The Writings of Ferdinand Lindheimer: Texas Botanist, Texas Philosopher (Gideon Lincecum Nature and Environment Series) 2020007530, 9781623498764, 1623498767

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THE WRITINGS OF

Ferdinand Lindheimer

Gideon Lincecum Nature and Environment Series

Lindheimer daisy or Texas star, Lindheimera texana, a common spring wildflower in Texas, one of 373 scientific plant names based, at least in part, on Lindheimer collections and one of 65 scientific plant names honoring Lindheimer. Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

THE WRITINGS OF

Ferdinand Lindheimer Texas Botanist, Texas Philosopher

Translated and with Commentary by

John E. Williams

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS COLLEGE STATION

Copyright © 2020 by John E. Williams All rights reserved First edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lindheimer, Ferdinand, 1801–1879, author. | Williams, John E., 1947–translator, writer of added commentary. Title: The writings of Ferdinand Lindheimer : Texas botanist, Texas philosopher / translated and with commentary by John E. Williams. Other titles: Gideon Lincecum nature and environment series. Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2020] | Series: Gideon Lincecum nature and environment series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020007530 | ISBN 9781623498764 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781623498771 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Botany--Texas. | LCGFT: Essays. Classification: LCC QK188 .L5613 2020 | DDC 581.9764--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007530

This book is dedicated to George J. Goodman (1904–1999), professor of botany at the University of Oklahoma, for instilling in his students a love of plant names whether Latin or English, for showing them a sense of the importance of history in the pursuit of botany, and for teaching by example the courtesy of grace and style and civility in one’s writing and in social and professional interactions.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

xiii

Notes on Publication History

xxv

Aufsätze und Abhandlungen von Ferdinand Lindheimer in Texa# Essays and Articles of Ferdinand Lindheimer in Texas Personal-Notiz About the Author [Introduction to the German Edition], edited by Gustav Passavant

1

ESSAY 1

Die Cypresse im westlichen Texa# The Bald Cypress in Western Texas

7

ESSAY 2

Da# Klima von Texa# The Climate of Texas

27

ESSAY 3

Eine Uebersicht der Flora von Texa# An Overview of the Flora of Texas

42

ESSAY 4

Die kürbi#artigen Gewächse in Texa# The Gourd-like Plants in Texas

78

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Contents

ESSAY 5

Ueber Viehzucht und Ackerbau in Texa# About Livestock and Agriculture in Texas

92

ESSAY 6

Ein Verbrechen der texanischen Regierung A Crime of the Texas Government

101

ESSAY 7

Meine Reise und Aufenthalt in Mexiko My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico

125

ESSAY 8

Optimi#mu# Optimism 203 ESSAY 9

Ueber Schulunterricht On School Instruction

208

ESSAY 10

War der Mensch schon ein Zeitgenosse de# Mastodon? Was Man Really a Contemporary of the Mastodon?

220

ESSAY 11

Scheinbare Anastrophe im Leben der Natur und der Menschheit An Apparent Inversion in the Life of Nature and Humanity

230

ESSAY 12

Reflexionen eine# Botaniker# Reflections of a Botanist

237

ESSAY 13

Geburt#tag#-Gedanken eine# 75 Jährigen Birthday Thoughts of a 75-Year-Old

245

Contents

ix

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION TO APPENDIXES

How Plants Get Described and Named

255

APPENDIX 1

Plants Named by Lindheimer

259

APPENDIX 2

Plants Named in Honor of Lindheimer

263

APPENDIX 3

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

279

Glossary of Taxonomic Terms

325

Bibliography 329 Index 339

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my patient wife, Eve, who had to put up with me complaining about the lack of a complete translation of this work for forty-six years, who would wait eagerly for me to relate the daily trivia about what Lindheimer said during my day’s translation, and who enjoyed the stories about Winkelried, Nada, and all the others as much as I did. I would like to thank Helen Lee-Khan for her unwavering support for our family and for this project for the past three decades. I would like to thank Catharine Ingersoll for directing me to the multi­ language translation forums on the internet service of LEO GmbH, headquartered in Munich. I would like to thank Rita Leist and countless other wonderful people who participate in the forums of LEO for helping me track down obscure quotations from Goethe, for helping me understand colloquial German phrases as well as Lindheimer’s semiphonetic Spanish words, and for putting me on to the sources or possible sources of some rather bizarre literary or historical references that were defying my attempts to Google. I would like to thank the staff of the Sophienburg Museum and Archives in New Braunfels for their patience in dealing with my requests. Finally, I would like to thank the staff at Texas A&M University Press for their professional help in getting this book published.

INTRODUCTION

I mean to conquer the world through knowledge. — F E R D I N A N D LI N D H E I M E R

This book is a translation of Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer’s Aufsätze und Abhandlungen von Ferdinand Lindheimer in Texas (Essays and Articles of Ferdinand Lindheimer in Texas), published in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1879. Lindheimer is generally acknowledged to be the “Father of Texas Botany.” Lindheimer’s book and his other published writings are in German and printed in Fraktur, a black-letter typeface or font wherein several pairs of letters are similar in appearance and difficult for a non-native German to distinguish. This has made his writings relatively inaccessible to English-speaking Americans. I learned of Lindheimer’s book upon arriving in Texas in 1973. I repeatedly tried to persuade friends, associates, and colleagues to at least decipher the Fraktur for me and if possible assist me in translating it. No one took me up on the project. Sometimes, if you want something done or you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. So here it goes. I have been waiting forty-six years for this translation. I am not waiting any longer. Minetta Altgelt Goyne presented a thorough and detailed biography of Ferdinand Lindheimer in her book A Life among the Texas Flora: Ferdinand Lindheimer’s Letters to George Engelmann. There is no need to repeat that here; I will provide just the basics.

xiv

Introduction

Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 21 May 1801 (Goyne says 1802, but she is the only one to so claim; his tombstone says 1801), the son of Johann Hartmann Lindheimer, a merchant, and Jahnette Magdeline Reisser Lindheimer. He was the youngest of four brothers and a distant cousin of the great German writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, scientist, and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. (Goethe’s mother’s mother was born a Lindheimer. Ferdinand and Wolfgang’s common great-great-greatgreat grandfather was Johann Lindheimer, who was born in 1550 and was a butcher in Frankfurt.) Lindheimer was educated at the Frankfurt Gymnasium, later at a preparatory school in Berlin, the University of Wiesbaden, the University of Jena, and finally the University of Bonn. At the age of twenty-six, he became a teacher at the Bunsen Institute in Frankfurt, established by Georg Bunsen in 1820. It is unknown what courses Lindheimer taught at the Bunsen Institute, but his educational background included many courses in classical literature, mythology, law, philosophy, and languages. Frankfurt at that time was a seat of democratic ideals for government reform, and at least six teachers at the institute, including Bunsen himself, were forced into exile by the repressive government in power. Nothing is officially known about why Lindheimer left Germany, but he did so in 1833. By 1834 he was living with friends in a German community near Belleville, Illinois, across the Mississippi from St. Louis. That fall he journeyed to Mexico and lived in a German settlement there, eventually working at a sugarcane plantation. He came to Texas in early 1836 and served about eighteen months in the Texas Army. He tried farming but wasn’t very good at it. He returned several times to St. Louis to visit his friend, the medical doctor George Engelmann, with whose relatives Lindheimer had stayed in 1834. It was during these visits that Lindheimer and Engelmann developed the plan for Lindheimer to collect the plants of Texas and to distribute identical sets of the collection to paying subscribers around the world. Crucial to this plan was the support of Asa Gray of Harvard University, America’s foremost botanist of the nineteenth century. With Gray soliciting subscriptions and with Engelmann receiving shipments of plants from

Introduction

xv

Engelmann daisy, Engelmannia peristenia, a common spring wildflower in Texas, named for Lindheimer’s St. Louis friend George Engelmann. Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

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Lindheimer and sorting them into sets to forward to Gray, Lindheimer set out “baling hay,” as some modern botanists might describe it. Lindheimer’s letters to Engelmann, translated by Minetta Goyne, described crate after crate of plant shipments, multitudinous reams of drying papers, and detailed descriptions of the weather conditions under which the pressed plants had to be dried. Among the known subscribers receiving complete sets of Florae Texanae Exsiccatae (“exsiccatae” meaning “dried,” referring to the dried specimens) were the British Museum, Kew Gardens, the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, the Boissier Herbarium at the Geneva Conservatory, the Smithsonian Institution, and dozens of individuals whose collections would later end up in major institutions around the world. The quantity of duplicate specimens kept by Engelmann that Gray did not need to satisfy the subscriptions was so great that even as late as the middle of the twentieth century the Missouri Botanical Garden (which Engelmann had founded) could satisfy requests from state college herbaria that asked for a reasonably complete set of the Lindheimer Exsiccatae. That is how I became acquainted with the name of Lindheimer as I examined specimens at the herbarium of the University of Oklahoma while working on my master’s degree in the early 1970s. Lindheimer was not the first person to collect plants in Texas for scientific examination. He listed those who came before him in the opening of the third essay of this translation, “An Overview of the Flora of Texas.” But botanists the world over did not appreciate or understand the nature, extent, or significance of the diversity of Texas plants until Lindheimer showed them that diversity, beginning with his first shipments to Engelmann in 1843 and Engelmann and Gray’s publication of the first part of Plantae Lindheimerianae in 1845 (and Gray’s subsequent shipment of Fascicle 1 of Florae Texanae Exsiccatae). Lindheimer continued to ship plants to St. Louis for eight years. Ultimately, 1,283 numbered collections by Lindheimer were distributed. There were hundreds of other collections by Lindheimer, but not in the quantity needed to distribute to all the subscribers. Eventually, 65 taxonomic entities of plants (species, subspecies, varieties, and one genus) were named in honor of Lindheimer (see appendix 2). Between 32 and 41 of these are generally accepted as distinct entities today. (The difference between 32 and 41 represents a difference

