Hans Thomale

Hans Thomale (* 1919 in Herne ; † July 25, 2002 in Lemgo ) was a German orchid breeder .

Life

Thomale grew up in Cologne . Before the Second World War he began studying chemistry and medicine . After the war he first grew potatoes. In 1946 he set up a laboratory for the propagation of native and tropical orchids .

Orchids

Thomale acquired his knowledge of orchids through self-study. The basis for this was the book Seed Germination of Orchids by Hans Burgeff (1883–1976).

In 1949 Gavino Rotor carried out the first meristem propagation in orchids with a single inflorescence . Thomale was the first to use this method to reproduce orchids over undifferentiated tissue . Thomale reported on this in 1956 at a conference of the German Orchid Society. The second edition (1957) of his book Die Orchideen contains a photo of a culture of Orchis maculata that had been preserved in this way.

Unfortunately, he was denied recognition of his discovery for a long time. In many books, Georges Morel is named as the discoverer (1960).

Works

• The orchids . Eugen Ulmer, 1954.
• New ways of orchid propagation . In: orchid . tape 7 , 1956, pp. 104-105 .
• Orchids. In: Friedrich Escher (Ed.): Handbook of the commercial gardener, cut flower cultures. Eugen Ulmer, 1996, ISBN 3-8001-5140-5 .

literature

• TW Yam, J. Arditti: History of orchid propagation: a mirror of the history of biotechnology . In: Plant Biotechnology Reports . tape 3 , no. 1 , 2009, p. 1-56 , doi : 10.1007 / s11816-008-0066-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The orchid . tape 53 , no. 3 , 2002, p. 288 .