithologist Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss (1789–1825) also belonged. Both had also reached Brazil through Langsdorff. Sellow and Freyreiss accompanied Prince Maximilian's expedition for only part of the way to Caravelas (in today's state of Bahia ). Sellow collected many finds which he sent to London. One of the plants he discovered was the fire sage , which has become very popular as a summer flower.

Since he has since been financed by Prussia, Sellow was able to participate in numerous other expeditions to southern Brazil and Uruguay in the following eleven years. In these expeditions he traveled to previously unexplored regions of the country (river basin of the Rio Doce , São Leopoldo ( Rio Grande do Sul ), etc.), collected thousands of plants, seeds, samples of tropical woods, insects and minerals and sent them to botanical gardens in Brazil, Portugal, England and Germany. In total, there should be an incredible 12,000 plants or seeds, 5,000 birds, 110,000 insects and 2,000 minerals and rocks. Among the seed samples from South American flowering plants were two new species that are now extremely popular summer plants, the begonia ( Begonia semperflorens ) and the white petunia ( Petunia axillaris ). In one of his ethnographic expeditions, Sellow accompanied the diplomat Ignaz von Olfers (1793–1871), who later became the first general director of the Royal Prussian Museums.

He also wrote the first guide for immigrants to Brazil.

Death and memory

In October 1831 Sellow, only 42 years old, drowned while crossing the Rio Doce when his canoe crashed into the rocks of the "Cachoeira Escura" (Dark Waterfall).

His versatile talent and his rich contribution to the botanical knowledge of the Brazilian flora were forgotten until recently. Since 1954 the " Sellowia ", a botanical journal published in Itajaí (state of Santa Catarina , Brazil), has been named after him. A Brazilian train station ( Belo Oriente ) on the Belo Horizonte - Vitória line near the place of his death has been named "Frederico Sellow" in his honor since 1961.

Written estate

Sello was one of the most important naturalists of his era. A large part of his work is documented in his handwritten estate. A total of 71 travel diaries and 26 excursion reports from the years 1818 to 1831 are kept in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin . Since 2011, a research project funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation has been devoted to transcribing the manuscripts in order to decipher Friedrich Sello's notes.

Plants and animals named after Friedrich Sellow

Plants (selection)

The plant genera Selloa Spreng. from the sunflower family (Asteraceae), Sellowia Roth ex Roem. & Schult. from the family of loosestrife (Lythraceae) and Sellocharis Taub. from the legume family (Fabaceae) are named in his honor. Kunth , who like Sprengel described the genus Selloa , explained his name in Latin as follows: "Genus dicatum viro amicissimo, C. Sello, peregrinatori germano, Brasiliam adhuc lustranti, qui herbaria hortosque botanicos plantis exquaesitis mirabiliter auxit."

Well-known plant species collected by Sello or named after Sello, at least originally:

  • Pampas grass - Cortaderia selloana (JA & JH Schultes) Aschers. & Graebn.
  • Fire Sage - Salvia splendens Sellow ex Roemer & JA Schultes ( Salvia splendens Sello ex Nees )
  • Brazilian guava , pineapple guava - Feijoa sellowiana (O.Berg) O.Berg , syn .: Acca sellowiana (O.Berg) Burret
  • Ice Begonia - Begonia semperflorens Link & Otto
  • White Wild Petunia - Petunia axillaris (Lam.) Britton. Sterns & Poggenb.
  • Tree friend - Philodendron scandens K. Koch & Sello
  • Shaggy Philodendron - Philodendron selloum K. Koch
  • Green pepper basil, green pepper basil - Ocimum selloi Benth.
  • Room maple - Abutilon sellovianum rule
  • Lychee tomato, rocket-leaved nightshade - Solanum sisymbriifolium Lam.
  • Parodia sellowii (Link & Otto) DRHunt

Plants named after Sello can often be identified by the following components of their names: selloi , sellovii , selloviana , sellovianum , sellovianus , sellowianum , sellowianus , sellowii , selloanus etc. Note: Some are named after another member of the gardening family, Hermann Sello .

Animals

See also

Family tree of the gardener family Sello (extract)

