Friedrich Sellow
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Sellow (1789-1831) was a German
botanist and naturalist
, one of the earliest scientific explorers of the Brazil
ian flora.
Friedrich Sellow was born on 12 March 1789, the oldest son of Carl Julius Samuel Sello, the gardener of the Royal Court of Potsdam
. After learning the profession of gardener with relatives, Sellow went to work and study in the Botanical Garden of Berlin
, under the patronage of its director, Carl Ludwig Willdenow
(1765-1812). In 1810 Sellow started a study travel to Paris
, France
, where he attended the scientific lectures of Georges Cuvier
and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
and worked at the Jardin des Plantes
.
In the next year, with recommendations and financial assistance of Alexander von Humboldt
(1769-1859). he traveled to the Netherlands
and England
, coming in contact with the most prominent botanists of the time. Due to the war with France
, however, Sellow was impeded to return to continental Europe for a time, so he accepted an invitation by the Russian consul, Baron von Langsdorff (1774-1852), who was serving at the time as a diplomat in Rio de Janeiro
, to be part of a scientific expedition he was organizing in Brazil
. After detailed preparations, and funded by British botanists, he sailed in 1814 to Rio de Janeiro. There, he and his colleagues were well received by the Portuguese colonial government in Brazil and soon started to receive a generous annual salary as an official naturalist. Sellow learned Portuguese
and carried out initially smaller excursions in the environs of Rio de Janeiro. First he followed, from 1815 to 1817, an expedition led by the German prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867). He collected many specimens, which he sent out to London. One of the plants he discovered, Lee's Scarlet Sage
(Salvia splendens
Sellow), became quite popular as an ornamental summer flowers in England and Germany.
Further financing from Prussia
allowed Sellow to undertake numerous other expeditions to southern Brazil and Uruguay
in the next 11 years. In these expeditions, he would travel into unexplored regions of the country, and would collect thousands of plants, seeds
, wood
samples, insect
s and mineral
s, in the tradition of the independent 19th century naturalist, sending them to botanical garden
s in Brazil, Portugal
, England and Germany. Among the seed specimens of South American ornamental plants sent by Sellow were two new species of begonia
(Begonia semperflorens) and white petunia
s (Petunia axillaris), which became wildly popular in the summer balconies of homes across Germany, Switzerland
and Austria
.
In one of his ethnographic
expeditions, Sellow accompanied the diplomat Ignaz Maria von Olfers (1793-1872), who later became the first general manager of the Royal Prussian museums. His scientific collections from Naturkunde Uruguay ('Staat von Montevideo' or 'Banda Oriental') and Brazil are divided between the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where parts are displayed and the Naturhistorisches Museum
in Vienna and the Berlin-Dahlem Ethnologisches Museum :de:Ethnologisches Museum. These include many zoological preparations,insects, shells, ethnographic drawings and original diaries.
Unfortunately, Sellow met his end very early in his life, perishing by drowning in a river in October 1831, only 42 years old. His versatile and rich contribution to the botanical knowledge about Brazilian plants remained forgotten until recently, when Sellowia, a botanical journal published in Itajai
, state of Santa Catarina
, Brazil, received his name.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
botanist and naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, one of the earliest scientific explorers of the Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian flora.
Friedrich Sellow was born on 12 March 1789, the oldest son of Carl Julius Samuel Sello, the gardener of the Royal Court of Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
. After learning the profession of gardener with relatives, Sellow went to work and study in the Botanical Garden of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, under the patronage of its director, Carl Ludwig Willdenow
Carl Ludwig Willdenow
Carl Ludwig Willdenow was a German botanist, pharmacist, and plant taxonomist. He is considered one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants...
(1765-1812). In 1810 Sellow started a study travel to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where he attended the scientific lectures of Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
and worked at the Jardin des Plantes
Jardin des Plantes
The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It is one of seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. It is situated in the 5ème arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the river Seine and covers 28 hectares .- Garden plan :The grounds of the Jardin des...
.