Introduction

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of opinion among botanists whether a named subunit of a species is distinct from the type of the original species name.) No fewer than 373 scientific names of plants are based, at least in part, on Lindheimer collections. Between 198 and 239 of these are generally accepted as distinct entities today (see appendix 3). As late as 2015, a new variety of Texas bindweed was named and described, at least in part, from a specimen that Lindheimer collected. (I need to admit that my list in appendix 3, “Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections,” is probably incomplete, but I would hope not by very much.) During his collecting activities in 1844, Lindheimer encountered Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, the commissioner general of the Mainzer Adelsverein, the Society of Nobles of Mainz. Later called the Verein zum Schutze Deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas), the Adelsverein was an organization of noblemen attempting to establish a new Germany in Texas by colonial settlement. The society had secured settlement rights to the FisherMiller Land Grant, an area covering five thousand square miles between the Llano and Colorado Rivers in central Texas. Prince Carl had been sent ahead to meet the first shiploads of Adelsverein-sponsored colonists and lead them to their temporary quarters on land Prince Carl had acquired near a place known as Las Fontanas (the fountains), later named Comal Springs, on the Comal River northeast of San Antonio. There they established a town they called Neu-Braunfels, after the Prince’s home principality in Germany. Lindheimer joined the wagon train of colonists as they departed Indianola on Matagorda Bay. He was delighted and excited by the plants he found around Comal Springs. He asked to join the colony and received a town lot in Neu-Braunfels on the Comal River, where he dreamed of establishing a botanical garden. All future plant collecting would be centered about this new locality. There, Lindheimer met Eleonora Reinarz, daughter of a colonist, and by the end of 1845 she had moved in with him. They were married in San Antonio the following May. He called her Lore. They would raise two sons and two daughters to adulthood in the little hut on the Comal. During 1846, the Lindheimers were visited by Dr. Ferdinand von Roemer, a German geologist who was traveling through the southern

xviii

Introduction

United States and who intended to study the chalk (limestone) formation of Texas and its fossils. Lindheimer and Roemer made excursions together and talked about the region’s plants and geology, and when Roemer departed later that year the two men exchanged plant specimens. It was nothing more than a professional courtesy. When Roemer returned to Germany, he first set about writing a nonscientific travelogue of his trip to Texas. He turned his plant specimens, including ones he exchanged with Lindheimer, over to Adolph Scheele, a pastor at Heersum near Hildesheim in Hanover (today part of Niedersachsen) who had an interest in botany, with the intent that Scheele would provide Roemer with a plant list to be included in his travelogue. Scheele worked assiduously on the collection and soon realized that many of the plants had not been described by Engelmann and Gray in the first part of Plantae Lindheimerianae, published in 1845. As Roemer neared completion of his travelogue, Scheele began publishing the plant list in the journal Linnaea in 1848 (and in eight subsequent installments stretching into 1852), including many new species. Of the species from Texas described as new by Scheele, seventy-three were collected by Lindheimer and sixty-six by Roemer. Asa Gray was not pleased. His work on publishing the second part of Plantae Lindheimerianae had been delayed because of all the many projects he had taken on. Part 2, authored by Gray, but not coauthored by Engelmann this time except for selected portions, was finally published in 1850 and the Exsiccatae for that part were distributed. No one outwardly blamed Lindheimer for his lack of discretion in exchanging specimens, but Gray’s displeasure was apparent from comments made about Scheele in part 2. For whatever reason, work on publishing further parts of Plantae Lindheimerianae and distribution of further sets of Exsiccatae ceased, until the project was taken up and finished by Joseph William Blankinship in 1907. Blankinship completed the list of Lindheimer plants and distributed the final Exsiccatae. By 1851, Lindheimer had made his last bulk shipment of plants to Engelmann. He would continue to collect and study plants throughout the rest of his life, but not in the quantity he had during the previous eight years.

Introduction

xix

In early 1852, the town of New Braunfels had grown to be the fourth largest in Texas (after San Antonio, Houston, and Galveston), and its citizens determined they needed a newspaper. Lindheimer was “elected” at a public meeting to be the editor. Publication of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung began on Friday, 12 November 1852. Beneath its masthead, the Zeitung declared itself an “organ” (or rather, a voice) of the German community of West Texas. Other German American newspaper editors charged that Lindheimer was the stooge or crony of the princes of the Adelsverein, charges that Lindheimer vigorously denied throughout his twenty years as the paper’s principal editor. The newspaper continues to be published today (in English) under its current name, the HeraldZeitung, after being bought by the English-language New Braunfels Herald in 1957. Beginning with the first edition of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, Lindheimer contributed the first essay that would later be included in his Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, “The Bald Cypress in Western Texas.” From this beginning, Lindheimer’s articles exhibited a breadth of knowledge about Greek and Roman classics, German history, German literature, and German philosophy that can only be described as staggering by today’s educational standards. Lindheimer threw in classical and historical references and quotes that he expected at least some of his readers would know and understand. It reflects the quality of education that could be obtained in Germany in the nineteenth century. Lindheimer had little tolerance for organized religion. Indeed, his outspoken challenge of authority makes it hard to give any credence to the charges of cronyism he endured. He may not have been as radical a revolutionary as his openly Marxist fellow townsman Adolph Douai, but he constantly praised the spread of European socialism. (Douai had promoted Lindheimer and had helped him gain the editorship of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung. Douai would later move to San Antonio to establish his own abolitionist newspaper, the San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung.) If Lindheimer had been a crony of the Adelsverein, then the princes constituting that organization would have been supporting an anticlerical socialist. In Lindheimer’s words, he preferred knowledge, skepticism, and freedom over ignorance, faith, and bondage. Paramount to Lindheimer was the advancement of science and the ways that science could contribute to the “spiritual” advancement of

xx

Introduction

humanity. Lindheimer never produced any technical publications; as he said, “I do not presume to lecture to the scholars of exact science.” But through his articles and essays in his newspaper, he contributed to making science available and understandable to the general public, that is, to the popularizing of science, “a meritorious work, which I support with my small contribution and weak ability.” After retirement from the newspaper, Lindheimer remained active in his garden. His fellow citizens of New Braunfels had recruited him to be their first justice of the peace, in which capacity he served from the 1840s until late in his life. One of his former students at the Bunsen Institute in Frankfurt, the surgeon Dr. Gustav Passavant, worked with Lindheimer to collect an assortment of his essays and articles for Aufsätze und Abhandlungen in early 1879. Lindheimer died on 2 December 1879 and was buried in Comal Cemetery in New Braunfels. He was described as a man of medium height with blue eyes and black hair and beard, both of which turned snow white with age. He possessed a strong, active body that he had developed in youth, and he retained much of his vigor in old age. He was quiet and deliberate in manner, temperate and regular in his habits, and a good conversationalist. He loved freedom and independence, the simple life and intellectual enjoyment, and the only reward he ever sought was the esteem of his fellow human beings. When I started work on the translation, my mental image of Lindheimer was that of a quiet, mild-mannered, harmless collector of plants. By the time I finished the translation, my perception of him had radically changed. Based on his own words, Ferdinand Lindheimer was a bold, outspoken, sword-wielding warrior determined to defeat ignorance, blind faith, and tyranny. He intended to conquer the world through knowledge. A note about the translation: Lindheimer used a great many scientific names. For all of these I have included in the translated text what I hope is the most familiar English common name in square brackets. Also, taxonomic understanding and concepts have evolved since Lindheimer’s day. If Lindheimer used a scientific name that is no longer considered the accepted name for that species, I have simply “translated” the scientific name Lindheimer used to today’s accepted name for the species and have included the name Lindheimer used in a note.

Introduction

xxi

Latin phrases used by Lindheimer that are longer than two words are retained as Latin in the translated text, and (unless translated by Lindheimer to German) an English rendition of the phrase is included in a note. Lindheimer’s uses of single Latin words, some two-word phrases, and, in one instance, a very short Italian phrase are for the most part simply translated into the English text. Before starting this translation, I knew that Lindheimer was credited by other botanists with the names of a few species, but I did not know how many. I also knew that many plants had been named in Lindheimer’s honor, but the number of those reported by different sources varied widely. When I first received training as a botanist, there were two sources for looking up plant names, who authored those names, and where they were published. One source, called the Gray Card Index, produced at Harvard University, was printed in periodic sets on individual library index cards, one name with its author and citation per card, containing all names published since the last set of cards was issued. These were sent to subscribers who had card files with drawer after drawer of such cards from all previous sets arranged alphabetically. It was the responsibility of the subscriber to take the new set of cards and insert them, one by one, into the drawers in proper alphabetical order. It was tedious to keep the index up to date, but easy to use provided the subscriber kept up with the new issue of cards and inserted them in the proper order. There was also a second source, called the Index Kewensis, two volumes that were produced in 1885 by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in England, wherein plant names with their authors and citations were alphabetical. The problem with a bound volume is that new names are constantly being published, so Kew published a supplement containing an alphabetical list of names published since the original bound volumes were issued. Then it had to publish a second supplement, then a third. Ultimately twenty supplements were issued, averaging about five years apart, through 1995. To find a plant name, one had to start with the original volume, then search through each supplement until the name was found. A Cumulated Index Kewensis was published in 1996, but people kept finding and naming new species. Finally, in 1999, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Harvard University Herbaria and Libraries, and the Australian National Herbar-

