Thailand was one of the last regions of Southeast Asia to be explored.
As Thailand has always been an independent country, never colonized by any
Western power, botanical exploration, in the tradition of the West, came late.
The first who collected plant specimens scientifically was a German medical
doctor Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) who, on his journey to the Far East on
board a ship belonging to the Dutch East India Company, first arrived in Siam,
as the country was called in those days, in 1690. He stayed for about one month
and collected information on language, architecture and natural phenomena. He
also collected plants, the specimens of which unfortunately have vanished. One
of his collections was a medicinal herb of which he sent a drawing and
description to Linnaeus, who named it in honour of its collector: Kaempferia
galanga. Looking into the famous Linnaean work of 1753, the Species
Plantarum, which enumerates all the plant species known to Linnaeus, it is
seen that he only was aware of nine species of Gingers, three of Canna, one
Marantaceae and one Costus. Among the Gingers are Kaempferia rotunda and
K. galanga, Zingiber zerumbet (referred to as Amomum) and Elettaria
cardamomum (also referred to Amomum), Curcuma longa, and C. rotunda.
After
Kaempfer, a century passed before a new scientific collector, J.G. Koenig
(1728-85) arrived. In the 18th century, many students came to Uppsala in Sweden
to study with Linnaeus, while others came to the famous old university of
Copenhagen founded in 1475. Koenig came as a young student from Latvia to
study, first in Copenhagen later he spent two years studying with Linnaeus. He
soon became an ardent botanist and plant collector in Denmark, Norway and
Iceland for the most prestigious project of those days: Flora Danica. In
1779, however, he travelled to Siam and two years later to Ceylon. Koenig was
one of the most prolific plant collectors of the 18th century. In Thailand, he
collected particularly on Phuket and in the Chantaburi Province. Among his
collections were many orchids (see Seidenfaden 1995) but also a large number of
Zingiberaceae and related plants, of which several were described as new
species: Amomum uliginosum Koenig and A. scyphiferum Koenig (now Hornstedtia
scyphifera), A. montanum Koenig (now Zingiber montanum), Banksea
speciosa Koenig (now Costus speciosus), Costus malaccensis Koenig
(now Alpinia malaccensis), Hedychium coronarium Koenig, Hornstedtia
leonurus Koenig, Languas chinenpis Koenig (now Alpinia nigra),
Languas vulgare Koenig (now Alpinia galanga). These name changes
also reflect changes in our taxonomic understanding with the growing knowledge
of ginger plants since the late 18th century.
Koenig’s name is commemorated in numerous
genera and species, for instance, among the Zingiberaceae in Amomum
koenigii. His collections from Thailand were long regarded lost, until many
were rediscovered in the Botanical Museum, Copenhagen some years ago.
Again a century passed before a new expedition
arrived in Thailand for scientific botanical collecting. Again it was a Danish
expedition 1899-1900 in which a young Danish botanist, E. Johannes Schmidt
(1877-1933) participated. Schmidt collected during four months on the Island of
Koh Chang in the Gulf of Siam near the Cambodian border. His collections
amounted to a number of 550, not a big total, but many members of his
collections were new to science. After returning to Denmark he wrote his thesis
on the morphology of trees in the mangrove and edited what became the first
floristic work in Thailand: Flora of Koh Chang. His material was worked on by
the greatest botanists of his time, those of the Engler School in Berlin. K.
Schumann, who also contributed other basic works on Zingiberaceae treated
Schmidt’s collection of Gingers. He described several new species, e.g., Elettariopsis
schmidtii K. Schum. (nowAmomum biflorum), AlpiniaoxymitraK. Schum., Alpinia
macrouraK. Schum., and Amomum hirticalyx K. Schum. Schmidt, however,
did not follow up with his success as a tropical botanist, but became
interested in marine science. His most important contribution to science is the
discovery of the transmigration of the eel larvae across the Altantic.
It was a British medical doctor,
however, who became the first large scale collector of Thai plant species in
the beginning of the 20th century and founder of the first herbarium in
Thailand, now the Bangkok Herbarium.
A.F.G. Kerr (1877-1942) came to Thailand
in 1902 to serve as medical cousultant to the British community in Chiang Mai.
During his spare time he made small excursions to the nearby mountain Doi
Suthep, his primary interest being the rich orchid flora of which he began to
make sketches. In 1908, when he went on leave to England, he had made 215 line drawings
which he carried with him and showed to the orchidologist at Kew, R.A. Rolfe.
Rolfe became very enthusiastic and talked with the director of the herbarium,
who urged Kerr to continue collecting and provided him with the necessary
equipment to collect plants, including those other than orchids.
This was the beginning of a career that
was to take Kerr all over Thailand. Eventually his medical duties became more
irregular, as he was away collecting for long periods. In 1920 he became
appointed Government Botanist in Bangkok and the Botanical Section was
established as a part of the Ministry of Commerce. This was the first botanical
institution in Thailand and Kerr became its Director. In 1932, after 25 years
of government service, Kerr retired and went back to England. At that time he
had collected more that 23,000 samples of flowering plants and ferns from all
over the country. His material had over the years been worked on by W.G. Craib
(1885— 1933) at the Kew Herbarium, who also initiated a series of descriptions
of new species from Thailand, and the Flora Siamensis Enumeratio, an
annotated checklist of the Thai flora. Soon after Kerr’s return to England
Craib passed away. Kerr spend much of his
time in the herbarium and some more families of the “Enumeratio” were
published. The series was, however, eventually discontinued. The
Monocotyledones, including the Zingiberaceae, were never treated. Most of these
collections were still in big parcels when the first author visited Kew in
1959, after the first Thai-Danish expedition in 1958.
Hundreds of species have been described
on the basis of Kerr’s collections and in numerous of these we find the famous
collector’s name. Among the Zingiberaceae can be mentioned Geostachys kerrii
K. Larsen, Globba kerrii Craib and Zingiber kerrii Craib.
In
the second half of the 20th century, numerous Thai and foreign botanists have
been collecting Zingiberaceae in Thailand. The author, who began his botanical
work in Thailand in 1958, took from the very begining interest in the group. As
leader of many Thai-Danish botanical expeditions, from then, up to the present
day, more that 30,000 numbers of all groups of plants and fungi have been
collected. This material is partly in the Botanical Museum, University of
Copenhagen (from the years 1958— 62), and partly in the Herbarium, University
of Aarhus (expeditions after 1962), with a set in The Forest Herbarium in
Bangkok. It is beyond the scope of this book to enumerate the many recent
expeditions and collectors, mainly from Denmark, Japan and the Netherlands
working in collaboration with botanists from the Royal Forest Department.
However, our knowledge of the Thai flora, including the Zingiberaceae, is
growing every year. Hopefully, within the first decade of the 21st century it
will be possible to finish the treatment of the family for the prestigious
work, Flora of Thailand published by the Forest Herbarium, Bangkok.
0 Comment:
Post a Comment