Eduard Ortgies (botanist)

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Eduard Ortgies

Karl Eduard Ortgies (born February 19, 1829 in Bremen , † December 6, 1916 in Kilchberg ZH ) was a German botanist .

Live and act

Eduard Ortgies was born on February 19, 1829 in Bremen. On May 1, 1844, he started an apprenticeship at the H. Böckmann commercial nursery in Hamburg . At the end of the three-year apprenticeship he stayed for a few months and left Hamburg at the end of 1847. On March 1, 1848, he accepted an assistant position at A. Henderson & Cie in London . After a little over a year in May 1849, he was hired by the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. The head gardener Joseph Paxton entrusted Ortgies with the care of the Victoria regia . The challenge was to be the first to make them bloom in Europe. When the Ortgies succeeded, many newspapers reported about it. On April 1, Ortgies moved to the Van Houtte commercial nursery in Ghent to take care of the Victoria regia for breeding and flowering . Van Houtte had a greenhouse built for it, which was called "Victoriahous". While the construction work was still in progress, he began to take care of it, so that it was able to report a bloom on September 3rd. At Van Houtte, Ortgies took over the English and German correspondence in the spring of 1851 and was also in charge of orchids and aquatic plants. He went on business trips on which he made numerous contacts.

In the summer of 1855 Ortgies was offered the position of head gardener at the botanical garden in Zurich. He accepted and became the successor of Eduard Regel , who went to the Imperial Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg as scientific director . In order to generate a source of income for the botanical garden, Ortgies was busy trading seeds and plants. With this income, Ortgies was able to build and renovate greenhouses and carry out other projects.

In 1855 the Federal Polytechnic contributed to the costs of the botanical garden and thus became co-owner. The Polytechnic received a botanical collection and a botanical institute. The botanical garden provided teaching material for forest botany.

After twenty years of service he was promoted to inspector. Through his exchange and trade with colleagues at home and abroad, he was able to expand the collection of rare plants considerably.

For the botanist Benedict Roezl he brokered the purchases of his collections. This was so successful that other collectors asked Ortgies to mediate. These included the collectors Gustav Wallis , Friedrich Carl Lehmann (1850-1903) in Colombia , Rudolf Richard Pfau (1856-1897) in Costa Rica and others.

In 1894 he celebrated his 50th anniversary as a gardener and thus ended his work in the botanical garden in Zurich.

Karl Eduard Ortgies became a citizen of Zurich in 1868. He was married to Ester Louise Locher, whose sister Elisabeth was married to Eduard Regel . They had five children together, four daughters, including the landscape painter Vida Ortgies (1858–1955), and a son, the landscape and animal painter Eduard Ortgies .

Hermann Christian Georg Ortgies (1819–1886) was a brother. He was the head of the Bremen deaf-mute institution and founded the Bremen Horticultural Association in 1840 with his father David Christian Ortgies (1786-1859) and others.

Honors

The plant genus Ortgiesia is named after Ortgies, usually from the bromeliad family (Bromeliaceae).

literature

  • Eduard Ortgies (50), in: Gartenflora , Vol. 43, 1894, 2. 225–229
  • Erich Wocke: Obituary Eduard Ortgies , in: Die Gartenwelt , vol. 21, 1917, pp. 21-22

Remarks

  1. ↑ Johann Hinrich Böckmann (1767-1854): Clemens Alexander Wimmer: On the emergence of tree nurseries in Germany , in: Sylvia Butenschön (Ed.): Early tree nurseries in Germany , workbooks Forum city and regional planning, Berlin 2012, p. 25, ISBN 978-3-7983-2414-5 .
  2. ^ The owner was Louis Van Houtte (1810–1876), holder of numerous orders and decorations and publisher of the Flore de Serres magazine .
  3. ↑ Often referred to as FC Lehmann in the literature. ( The Life and Travels of Friedrich Carl Lehmann , in: LANKESTERIANA 10 (2-3), December 2010. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2010. ( PDF )); ( Obituary , in: The Gardeners Cronicle , Vol. XXXV, February 13, 1904, p. 106, (English)).
  4. ↑ Ortgies. From Bremen, 1868 . In: Kaspar Pfister: Directory of the citizens of the city of Zurich in 1875 , Schultheß, Zurich undated, p. 243
  5. ↑ In: Personalnotizen ; in Hamburger Garten- und Blumenzeitung, Volume 42, 1886, p. 527f.
  6. ↑ 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 .

Web links

Wikisource: Garden flora  - sources and full texts
Wikisource: The Garden World  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: Hamburger Garten- und Blumenzeitung  - Sources and full texts
  • Karl Eduard Ortgies-Locher (9.2.1829 - 6.12.1916) , University of Zurich, herbaria of the University and ETH Zurich, herbaria , collector details, digitized
personal data
SURNAME Ortgies, Eduard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ortgies, Karl Eduard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1916
Place of death Kilchberg ZH