literature

  • Sabine Hackethal, Carsten Eckert, Hanns Zischler (eds.): The exploration of Brazil. Friedrich Sellow's unfinished journey. Verlag Galiani bei Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin 2013, ISBN 9783869710754 .
  • Sabine Hackethal: Friedrich Sellow (1789–1831). Sketches of an unfinished journey through South America . In: Fauna and flora in Rhineland-Palatinate . Beiheft 17, 1995, pp. 229–246 (There are more articles in the booklet about Max's trips to Wied-Neuwied)
  • Anita Hermannstädter: Early Ethnography in Brazil 1815–1831. The Friedrich Sellow and Ignaz von Olfers Collection. A Berlin-Brandenburg cooperation . In: Gregor Wolff (Hrsg.): The Berlin and Brandenburg research on Latin America in the past and present. Persons and institutions [Colloquium in Berlin from October 25 to 28, 2000], Berlin 2001, pp. 311–328
  • International Society of Notocactus Friends V. (Ed.): The journeys of Friedrich Sellow . In: INTERNOTO . Issue 1, 1985, p. 11
  • Levy Rocha : Wied, Freyreiss e Sellow no Espírito Santo . In: Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro . Volume 297, 1972, pp. 56–67, Rio de Janeiro 1973. (An essay on the Sellow expedition with George Wilhelm Freyreiss and Wied.)
  • Christian Samuel Weiss : About the southern end of the mountain range of Brazil in the province of S. Pedro do Sul and the Banda oriental or the state of Monte Video. According to the collections of Mr. Fr. Sellow (after a lecture at the Academy of Sciences on August 9, 1827 and June 5, 1828), (In: Treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin . 1827), Dümmler, Berlin 1830
  • José Newton Cardoso Marchiori and Miguel Antão Durlo: Friedrich Sellow e sua contribuição para as ciências naturais . In: Revista Ciência & Ambiente 16: Paleontologia na América Do Sul . (Ed .: Delmar Bressan, Pascal Acot, Alvaro Mones, José Marchiori, Miguel Antão Durlo, César Schultz, Rubén Cúneo, Michael Holz, Claiton Scherer Laureen Alves, Margot Guerra-Sommer), Editora da UFSM, Rio Grande do Sul, 1998
  • José Fernando Pacheco and Bret M. Whitney: A tribute to naturalist Friedrich Sellow (1789–1831). Recounting his passage through Bahia and the unfortunate fate of his ornithological collection . In: Actualidades Ornithológicas . Volume 100, March / April 2001, pp. 6ff.
  • Carlos de Paula Couto: Sobre os vertebrados fósseis da coleção Sellow, do Uruguai , [Brazil] Departamento Nacional da Produção Mineral. Divisão de Geologia e Mineralogia. Boletim n. 125., 1-14 + 9 estampas. Rio de Janeiro 1948.
  • Guillermo Gustavo Herter and Balduino Rambo SJ : Nas pegadas dos naturalistas Sellow e Saint-Hilaire (Estudios botánicos en la región uruguaya; 18), Basilea 1953; (Transl. = Wilhelm Gustav Franz Herter: In the footsteps of the naturalists Sellow and Saint-Hilaire . In: Botanische Jahrbücher . Volume 74, Stuttgart 1945, Issue 1, pp. 119–149)
  • Eduard d'Alton : About the fossil armor fragments brought with him by [the deceased] Mr. Sellow from the Banda oriental , (Memoires de l'Academie royale des sciences et belles-lettres = treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, 1833), Berlin 1834 / 1835
  • Bot. Year syst. Volume 17, 1893, pp. 177-198.
  • Bot. Year syst. Volume 74, 1945, pp. 119-149.
  • Fl. Brazil. Volume 1, Issue 1, 1906, pp. 105-116.
  • Zool. Year (syst.) . Volume 77, 1948, pp. 401-425.
  • Jan-Peter Frahm and Jens Eggers: Lexicon of German-speaking bryologists . Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-8311-0986-9 , p. 488
  • Sellowia: anais botânicos do Herbário “Barbosa Rodrigues” , ISSN  0375-1651 0374-5015
  • Sabine Hackethal:  Sellow, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 225 f. ( Digitized version ).

Archives and sources

  • The “ International Plant Names Index ” (IPNI), in which only a small fraction of the species present at Harvard is currently recorded, shows 11 species named after “Sellow” (as of April 2006) [1] , as well as 171 different verifiably from species collected for him [2] .
  • Friedrich Sello's estate, including many zoological specimens, ethnographic drawings and his travel records in 70 notebooks and sketchbooks, is now in the Natural History Museum in Berlin ("Historical Workplace", avifaunistic specimens in the "Institute for Systematic Zoology"). So far, this material has hardly been processed - except in 1823 by Heinrich Lichtenstein in a relatively unsatisfactory manner.
  • Parts of Sellow's collections are also in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.
  • The "Harvard University Herbaria - Index of Botanists" shows about 10,000 (albeit largely destroyed) herbarium specimens from Friedrich Sello for Berlin, with references to further holdings in three dozen herbaria worldwide [3] .
  • In the " Botanical State Collection of the University of Munich " several documents from collections by Friedrich Sello are kept. A part of it (unknown number of vascular plant specimens from Austria-Hungary and Brazil) comes from the private herbarium of Zuccarini (* 1797, † 1848; 2nd conservator at the herbarium and garden) bought in 1849 , who probably bought it directly from his contemporary Sello got. Another part (7 documents from Brazil; added in 1891) comes from the Botanical Museum / Botanical Garden Berlin-Dahlem . Source: Collectors Index Herbarium [4]
  • The “Pringle Herbarium” of the “University of Vermont's Research Plant Collection” received several thousand specimens of flowering plants from a duplicate exchange with the herbarium of the Botanical Garden in Berlin-Dahlem. This inventory is of great importance today, as the inventory in Dahlem was destroyed in the Second World War.
  • The Natural History Museum Vienna , 1st Zoological Department - Bird Collection, has specimens from the collections of Friedrich Sello
  • From 1834 to 1849 Sir Joseph Paxton published in his multi-volume Magazine of Botany, among other things, a few depictions of plants named after Friedrich Sellow.
  • The "Darwin Correspondence Project" lists Friedrich Sellow as a person corresponding with Charles Darwin [5] .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The "Frederico Sellow" train station on the Estações Ferroviárias do Brasil website , Portuguese, accessed on April 14, 2013
  2. ↑ Transcription example of Friedrich Sello's travel reports  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de  
  3. ↑ The second discoverer of Brazil in Die Welt, September 28, 2013, p. 8
  4. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Sello, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sellow, Friedrich; Selovius; Sellow, Frederick; Sellow, Frederico
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gardener, naturalist in South America
DATE OF BIRTH baptized March 12, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH October 1831
Place of death Rio Doce , Brazil