xxii

Introduction

ium joined in a collaboration to produce the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), an electronic online database updated daily and hosted by Kew. The IPNI database is searchable by family name, genus name, species epithet, infrafamily name, infragenus name, infraspecies epithet, author surname, author forename, standardized author abbreviation, publication title, or standardized publication abbreviation. Wildcards can be used. The IPNI database made it easy to discover that there are 124 plant names with “lindheim*” as part of the scientific name. Once I knew that, it was a matter of comparing contemporary works to see how many of those names are still accepted and being used, and how many are treated as synonyms of some earlier name. Those 124 plant names represent 65 biologically distinct entities, of which at least 32 and perhaps as many as 41 are considered distinct in modern botanical works. At the time I completed the translation, there were seven original plant names credited to Lindheimer as author. However, all of the original seven names were credited to Lindheimer by other authors: one by Adolph Scheele, one by John Torrey, one by George Engelmann, and four by Asa Gray. Six of those names (all but Scheele’s) showed Lindheimer’s name in the original publication followed by “ined.” (unpublished) or “mss.” (in manuscript). In my translation of his book, Lindheimer clearly indicated that two plant names were “new species.” Neither of them appeared in the IPNI database in the summer of 2018. That has been corrected, and the IPNI database now shows nine original names credited to him. Lindheimer’s book also now has a standardized botanical abbreviation, “Aufsätze Abh.” Having created a list of plant names credited to Lindheimer as author, and a list of plants named in honor of Lindheimer, I set about trying to track down how many plant names are based, at least in part, on Lindheimer collections. The task was not as difficult as it might seem. New names first published by Gray or Engelmann in Plantae Lindheimerianae were obviously based on Lindheimer collections, as were many of the names first published by Adolph Scheele in his publications.

Introduction

xxiii

Also, the Missouri Botanical Garden was created from George Engelmann’s plant collection. That collection included not only plants collected by Engelmann, but all of Lindheimer’s specimens. Luckily, the garden has photographed Engelmann’s collection and made the photographs available online. Beside the original label, many of those specimens bear annotation labels with different plant names added by later researchers examining Lindheimer’s plants and naming new species. The same is true of Asa Gray’s plant collection at Harvard University, and those specimens too have been photographed and made available online with original and annotation labels. Finally, the number of additional places where new plant names of western American plants were published in the nineteenth century is not large, and the websites that make those historic publications available also generally have machine-digitized text so they are searchable (depending on the limitations of the digitizing machine). I cannot say with any certainty that I have discovered all scientific names based on Lindheimer’s collections, but to date I have discovered 373 of them. All of these lists are in the appendixes following my translation, introduced with a brief explanation of how plants are named, and followed by a glossary of the technical terminology involved in the naming of plants. I hope these lists will be helpful to someone in the future.

NOTES ON PUBLICATION HISTORY

“About the Author [Introduction to the German Edition]”: The first three paragraphs of the translation appeared as an unsigned note (of one paragraph) in the Botanische Zeitung, vol. 8(47), columns 847–48, published in Berlin on 22 November 1850. The editors of that issue were Hugo von Mohl and Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal. The fourth paragraph of the translation is original and therefore the work of Gustav Passavant (1815–1893), one of Lindheimer’s students from Frankfurt who helped Lindheimer publish the Aufsätze. The last paragraph, as indicated in the fourth paragraph, first appeared as an unsigned note in Die Zukunft, vol. 11(22), pg. 5, published in Indianapolis on 14 March 1878. The editors of that issue were Adalbert Krieger and Hermann Sieboldt. “The Bald Cypress in Western Texas”: This essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung in two installments. The first installment appeared in vol. 1(1), pg. 2, on 12 November 1852, and the second installment appeared in vol. 1(2), pg. 1, on 19 November 1852. The break in installments is marked in the translated text. Portions were edited for publication in the Aufsätze as indicated in the notes. “The Climate of Texas”: According to Goyne (1991), Lindheimer wrote to George Engelmann at the beginning of August 1845 that he had received an issue of Anzeiger des Westens (published in St. Louis) dated May 1845 and that “the article about the climate of Texas was printed the way I wrote it.” However, the essay published in the Aufsätze in 1879 mentioned a hailstorm in May 1847 and a drought that lasted from later in 1847 until April 1848. Therefore, if it is the same article as the one he wrote for Anzeiger des Westens, then it was revised no earlier than 1848. It was apparently never published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung.

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Notes on Publication History

“An Overview of the Flora of Texas”: Toward the end of this essay, Lindheimer said that it had been thirty years since he had botanized in the area of the Llano River. Blankinship (1907) noted that Lindheimer accompanied a train of settlers to Fredericksburg in 1847 and in September pushed northward to the Darmstadter Colony of Bettina between the Llano and San Saba Rivers. Thus, it can be assumed that this essay was written (or revised) around 1877. “The Gourd-like Plants in Texas”: This essay was first published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, vol. 1(11), pg. 1, on 21 January 1853. It was edited and portions extensively revised for publication in the Aufsätze, as noted in the translation. In the Aufsätze version, Lindheimer described an event about thirty years before of squashes crossing with the indigenous wild gourd and producing fruit that was very bitter. In the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung version, the same event is described as happening about five years before; therefore the revisions were made about twenty-five years after first publication, or about 1878. “About Livestock and Agriculture in Texas”: In this essay, Lindheimer said that he had been observing the vegetation of Texas for forty-two years. Lindheimer came to Texas in 1836, putting the date of this essay (or its revision) at 1878. “A Crime of the Texas Government”: Lindheimer cited Texas legislation passed in 1876 in this essay. “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico”: This essay was serialized in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung in ten installments beginning on 2 October 1857, vol. 5(45), pg. 1, and continuing until 11 December 1857, vol. 6(3), pg. 2. Lindheimer also referred to comments made by Sartorius and others “23 years ago,” which would date those comments to 1834, the year Lindheimer traveled to Mexico. The breaks in installments are marked in the text. “Optimism”: This essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on 2 March 1855, vol. 3(15), pg. 1. “On School Instruction”: This untitled response to a letter to the editor was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on 19 May 1854, vol. 2(26), pg. 3. “Was Man Really a Contemporary of the Mastodon?”: The work of Heinrich Georg Bronn referred to by Lindheimer in the last paragraph

Notes on Publication History

xxvii

includes a work he coauthored with Lindheimer’s friend Ferdinand Roemer between 1851 and 1856. “An Apparent Inversion in the Life of Nature and Humanity”: In this essay, Lindheimer referred to the New-York Tribune. Between 1842 and 1866, that newspaper was named the New-York Daily Tribune, dating this essay no earlier than the post–Civil War period. “Reflections of a Botanist”: In this essay, Lindheimer referred to a speech delivered by the tsar of Russia “not long ago.” In that speech, on 30 March 1856, Tsar Alexander II declared his intention to abolish serfdom, dating Lindheimer’s essay to the late 1850s. “Birthday Thoughts of a 75-Year-Old”: As stated in the forward to the German edition of the Aufsätze, this essay first appeared in Die Zukunft, vol. 11(22), pg. 5, published in Indianapolis on 14 March 1878.

THE WRITINGS OF

Ferdinand Lindheimer

Personal-Notiz About the Author 1 [Introduction to the German Edition]

“Dr. Roemer 2 in his book on Texas gives the following account about Ferdinand Lindheimer of Frankfurt am Main, whose botanical collections from the state of Texas have been made known to botanists by Dr. Engelmann3 and Professor Asa Gray 4 and whose name is already attached to plants in our gardens: “‘At the end of the town (New Braunfels) and some distance from the last houses, half hidden among a cluster of elms and oaks and hard 1. The first three paragraphs of the translation appeared as an unsigned note (of one paragraph) in the Botanische Zeitung, vol. 8(47), columns 847–48, published in Berlin on 22 November 1850. The editors of that issue were Hugo von Mohl and Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal. The fourth paragraph of the translation is original and therefore the work of Gustav Passavant (1815–1893), one of Lindheimer’s students from Frankfurt who helped Lindheimer publish the Aufsätze. The last paragraph, as indicated in the fourth paragraph, first appeared as an unsigned note in Die Zukunft, vol. 11(22), pg. 5, published in Indianapolis on 14 March 1878. The editors of that issue were Adalbert Krieger and Hermann Sieboldt. 2. Carl Ferdinand von Roemer (1818–1891) was a German geologist. Roemer visited America in 1845 and devoted a year to the study of the geology of Texas and other southern states. The quote in the second paragraph is from his travelogue book Texas, published in 1849. He later published a detailed description of the Cretaceous rocks and fossils of Texas. For that he is generally acknowledged as the “Father of Texas Geology.” 3. George Engelmann (1809–1884) was a German American physician and botanist. He settled in St. Louis where, encouraged by wealthy businessman Henry Shaw, he established “Shaw’s Garden” in 1859, which would eventually become the Missouri Botanical Garden, today one of the foremost research institutions in the world. 4. Asa Gray (1810–1888) of Harvard University was the most important American botanist of the nineteenth century.

