Community Science Literature Project: Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Kränzlin

Kränzlin’s Orchids, from Hamburg to Harvard to Here

Friedrich ("Fritz") Wilhelm Ludwig Kränzlin (1847–1934) was one of the most important German orchidologists in the first quarter of the twentieth century, continuing the taxonomic efforts of Heinrich Reichenbach (1823–89). The Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden has an important collection of notes and documentation created by Kränzlin for his unfinished magnum opus, Orchidacearum Genera et Species.

Kränzlin, was an enthusiastic taxonomist, but unfortunately did not carefully follow taxonomic rules in designating type specimens (holotypes) or depositing these types in publicly accessible collections. Some specimens were placed in Kränzlin's own Berlin herbarium, a portion of which was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in March 1943. Some portions of his herbarium were saved in the Hamburg Herbarium Hamburgense, thanks to that collection’s relocation during World War II to a site near Leipzig. Other portions of Kränzlin's collection were secured before the war at Harvard's Orchid Herbarium, thanks to the efforts of the director of the [Harvard] Botanical Museum, Oakes Ames (1874–1950).

These papers survived thanks to another orchid enthusiast, Bostonian Albert Cameron Burrage (1859–1931). Burrage was one of America's most prominent orchid specialists, earning the Lindley Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society, and he was the first president of the American Orchid Society. He built a large library, which eventually found its way to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS) after his death. The Chicago Botanic Garden acquired the MHS rare book collection in 2002. There is no documentation indicating exactly how Burrage acquired Kränzlin's papers, but fortunately this collection has survived for future generations of students and scholars.

Kränzlin organized his work by genera, in packets filled with drawings, notes, illustrations (often extracted from books and journals), and even maps. He was frugal, using all sorts of scraps for his commentary, perhaps a reflection of Germany's hyperinflation in the 1920s. This collection includes correspondence with other orchid specialists and hobbyists around the world as well as extracts of papers and illustrations from many orchid journals and magazines. It represents years of work by Kränzlin, and awaits a scholar to solve many of the puzzles left by Kränzlin and his incomplete Orchidacearum Genera et Species.

Thanks to the efforts of Burrage (who was probably encouraged to help Kränzlin financially by Ames at Harvard), the Lenhardt Library has a significant cache of Kränzlin's papers for future scholars and students of orchids.