In the next year, with recommendations and financial assistance of Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
(1769-1859). he traveled to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, coming in contact with the most prominent botanists of the time. Due to the war with France
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, however, Sellow was impeded to return to continental Europe for a time, so he accepted an invitation by the Russian consul, Baron von Langsdorff (1774-1852), who was serving at the time as a diplomat in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, to be part of a scientific expedition he was organizing in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. After detailed preparations, and funded by British botanists, he sailed in 1814 to Rio de Janeiro. There, he and his colleagues were well received by the Portuguese colonial government in Brazil and soon started to receive a generous annual salary as an official naturalist. Sellow learned Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and carried out initially smaller excursions in the environs of Rio de Janeiro. First he followed, from 1815 to 1817, an expedition led by the German prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867). He collected many specimens, which he sent out to London. One of the plants he discovered, Lee's Scarlet Sage
Scarlet sage
Salvia splendens is a tender herbaceous perennial that is native to Brazil, growing at elevation where it is warm year-round and with high humidity. The native plant, rarely seen in cultivation, reaches tall. Smaller selections are very popular as bedding plants, seen in shopping malls and...
(Salvia splendens
Scarlet sage
Salvia splendens is a tender herbaceous perennial that is native to Brazil, growing at elevation where it is warm year-round and with high humidity. The native plant, rarely seen in cultivation, reaches tall. Smaller selections are very popular as bedding plants, seen in shopping malls and...
Sellow), became quite popular as an ornamental summer flowers in England and Germany.
Further financing from Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
allowed Sellow to undertake numerous other expeditions to southern Brazil and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
in the next 11 years. In these expeditions, he would travel into unexplored regions of the country, and would collect thousands of plants, seeds
SEEDS
SEEDS is a voluntary organisation registered under the Societies Act of India....
, wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
samples, insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s and mineral
Mineral
A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance formed through biogeochemical processes, having characteristic chemical composition, highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not...
s, in the tradition of the independent 19th century naturalist, sending them to botanical garden
Botanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
s in Brazil, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, England and Germany. Among the seed specimens of South American ornamental plants sent by Sellow were two new species of begonia
Begonia
Begonia is a genus in the flowering plant family Begoniaceae and is a perennial. The only other members of the family Begoniaceae are Hillebrandia, a genus with a single species in the Hawaiian Islands, and the genus Symbegonia which more recently was included in Begonia...
(Begonia semperflorens) and white petunia
Petunia
Petunia is a widely cultivated genus of flowering plants of South American origin, closely related with tobacco, cape gooseberries, tomatoes, deadly nightshades, potatoes and chili peppers; in the family Solanaceae. The popular flower derived its name from French, which took the word petun, meaning...
s (Petunia axillaris), which became wildly popular in the summer balconies of homes across Germany, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
In one of his ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
expeditions, Sellow accompanied the diplomat Ignaz Maria von Olfers (1793-1872), who later became the first general manager of the Royal Prussian museums. His scientific collections from Naturkunde Uruguay ('Staat von Montevideo' or 'Banda Oriental') and Brazil are divided between the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where parts are displayed and the Naturhistorisches Museum
Naturhistorisches Museum
The Naturhistorisches Museum Wien or NHMW is a large museum located in Vienna, Austria.The collections displayed cover , and the museum has a website providing an overview as a video virtual tour....
in Vienna and the Berlin-Dahlem Ethnologisches Museum :de:Ethnologisches Museum. These include many zoological preparations,insects, shells, ethnographic drawings and original diaries.
Unfortunately, Sellow met his end very early in his life, perishing by drowning in a river in October 1831, only 42 years old. His versatile and rich contribution to the botanical knowledge about Brazilian plants remained forgotten until recently, when Sellowia, a botanical journal published in Itajai
Itajaí
Itajaí is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina.-History:The city was founded on June 15, 1860, but the colonization of Itajaí started in 1658, when the Paulista João Dias D’Arzão arrived in the region. In 1750, Portuguese colonists coming from Madeira and the Azores made this region...
, state of Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, Brazil, received his name.
External links
- H.-D. Krausch: Friedrich Sello, ein vergessener Pflanzensammler aus Potsdam. Zandera 17 (2002), Nr. 2, S.73-76. (In German)