2

About the Author

Lindheimer’s house in New Braunfels. Photo by Larry D. Moore. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

on the bank of the Comal River, stood a cabin or small house with a little fenced garden in front that presented the appearance and situation of a true idyllic picture. When I approached this simple rustic dwelling for the first time, I saw before the entrance of the hut a man who was busily engaged splitting wood, and apparently accustomed to this work. As far as the thick black beard that covered his face allowed one to see it, he might have been a man in his early forties. He wore a blue shirt open in front, yellow leather trousers, and coarse shoes, as usual for farmers of this country. Beside him were two beautiful brown-speckled gundogs and a dark-colored pony was tethered to a nearby tree. The description could only be the very man I was looking for. The way he answered me in the language of an educated man, though with a soft, almost timid voice that did not seem to fit his rough exterior, confirmed my suspicion.’ “After Lindheimer had received a scientific education at the best German schools and universities, with special training particularly in the study of the ancient classics, and having worked at an institute of higher learning for a long time, his dissatisfaction with the political conditions at home as well as the lure of adventure drove him beyond the sea more than a decade ago. He first went to Mexico with several

About the Author

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Ferdinand Lindheimer with “a gloomy melancholy appearance”— words he used to describe a silk-tassel bush that had been named in his honor. Photographer unknown, from Sommer (1908). (PD-old)

likeminded people, lived there in the vicinity of Jalapa on the earnings of a pineapple and banana plantation,5 and later went to Texas in order to participate as a volunteer during the last part of the Texas War for Independence against Mexico. After the end of the war he tried to live for a time as a farmer and set up a farm. But even this way of life did not appeal to him and he decided, at the suggestion of a friend in St. Louis, to fulfill a cherished passion since earliest youth for botany, and at the same time make it a source of income. He bought a twowheeled cart with a horse and loaded it with a pack of pressing papers and a supply of the necessaries of food, especially flour, coffee, and salt. Then, armed with a gun and with no other companion than his two hunting dogs, he headed into the wilderness, where he occupied himself collecting and pressing plants, mainly dependent for his sustenance on the results of hunting, and often passing several months in a row without seeing a human being. Then in late autumn of 1844, as the 5. Lindheimer said it was a sugarcane plantation in essay 7, “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico.”

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first large company of German immigrants led by Prince Solms arrived in Texas, Lindheimer joined in and was included as a man with knowledge and experience of the country, and he was made welcome by the newcomers. He moved with them to the Comal River, and when the city of New Braunfels was founded in the spring of the following year, he gave up all other land claims and asked the Prince for a spot of land, insignificant and worthless, but charmingly located on the steep bank of the incomparably beautiful Comal River. There he built a cabin and started to explore the rich and for the most part still unknown flora of Texas with more leisure and comfort. He united in marriage with a daughter of one of the colonists who had recently arrived and, supported by his wife in his business and removed from domestic troubles, continues to live in original simplicity in his cottage.” Botanische Zeitung, vol. 8(47), column 847, 1850.6 Die Zukunft,7 the organ of the North American Turners’ Federation,8 published Ferdinand Lindheimer’s essay “Birthday Thoughts of a 75-Year-Old” 9 on 14 March 1878 and added the following note: “When the German colony was established, he chose New Braunfels as his permanent residence where he founded the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung in the early eighteen-fifties. This he has continued for some twenty years under possibly the worst conditions, yet maintaining a high intellectual level, something few better-off newspapers could boast. Several years ago his fellow citizens elected him as their first justice of the peace, and though he was silver-haired and slightly curved in the 6. Set up as a protest against other “fossilized” German botanical journals of its time, the Botanische Zeitung played an important role in German botany from its first volume onward. 7. “The Future.” 8. Turner means literally “gymnast,” from turnen, “to do or practice gymnastics.” In the early 1800s, Turnerbünde or Turnervereine were exercise organizations intended to promote health and fitness at home and in society, similar to modern YMCAs and YWCAs. Turner societies gradually developed social and, eventually, political aspects wherever Germans immigrated. In America, Turners served as bodyguards for President Lincoln. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Turner societies evolved into athletic organizations, sometimes encompassing and promoting all kinds of sports events. By the end of the twentieth century, few Turner societies remained active in America. However, in Europe, the Turner name continues in the names of the business organizations for German football teams. 9. See essay 13.

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back as he went, nevertheless he has retained a truly touching simplicity in manners and way of life in his seventy-sixth year, no longer with such a strong body, yet he is an avid gardener with spades and hoes, and as the above essay attests, he still has a youthful freshness of spirit for which many a younger man has sufficient reason to envy.” —Gustav Passavant

ESSAY 1

Die Cypresse im westlichen Texa# The Bald Cypress1 in Western Texas2 Cupressus disticha Linnaeus,3 Taxodium distichum (Linnaeus) Richard4

Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, at Pedernales Falls State Park. “On the banks of the same rivers stand closed ranks of more advantaged trees entwined root within root. One tree strengthens another.” Photo by Linda Lebsack. Used by permission.

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Among the trees of western Texas, the bald cypress is the undisputed queen. The mightiest and most prominent species of trees in other parts of the country, such as the sycamore (Platanus occidentalis L.), the live oak (Quercus virginiana Mill.5), and the scarlet oak (Q. coccinea Münchh.6), do not achieve their fullest stature here.7 Thus the bald cypress appears so much mightier. In the swamps of Louisiana, the home of alligators, thickheaded turtles,8 bullfrogs, and poisonous water snakes, the bald cypress rises as a forest of slender columns above the sinister dark surface of the water. In West Texas where there are no swamps, it stands only in rows at the edge of clear flowing creeks and streams, but of greater stature and often pushed so close together that between two trunks no third of equal size could fit. On the upper Guadalupe, on Spring Creek, on the Sabinal, on the Medina, bald cypresses often are found in long rows with trunks standing three to seven feet thick, each with a naked trunk reaching sixty to eighty feet. If a painter portrayed such a scene you would call his image false and excessive. “How can the roots of such

1. By using the scientific name in the next line, Lindheimer clearly intended to talk about the deciduous bald cypress of the southeastern United States. However, toward the end of this essay, he discussed the association of the cypress with death and mourning. In that regard, Lindheimer was referring to the evergreen Italian cypress, Cupressus sempervirens, the principal cemetery tree in the Mediterranean region in both Muslim and Christian communities. In this translation, I have interpreted Lindheimer’s Cypresse as bald cypress throughout the essay except for the final paragraphs beginning with the discussion of Saint Boniface. 2. What was called western Texas in Lindheimer’s time we would call Central Texas today, that is, the area of the Texas Hill Country or Edwards Plateau west and north of the Balcones Escarpment that runs from Austin to New Braunfels and San Antonio. 3. Lindheimer ascribed Cupressus disticha to Willdenow, who edited the six-volume fifth edition of Species Plantarum two decades after Linnaeus died. Willdenow’s edition was very popular, well marketed, and widely distributed, and many botanists throughout the nineteenth century ascribed plant names to Willdenow that should have been ascribed to Linnaeus. 4. The first half of this article appeared in the first issue of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, vol. 1(1), pg. 2, on Friday, 12 November 1852. Portions were edited for publication in the Aufsätze, as indicated in subsequent notes. 5. Lindheimer called this Quercus virens and ascribed the name to someone abbreviated as “W.” Q. virens Aiton is a legitimate synonym of Q. virginiana Mill. 6. Lindheimer ascribed this name to Wangenheim, but it is properly ascribed to Münchhausen.

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densely standing trees find space, not to mention sufficient food in the ground?” one would say. The bald cypress seems more like a water plant. Groups of small and medium-sized bald cypresses often stand on rocky shoals or in the very fast flow of mountain streams desperately clasping rocks with their branching roots and with conspicuous effort standing their ground with their weight upright against the mechanical laws of fluid dynamics.9 Just as here organic nature triumphs over the laws of the inorganic, in the same way the truly moral nature of man holds its own despite all the apparent contradictions of a baser world- and life-view. But also from a different, more somber perspective, bald cypresses may represent a parable to us: The highest goal of perfection can hardly be achieved if the struggle for mere existence takes all strength. On the banks of the same rivers stand closed ranks of more advantaged trees entwined root within root. One tree strengthens another— the powerful roots together form a braided embankment against the washing waves and a dike against the country beyond, from which sed-

7. In the area west of Lindheimer’s home in New Braunfels grows the plateau live oak, Quercus fusiformis, which is a diminutive relative of the more coastal live oak, Q. virginiana, that Lindheimer mentioned. But in Lindheimer’s time, the plateau species was not distinguished as distinct from the coastal species. Likewise, in the area west of Lindheimer’s home in New Braunfels grows the Texas or Spanish oak, Q. buckleyi, which is a diminutive relative of the more eastern scarlet oak, Q. coccinea, that Lindheimer mentioned. But in Lindheimer’s time, Q. buckleyi was not yet distinguished as distinct from the more eastern species. Hence, Lindheimer could assert that neither achieved its fullest stature in western Texas. 8. Lindheimer used the name dickköpfige Schildkröte. This is undoubtedly a reference to alligator snapping turtles. 9. Lindheimer wrote: das mechanische Gesetz der Diagonale der Kräfte von Wasserstoß. A literal translation would be “the mechanical law of the diagonal force of a water hammer.” Engineers explain that although the direction of the force of the flowing water may be horizontal and perpendicular to the upward growth of the tree trunk, in combination with the downward force of gravity the overall force acting on the tree trunk is a downward diagonal, that is, the sum of the directional forces combined (as opposed to the upward vertical growth of the tree). A Wasserstoß is a water hammer, which is the pressure surge (along with an accompanying sound resembling the pounding of a hammer) resulting when a fluid in motion is forced to stop or change direction suddenly. But technically, a water hammer occurs only in a closed system such as a pipe, not in the open system of a stream.

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iment washed down by heavy rains is caught as if by the finest earthen dam. Thus unification ensures added stability and ample nourishment for each individual. Under such conditions the bald cypress reaches its highest perfection (as does man by analogy) and in such places occur bald cypresses from seven or more feet in diameter. But, dear reader, imagine we were each provided with a good American ax and went out to look for a bald cypress tree from which one may split good shingles. Because you are probably not yet familiar with the peculiarities of the local kinds of wood, I want for the present to give you an account of some things until we get to the place where we are going. Not all kinds of wood split into shingles in the same way. Some species split better with the growth rings (concentrically), some better across the growth rings (diametrically). Oak species in particular belong to the latter, coniferous species to the former, but above all of them is the bald cypress. Bald cypress cannot be split across the growth rings even in longer pieces of the slimmest stem, which is why it cannot be used for fencing. The growth rings of bald cypress are only loosely connected, but within the growth rings the wood fibers cross like an artificial mesh. In all species it is the rule that those trees that show the most regularly parallel vertical strips of bark will split best. Furthermore, we must be careful to find a suitable tree, one without heavy branches in the direction of the water, so that upon felling it should not fall into the water. One can do much to help the tree fall down in a specific direction by the way of felling it. One first begins to chop on the side on which the tree is supposed to fall. Observing a certain order and regularity makes the work much easier. A notch is started by splitting off chips. Then it is widened and extended with every stroke keeping the upper edge of the notch equal with the bottom surface. This one does repeatedly until the notch extends completely into the middle of the tree. Then one begins hewing on the opposite side beginning a little higher than the base of the first notch made. It should be clear now that if there are no very significant obstacles, including the leaning posture of the tree, branches too large on one side, a sudden

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gust of wind, or other large trees nearby that could change the direction of the falling tree or stop the direction, then the falling tree must fall where the deepest and lowest notch was cut. While explaining all this, we have come closer to our destination. Do you see where broad horizontal treetops scarcely break the surface of the horizon? It is reminiscent of the growth of Italian pine trees. This is the general shape of old-growth bald cypresses. They stand on the banks of a river at the foot of a high vertical cliff. We are looking for a quick way to climb down from the top of this cliff, such as this cut made by a stream. Later when we make the shingles, we will have to look for a different approach to the place through which one can get a wagon down to the river, or if that is not possible we will need to float the shingles down the river until we reach a point that is accessible to wagons. Do you hear that rushing water? We are there, and it is a beautiful place. From the top of this cliff one can overlook a long stretch of this river. Upstream where the river is less deep and flows over a horizontal bed of white marl limestone the water has the most vivid emerald green color. Here directly below us where the bed abruptly forms a deep little pool the water appears the purest dark blue. These phenomena Byron also observed in both arms of the Rhône and described in the third canto of his “Childe Harold”;10 Goethe also characterized it in detail in his theory of color.11 In another passage Goethe says about the same subject: “The highest goal that a person can reach is the ability to wonder. When a person is brought to this state by seeing a primary phenomenon, he should be satisfied, since nothing higher than this will come of it. He should not try to seek anything beyond, for this is the ultimate limit. But the sight of a primary phenomenon is usually not enough for people. They think there should be more to it and they are like children that see themselves

10. George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (London: John Murray, 1812), canto III, stanza 71. “By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone.” 11. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (Tübingen, Germany: Cotta, 1810); Goethe’s Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840).

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in a mirror the first time then immediately turn it around to see what is on the other side of it.”12 But now let us go down. Here in this country, where every day belongs to us, time hastens us along too fast. That, by the way, is the secret of why days and years pass so quickly here. We are now in place. Indians must have camped here before. They made themselves winter homes from the peeled bark of this bald cypress. On this other bald cypress a large Saint Andrew’s cross13 is carved, which identified it to the Indians as a bee tree. Let’s go down to the river and search for a compatible tree. Here, this high framework of poles bound together with basswood fiber surrounding the adjacent bald cypress was once built by some Americans to gain height and to cut the bald cypress in the middle. In the upper part of that bald cypress was a swarm of bees with plenty of honey. To spare themselves the trouble of chopping through the extremely thick base of the trunk, the bee hunters built this framework. Even I was invited to this event. We paused from the felling of the tree. The high position was very uncomfortable and particularly dangerous for those who had to deliver the last strokes of the ax. The cleverest and strongest man was the last person on the framework. Each of the last strokes was delivered carefully. All eyes were fixed on the outermost branches of the tree that would describe the biggest arc even if no other movement of the tree was visible from the chopping. There must have passed a considerable space of time. Finally, the outermost branches of the tree trembled. A cry of bystanders and a faint crackling of tearing wood fibers announced the approaching fall. The daring axman half climbed and half jumped off the dangerous structure. The peak of the tree tilted faster and faster. The crackling sound was followed by a crash of breaking limbs and then under the law of gravity in accelerated motion the severed tree crashed 12. Johann Peter Eckermann, “Conversation of Wednesday the 18th of February 1829,” in Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, Erster Band, 1823– 1832 (Leipzig, Germany: Brockhaus, 1836), 50. 13. A Saint Andrew’s cross is a diagonal cross forming the letter X.

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into the river, injecting water high into the air and creating waves that beat against the shore. Fortunately the entrance to the bees was out of the water, otherwise the water would have dissolved the honey if it had penetrated into the tree. The tree floating now on still water was mounted and, by means of a small fire fueled by old cotton cloth, smoke was curling around to ward off the bees. The local wild bees are generally not very aggressive. A large square hole was cut in the floating bee tree and the honeycombs were removed without anyone being stung by a bee. Finally, we must now decide on the choice of a tree. This one seems to be one of the most suitable. As a precaution, we should first split off a foot-long chip and see if the split-off piece can split easily into thinner strips, which is a sure sign of the cleavage of the entire tree. Now our coats are taken off and the place is cleared of bushes and vines. Vines are particularly dangerous when the sharp ax encounters them on a back swing, causing a missed stroke. Also one must be careful to have a safe place to retreat from the falling tree. We must especially take care that the tree does not get hung in one of the nearby trees. Now fresh to work! Hard work never hurt anyone. No other revelation is needed!

says an old saying of Persian fire worshippers,14 older and wiser than all the Wisdom of Solomon and the prophets. Blow by blow, let the broad chips fly! Light and playful, like a sword in the hand of an experienced fencer, the American ax does its work. It is a major advantage in chopping to get into the right rhythm. You can immediately recognize a capable woodcutter, especially here in America where woodcutting is practiced with technical skill. The difference 14. Actually, this is not an old Persian saying, but a paraphrase of Goethe writing poetry as if he were a Persian priest on his deathbed. Lindheimer’s first line was Harter Werke tägliche Bewahrung. Goethe’s first line was Schwerer Dienste tägliche Bewahrung (Heavy service [results in] daily preservation), referring to one’s daily fulfillment through continuous service to God or to others. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Parsi Nameh,” in West-östlicher Divan (Stuttgart, Germany: Cotta, 1819).

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between good and mediocre woodcutting is particularly striking. This empirically developed advantage of good rhythm in woodcutting consists chiefly in the movement of the falling ax with a regular, accelerated movement of our arms that is increased even more by sliding one hand on the ax handle, which extends the leverage until the ax connects. In the inexperienced woodcutter, the force applied to the ax does not extend the accelerated motion of the fall but runs behind it, and moreover it checks the accelerated motion of the fall by not using the lever, or pendulum, of the ax handle to extend the force of the falling blow. In a symmetrical tree the center of balance falls in the middle of the trunk, or as I have heard one American lumberjack express it, in the centrum gravitatis. If, therefore, one does like the Indians or even the newly arrived Irishmen cutting a tree evenly all around, it will not fall before it has been completely cut through and even then it might balance for some time on its conical tip such that one cannot know in which direction it will fall. The inexperienced woodcutter then usually runs away in great dismay and seeks to get outside the area of the falling tree, but that is often just his ruin; he is struck by the outermost branches of the tree and knocked to the ground. If he had stood still at the base of the cut tree, with firm conviction that the tree could fall only in one direction and that the tree would fall slower at the base than at the top, then at the base of the trunk it would be three steps outside of danger! But the caprice and the illogicality of fear, which often wishes to avoid the inevitable but more often deprives us of the means of avoiding the avoidable, is deeply rooted in the perverse nature of modern humanity, which is always only looking out for oneself for help, salvation, and redemption. I have often heard from Europeans the claim that the Americans were good woodsmen because they had good axes. On the contrary, I believe that the matter is reversed. Namely, the Americans have such good axes because they are such good woodsmen. They themselves invented these axes and were able to invent them because of their great skill in woodcutting. They were well aware of the mechanical laws that mattered most here. Likewise, the Arabs have the best horses because they are the best riders; the North Americans the fastest ships because they

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are the best seafarers. Similarly, the Germans invented the art of printing because they had something to say to the world, and not vice versa. These American axes now have some advantage over the European. The American ax is, on average, heavier than the European ax and therefore, since acceleration through the arc of the swing must be the same, the force of the strike must have a much greater effect than the European ax. The cutting edge of the American ax is almost once again as wide as that of the German ax so it cuts a much wider span. So as not to prevent the blade from penetrating the wood, this cutting edge is not nearly as straight as in the German ax but forms a circular arc of about 120 degrees. It is a foregone conclusion that a blow that does not cut the wood fibers at right angles but at an oblique angle penetrates deeper, as the hussar of the uhlans15 can thrust the lance only obliquely, because the elasticity of the wood fiber does not resist so much. It must also be clear that a curved cutting edge in addition to the oblique direction of the blow itself obliquely penetrates into the wood fiber from both sides with the upper and lower halves of the blade, and therefore has a stronger effect. Another factor, and not the least important, promoting the more powerful intrusion of the American ax is its polish, which significantly reduces friction, as well as the quality of the steel, which allows a sharpness of the cutting edge that no German ax can endure without bending or breaking. But all these advantages of the American ax would be useless if the sides of the blade were straight. The deeply penetrating ax would then get stuck in the wood each time. In the American ax, the side surfaces are convex,16 but only so much that jamming of the ax is prevented and penetration is not disturbed. Likewise, the handle of the American ax is of unsurpassable form and material. A Yankee handle of hickory wood does everything that can be demanded of such a tool. As strange as it may seem to the European, the double-curved shape of the 15. The Austro-Hungarian cavalry was divided into three types: the Imperial and Royal Dragoons, the Imperial and Royal Hussars, and the Imperial and Royal Uhlans. The difference between the three cavalries seemed to be primarily in their style of uniform. Thus, it was only natural that Lindheimer confused a hussar with an uhlan. 16. Convex means curving outward. This is clearly wrong. Lindheimer should have said the side surfaces of the ax head are concave, curving inward.

Two Turkish yatagans. Photo by Worldantiques. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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American ax blade is the most practical shape for a cutting instrument; it is the figure of the Turkish yatagan! 17 But listen; put your ear to the trunk. Things are softly starting to move in the interior of the tree. Once in a while one can hear the sound of tearing wood fibers. We can safely deliver a number of blows with the ax before the tree tilts to its doom. Now, the crackling and creaking doubles! It falls! Faster and faster like a windstorm, the crown sweeps through the air. The strong branches shatter to the ground, and with a short dull sound—hard to tell whether it is more the sound of the soil or more the sound of the trunk—the giant that took centuries to grow falls. Its annual rings record the weather of around seven centuries (once we have had a better opportunity to read them). But even as the sun sinks, we have completed our day’s work for today.18 When we went out this morning, I talked about the different ways different wood species split. I said that bald cypresses are extremely difficult to split diametrically, that is, across the tree rings. This property of the bald cypress makes it the most suitable wood to make canoes, for it is at the back and the front where the annual rings are crossed by the surface of the canoe that almost every other type of wood, except the plane tree or sycamore, would be split by the sun. But the bald cypress has the advantage over the plane tree in that, as a resinous wood, it is not easily exposed to rotting. I once owned a canoe of bald cypress wood that was the largest of its day on Buffalo Bayou. The tree of this canoe had grown on the banks of the Trinity from where a couple of daring men brought the canoe by sea around the coast to Houston. A

17. A yatagan or yataghan is a long hewing knife or short saber without a guard for the hand where the hilt joins the blade, and with a double-curved cutting edge. They were particularly popular in the Ottoman Empire. It is believed that Lindheimer owned such an instrument and brought it with him to America. At the least, in essay 7, “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico,” he mentioned meinem türkische Yatagan (my Turkish yatagan) when he was in Veracruz about to depart for Texas. 18. Starting with the next paragraph, the remainder of this article first appeared in the second issue of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, vol. 1(2), pg. 1, on Friday, 19 November 1852.

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Wild turkey with chicks. Photo by Mike’s Birds. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

storm befell them at sea19 and they had to seek land in an emergency. Having barely reached it, they had to pull the canoe up on the beach so that it did not wash away in the surf. For two days the men were stranded by the storm on the coast. A burning thirst seized them, but with a spade, which they fortunately had with them, they found fresh water behind the dunes at a shallow depth. Fortes fortuna juvat ! 20 Do you see there behind those trees this strange grayish-red haze? It is the smoke of our hut illuminated by the evening sun, and at the friendly meal that awaits us I will tell you more about bald cypresses. But now, just as magnet and iron hurry toward each other as they get closer, impatience drives me to see my wife and children again. So let me have my own thoughts for a moment. You see, our meal is ready and the clean table already set. My busy wife will not wait. 19. By “at sea” Lindheimer meant in the upper reaches of Galveston Bay, or more properly Trinity Bay. From the mouth of the Trinity, one has to navigate some twenty or more miles across the open bay to Morgan’s Point, then another ten miles up a series of smaller bays (constituting the lowermost San Jacinto River) to the junction of Buffalo Bayou with the San Jacinto. Today, this area is all very industrial. In Lindheimer’s day, it was undeveloped and mostly uninhabited. 20. “Fortune favors the brave” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Other sources prefer “fortune favors the bold,” and there are several variations of the Latin.

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It may be difficult for you to guess from which animal this fine smoked meat is made. You might perhaps think of Pomeranian goose breasts. But there are nicer breasts than goose breasts and in Texas you don’t need to think of Pomerania.21 In short, these are smoked turkey breasts. In Audubon’s world-famous works on the birds of North America many things are said and told about turkeys, but little is said about how they live and what this bird does throughout the day. If you find feathers from a turkey, which you can easily distinguish by their coppery metallic luster, and a large amount of bird dung under a tree, then you can be sure that turkeys have slept in this tree. The favorite sleeping places for turkeys, a turkey roost, are bald cypresses for several reasons. The bald cypress is a very tall tree on which the turkey feels safe; the bald cypress has very long branches on which a bird can sit comfortably; and the bald cypress often stands near rocks over which the turkey, who relies more on his legs than on his wings, can easily escape. The bald cypress also grows close to water and the bird needs water at least three times a day because of the heat produced by its strong digestive process. Most of all the turkey loves places where clear shallow water trickles over gravel. If you have found such a turkey roost, hide yourself one hour before sunset near the roost. Soon you will hear the crackling of dry twigs. One would almost believe it to be a human so loud are the footfalls. Usually there appears a cautious turkey cock, which at first moves slowly; sometimes it runs, sometimes it stands still and looks around, or rather listens. Whether his movements are guided more by fear or, which is just as likely, by attachment to his female flock is hard to say. 21. Pomerania lies on the Baltic coast and today is divided between Poland and Germany. Historically, it was much fought over by Sweden, Denmark, France, Poland, Austria, and several German states. In Lindheimer’s time it was a province of Prussia. The Pomeranian goose, also known as the Rügener goose, is a breed of domestic goose developed by north German farmers at least as early as 1500, possibly as early as 1300. It is a well-known, tasty, and popular market goose in Europe even today, especially in countries around the Baltic Sea. As for the phrase und in Texas mußt Du nicht an Pommern denken, when I asked a German internet forum of professional translators what Lindheimer might have meant by it, one person responded, “Have you ever seen Pomerania? Even if wars were fought over its strategic importance, I think what your author meant was, once you’re in Texas, Pomerania is too trivial, too insignificant to bother thinking about.”

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At long last he approaches the water, which he enters with his long legs stretched out, and drinks. The hens follow individually. Probably one has stopped here, another there looking for berries, acorns, or nuts, or catching a locust, or upon returning to the forest edge and finding a spot of ripe grass strips the grains from the grass ears with its beak. Even before all the hens have arrived the cock searches for his overnight accommodation. Having craned his long neck a couple of times, he decides to move his sluggish wings. Once on his branch he usually changes his position a few more times until he has found the most comfortable place for the balance of his heavy body, then lets his chest sink onto the branch and draws in his neck. After similar preparations, all the hens settle on a sleeping place and commit to rest. But the slightest noise would scare the whole roost, so, for a successful turkey shoot, you had better wait as long as possible until it is just bright enough to see. If it is a full moon night, which is almost as bright as a German day, you had better wait until after midnight to hunt. If you have now shot some turkeys in the evening and scared off the roost, then these birds will fly in the night only to nearby high trees. You can have another good hunt in the same place before dawn. Turkeys leave the trees late and it will be light enough to take a shot when these birds are still asleep. Often the first rays of the morning sun will strike their shiny metallic plumage before they leave the high seat of their night’s sleep. Perhaps you have bagged enough birds the night before and you prefer to observe these turkeys in the morning. Later, once the farm rooster crows and until the break of day, one can hear the strong gobbling cry of the turkey cock. Usually, turkeys first leave the place of their night’s rest when the tops of the trees shine from the oblique rays of the morning sun. They first seek out water once again. The hens gather around the cock and the flock then leaves the river grove. If a prairie borders on this river grove, many cocks often gather with their hens to form a large flock, sometimes of several hundreds. Often they are pushed so close together that one turkey bumps against another and the hens in particular peck each other and fly up against each other during their tottering walk. When they come closer to their feeding place, the individual turkey families separate; individual turkeys may run here and there, but the members of the families

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always keep close together. Hens that have wandered too far can often be heard using the contact call.22 Following such a hen from a distance, one often can come so close to the turkey family that one can hear their scratching and pawing in the dry foliage looking for acorns and pecans on the ground. But I do not want to describe for you further today how and when and where to find the turkey, nor the types, times, and places of the turkey hunt. It was only the bald cypresses that are so relative to the western turkey hunt that made me speak of turkeys today. And now at the conclusion of our conversation today about the bald cypresses of West Texas, mention may still be made of the largest bald cypress that exists in this area. Seven men can barely encircle the circumference of its trunk. Its half diameter is therefore about seven feet and, according to the usual thickness of annual rings among bald cypresses, the age of this tree must be more than a thousand years. The seed of this tree may have fallen and sprouted when Winfrid’s Christian ax felled the holy oak in Germany (720 AD) 23 displacing

22. Lindheimer used the phrase den Lockton rufen. A literal translation would be “to call the luring sound,” but such a female in the context that Lindheimer described likely would not be trying to lure a male, nor to lure other birds for the sake of a hunter (a Lockente is a captive duck [Ente] used by hunters to lure in other ducks through its Lockton — ­ Duden, Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. The next sentence provides further context, describing being able to come close to the turkey family. Many birds (as well as gregarious mammals) use a mixture of various sounds to accompany the group’s everyday activities, such as foraging. The vocalization is not a specific signal communicating any specific information but rather is used to keep in contact with other members of the group. In the case of females, it may be used to comfort chicks and keep them close. Ornithologists designate such vocalizations as contact calls. 23. Winfrid (spelled variously; ca. 675–754) was an Anglo-Saxon priest from Wessex. In 717, he was renamed Boniface by the pope and appointed missionary bishop for Germania under the protection of Charles Martel, Frankish ruler of Gaul. In northern Hesse, traditionally located near the modern town of Fritzlar, was a very large oak held by Germans to be sacred to Donar or Thor, the oak being the earthly equivalent of Yggdrasil, an immense mythical tree connecting the many worlds of Norse mythology, including Earth and Valhalla. In what was probably a well-prepared and well-publicized event in the early 720s, Boniface and his retinue cut down the Donar Oak. When the pagan god failed to strike Boniface down, the German peoples reportedly converted en masse to Christianity. Conversion allowed the Christian Frankish rulers west of the Rhine to expand their influence over their rivals, the non-Christian Saxon and Bavarian rulers east of the Rhine, setting the stage for the later empire of Charlemagne.

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Valhalla, the reward of deeds, with the Christian heaven, the reward of faith. This was an important event in the history of humanity as one worldview replaced another. Instead of good law, only grace is valid; sanctioned by the supreme God, man is only a lawless creature. Over a millennium, this demoralizing influence of priestly Christianity has tried to orientalize the West. Saint Boniface, you who first laid the ax on the German oak tree: the oaks of the Lord are an eternal race that you cannot exterminate any more than the robora populi Germanici, the oaks of the German nation, for they are the core and representative of the German spirit! You declared Vergilius of Strasbourg 24 a heretic because he believed in antipodes. Now completely different antipodes have arisen for you, antipodes of your mind. The gift of grace from your priestly Christianity is too dearly bought if we must give up our human dignity. We do not need your promises; neither you nor this cypress nor any fixed star 25 teaches us our eternal existence. Our own logic teaches us that. By extending our consciousness beyond the life of the cypress and the fixed star, we prove de facto that our consciousness also extends beyond this present time. The innate nature of this consciousness is the proof of immortality. This is also the old Mosaic belief in what is, was, and will be Jehovah, literally the God of Mysteries. This is the true faith of Moses, the true Christian faith, which teaches us the logic, the logical connection, and the logical meaning of all beings. “In the beginning was the Logos.” This Christian doctrine is translated by our clergy: “In the beginning 24. Lindheimer here confused Strasbourg in modern France (formerly in medieval Swabia) for Salzburg in modern Austria (formerly in medieval Bavaria). Vergilius of Salzburg (born Feirgil; ca. 700–784) was an Irish priest and early astronomer who, at the invitation of the duke of Bavaria, was sent by Boniface to establish bishoprics there. Vergilius came into conflict with Boniface over a questionable baptism, but the pope decided in favor of Vergilius. Boniface then denounced Vergilius for teaching the doctrine of the roundness of the Earth, “contrary to the Scriptures.” The pope ordered a council to investigate whether Vergilius professed belief that at the antipodes there lived another race of men under the Earth who were “not descendants of Adam and not redeemed by Christ.” Vergilius freed himself of the charge, but neither his work on the antipodes nor the findings of the council have survived, only the charges against him. After Boniface died and was canonized, Vergilius went on to convert the Alpine Slavs of Carinthia (between Salzburg and Venice) and was canonized for that. 25. By “fixed star,” Lindheimer meant the North Star, Polaris, the one star that seemingly never moves.

Saint Boniface cuts down Donar’s oak. Engraving by Bernhard Rode, 1781. (PD-100)

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was the word” and by word you mean your nonsensical dogma. But Logos is an expression borrowed from Greek philosophy and originally meant thought,26 reason! And so with good reason and justice we can denounce you, you Levites and priests, to be the primordial heretics of the pure Mosaic teaching and the pure teaching of Christ. Well then you cypresses, live well. When I have stood among you so often at night and the living breath that surrounds this globe whispered in your branches, I often weighed the value of this life in my mind. You millennial cypresses, you more than twenty-thousand-year-old bed of the Guadalupe and you almost everlasting star, you are all but changing shapes. Since stars of the first magnitude have disappeared from the firmament,27 faith can no longer hold to any existing one. At first the Earth was considered to be the fixed center, then the sun was considered to be the fixed center; but even the zodiac depicted in the Egyptian temples soon showed that our whole solar system moved—that every 71 years the vernal equinox moved one degree in the zodiac, so that in 360 × 71 years, that is 25,560 years, our solar system is again in the same place in the zodiac, that is, it has made a lap about a midpoint, and this center undoubtedly moves again around another center and so on.28 26. The original publication in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung included a third meaning for Logos at this point: die Wahrheit (the truth). 27. At this point in the original essay published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, instead of Seit Sterne erster Größe am Firmament verschwunden sind (Since stars of the first magnitude have disappeared from the firmament), Lindheimer wrote Seit ein Stern erster Größe in dem Sitz der Cassiopea verschwunden ist (Since a star of the first magnitude has disappeared in the chair of Cassiopeia). The event to which Lindheimer referred was Tycho’s Star, a supernova reported on in detail by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. His and other contemporary reports stated that the new star burst forth soon after 2 November 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia. By 11 November, it was already brighter than Jupiter, and by the sixteenth it had reached its peak brightness, with some observers saying it was as bright as Venus. The supernova remained visible to the naked eye into early 1574, gradually fading until it disappeared. The official teaching of the church at the time was that the stars of the firmament were changeless. 28. The phenomenon described by Lindheimer is known as axial precession. Like a wobbling spinning top or gyroscope, the Earth’s spinning axis wobbles and the extension of the axis projects a circle around a midpoint. The current measurement of one complete precessional cycle is 25,772 years. Today, the extension of the Earth’s axis in the Northern Hemisphere points to within one degree of Polaris, today’s “fixed” North

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Nothing is constant in the eternal change of things! Yes, there is something constant in this change of things! It is change itself that is constant and only in this life does it exist differently at every moment. This continual otherness of being different, this negation of negation, is the true affirmation. We ourselves are physically and mentally different at every moment. Without otherness, without progress, no spiritual life and no living spirit is conceivable; and as far as our body is concerned, in twenty years hardly a drop of our flesh is the same. This is how we live, by dying continually. This supposed, relative death is but a misunderstanding of the true laws of life. There is no absolute death. The concept of an absolute death is in itself nonsense, a contradictio in adjecto (an assertion based on contradictory assumptions).29 We can only come to the concept of death through the concept of life. Death itself is only a negative term. Now let us say, for example, that death should take place! Does life then also not take place? But since death is the negation of life and life does not take place in the case of death, how can negation, death, take place when what it is meant to negate does not take place at the same time? There is no real death! Atra Cupressus! funebris Cupressus ! 30 You sinister cypress of death, I understand the words that whisper of the world spirit living in your branches. The ancients planted you at their graves as a symbol of eter-

Star. Five thousand years ago, the North Star was the much fainter star Thuban at the end of the tail of the constellation Draco. Fourteen thousand years ago, the northern extension of the Earth’s axis pointed to within five degrees of the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra. Twelve thousand years from now, it will again point to within five degrees of Vega. The same axial precession shifts the solstices and equinoxes through the calendar. Furthermore, the shift in the direction of the Earth’s axis also shifts the constellations of the zodiac lying along the outward extension of the Earth’s ecliptic, not only right to left, but also up and down to different zodiacal constellations. (The constellations don’t move, just the outward extension of the ecliptic as the Earth’s axis wobbles.) Lindheimer’s reference to an Egyptian temple referred to a carved star map (the Dendera Zodiac) in a temple complex in Dendera near Luxor. Although the star map allegedly records precession, knowledge of such is not specifically recorded in any surviving Egyptian astronomical text. 29. The translation of the Latin is from Lindheimer’s German translation. 30. “Dark cypress! Funereal cypress!”

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nal life, as if they were at the entrances to Hades. The poor, contrite Christians, who from the outset see only death and ruin, can conceive of life only as a negation of death. As the negative expression of immortality shows, Christians only look on cypresses with tears and grief. There is no immortality for us, because there is no death for us! But this cypress lives as a true symbol of eternal life, and as true as the laws of all life are eternal laws, so true is the spirit that partially comprehends these eternal laws but is conscious in its organic totality. From the outset the law itself must be homogeneous and eternal, so this human spirit must be truly eternal. We do not look on the cypress with tears. Instead, we plant on the wall of the grave, as if storming the bulwark of death, our victorious banner of immortality, the cypress!

ESSAY 2

Da# Klima von Texa# The Climate of Texas1

The climate of a country is determined not only by its geographical coordinates but also by its physical setting. Whoever wanted to conclude the climate of Lower Canada from the friendly skies of Lake Garda and Lake Como in Italy, or that of New York or Boston from the mild weather of Rome, because these places lie on almost the same latitude, would likewise fail if one thought that we here in Texas have the daytime heat and nightly frost of the Sahara, which lies along the same northern latitude as us. Even in the tropics there is a region of eternal winter, while lying close to it and along the same latitude a lowland feels the full glory of a tropical sun, and between this cold and this hot land of the tropics (tierra fría and tierra caliente, as the Mexicans call it) at about 2,000 feet above sea level lies the tierra templada, the land of eternal spring.2 1. According to Goyne (1991), Lindheimer wrote to George Engelmann at the beginning of August 1845 that he had received an issue of Anzeiger des Westens (published in St. Louis) dated May 1845 and that “the article about the climate of Texas was printed the way I wrote it.” However, the essay published in the Aufsätze in 1879 mentioned a hailstorm in May 1847 and a drought that lasted from later in 1847 until April 1848. Therefore, if it is the same article as the one he wrote for Anzeiger des Westens, it was revised no earlier than 1848. It was apparently never published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung. 2. Lindheimer described these regions of eastern Mexico in more detail in essay 7, “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico.”

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Here too in Texas we have a temperate climate, not because of our high elevation above sea level but because of other causes despite our numerically small northern latitude. It is a well-known fact that a continent extending far to the north is colder in the southern parts of the same landmass: therefore Europe and North Africa are considerably warmer at the same latitude than the continent of North America, which extends to the polar regions. This is one reason why the summer heat of Texas does not correspond to our European idea of a country lying at 30° latitude, which we always think of as southern Europe and North Africa. A second major cause of the comparatively low degree of heat here in Texas is that we do not have along our northern border a mountain chain that holds off the north winds, as Lombardy has the Alps, Greece the Balkans, and India the Himalayas. Without obstacle here the north wind sweeps from the nocturnal ice fields of the North Pole to the Gulf of Mexico. The warmth of a country, however, is not the only thing that determines its climate, although the original meaning of the word signifies nothing more than that (namely, the inclination of the Earth’s surface to the sun’s rays, climate being derived from the Greek verb klinein).3 One speaks of a healthy fertile climate. Thus, by climate we mean the total effect on vegetation and animal life. But also in this sense I believe that we must compare the advantages of the climate of Texas ahead of not only many but most countries of the world. Take, for example, the great number of bright and mild days of the year and, moreover, how a fresh wind mitigates the heat of summer most every day, for which we can thank the result of a continual flow of air due to our fortunate position between the warming waters of the Gulf Stream and the far north of our continent. The differently heated layers of air constantly striving to achieve equilibrium produce a continuous flow between north and south. Lord Byron boasted of the beautiful climate of Attica4 and that he had been able to ride every day for thirty days when the weather was fine. The weather here in Texas is beautiful for almost nine months in 3. The Greek verb klinein means “to slope or incline.” 4. Attica is the historical region of ancient Greece that encompasses the city of Athens and its environs.

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the year. How does the weather of a landscape condition the state of mind for a man and how often is the weather conditioned by our own state of mind? Gray and stormy days give us a similar mood and for the most part they are time lost out of our lives. Only the days spent in cheerful activity are worth living. On our bad days in Texas the weather has only the slightest fault and if we would count all the beautiful days that the sky in Texas presents to us, and which most of us only squander, we would certainly not find their numbers as low as the great caliph in Spain who on every good day cast a white stone in an urn and on every bad day a black stone.5 Here the land descends from the mountains to the northwest in three large terraces like an amphitheater. It is here where the animals of the wilderness and the birds of the sky find refuge from the severity of winter. What German does not remember his old home? When the dead breath of winter makes German meadows freeze and everything that has wings migrates to a milder zone, then too the wings of our imagination also stir and we say: “Where are you going? What regions are there in which the frost and hunger of winter do not reach?” But they do not answer us. They hurry past and rush with shouting for the journey is long. The fact that Texas lies in such a milder zone in which every year migratory birds overwinter from the north is shown by the numerous flocks of ducks, geese, and swans that populate our waters throughout the winter and the swarms of cranes on our prairies and other northern migratory birds that make Texas their winter habitat; while the roseate spoonbills, Platalea ajaja,6 the Pelecanus occidentalis 7 [brown pelican], 5. Though not specifically connected to Spain, any particular caliph, or even the weather, the Latin phrase albo lapillo notare diem (to mark the day with a white stone) refers to an ancient Roman custom of marking each overall happy day by dropping a white stone into an urn and each bad day by doing the same with a black stone. At the end of the month, the urn would be emptied and the stones counted. The phrase and/or the practice seems to have been well known in Victorian times, particularly to those with an education in the classics (regardless of country), like Lindheimer. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) referred to marking a particular day with a white stone multiple times in his published diaries. 6. Lindheimer misspelled the name as Ptalea Aiaia. 7. Lindheimer used the misspelled synonym Pelicanus fuscus.

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and others who in the summer leave the hot tropics and visit our shores from the other direction also prove to us that we have a mild climate in Texas. But above all we must witness the farmers who do their field work every month of the year without interruption and who are able to plant corn and other crops in February. Due to its flora, Texas is also characterized as a land lying on the southern border of the temperate zone. Legume species are common. Cacti are fairly abundant in the western part of the state. There are five to six species of yuccas, including the treelike Yucca treculeana 8 [Spanish dagger or Spanish bayonet].9 Furthermore, there is the fan palm,10 the cabbage palm,11 and a treelike cactus.12 The mean temperature during summer is 81½°F in Austin and 50½°F in winter, 67½°F throughout the year,13 with extremes in summer of 101°F 14 and in winter –6°F.15 The rainfall in central Texas is 31 inches per year,16 a little more on the coast and in the eastern part of the country. The most beautiful weather is the rule here in Texas with a clear sky and alternating north and south winds. Cloudy, stormy days are just exceptions. Temperatures exceeding 100°F 17 with no wind and tempera8. Lindheimer misspelled the name as Y Treculiana. 9. This yucca can grow up to 10 meters (33 feet) tall. Larger specimens are often branched. 10. This would be the dwarf palmetto, Sabal minor. 11. This is not quite correct. The cabbage palm, Sabal palmetto, grows naturally only in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Cuba, and the Bahamas. It is easily cultivated across much of Texas with little or no winter protection, but it is not considered native. What Lindheimer may have meant was the Rio Grande or Mexican palmetto, Sabal mexicana, native to southernmost Texas and isolated locations along the Texas coast. 12. This would be the tree cholla or cane cholla, Cylindropuntia imbricata. 13. Mean summer, winter, and annual temperatures are no longer calculated, only the mean daily high and low temperatures for each month. For Austin, these are 97° and 75°F for August and 61° and 41°F for January. 14. The current record high in Austin is 112°F on 5 September 2000 and 28 August 2011. 15. The lowest recorded temperature in Austin since 1891 is –2°F on 31 January 1949. 16. The current average annual rainfall in Austin (1981–2010) is 34.32 inches. 17. Here, with no explanation, Lindheimer switched from using the Fahrenheit temperature scale to the Réaumur temperature scale. The Réaumur scale is similar to the Celsius scale in that the freezing point of water is 0° on both, but they differ in that the

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tures below 25°F with north wind and freezing rain (black ice) are very rare. In some winters we have neither ice nor snow so that in January the most delicate plants, such as tobacco, cucumbers, and watermelons, do not freeze in the fields. One of the hardest winters was in 1838. At that time trees were covered with ice over four days of continuous north wind at Houston and in the Brazos bottom near San Felipe.18 Falling branches killed cattle that had taken refuge in the forest and for a long time afterward the road that led through the Brazos bottom to San Felipe was made impassable by fallen trees. Hailstorms rarely happen. In 1842, in the area along the Brazos below San Felipe, there was a line of hailstorms that defoliated the forest trees, killed chickens on the farms there, and forced travelers to dismount and cover their heads with their saddles. In 1847, in May, another violent hailstorm took place near New Braunfels. The flowers of wild grapes and pecans were destroyed so that they bore no fruit that year. On the upper Guadalupe fifty miles north of New Braunfels, where I was at that time, I did not notice the weather except the cloud sweeping across the southeast. The next day I came to the place where the storm had swept across the road in a westerly direction. A swath of fallen tree foliage covered the ground and beneath the leaf litter hail had accumulated in potholes in the road up to four inches deep. In New Braunfels there was so much ice during the whole of the following day that one could enjoy the rare pleasure of an iced drink in all taverns. If one ranks the seasons in Texas not astronomically but according to their peculiar weather and according to the stages of life of the vegetative world, it follows that the most pleasant seasons here are the longest, spring and autumn, and the least pleasant are the shortest, summer and winter. Spring, with its light rain showers, its soft clouds

boiling point of water is 80° on the Réaumur scale and 100° on the Celsius scale. The Réaumur scale was widely used in Germany until it was replaced by the Celsius scale around the middle of the nineteenth century. Lindheimer’s Réaumur temperatures are here converted to Fahrenheit in the translation. 18. San Felipe de Austin on the Brazos River was established in 1824 by Stephen F. Austin to be the capital of his American colony in Texas. Every settler applying for land had to pass through the Land Office in San Felipe. By 1835, San Felipe had a population of six hundred and was second only to San Antonio as a commercial center in Texas. In some places, Lindheimer referred to it as St. Felipe.

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on a dark blue firmament, its flowers, and its invigorating air, lasts a full four months. The anemones, the Cercis canadensis var. texensis 19 [Texas redbud], the Ungnadia speciosa [Mexican buckeye], the Berberis trifoliolata [agarita], and other flowering shrubs begin the cycle of plant life in central Texas at the beginning of February. On the coast the flowering period begins one month earlier. A hundred English miles20 north of New Braunfels, at the foot of the granite mountains beyond the Llano River, the development of vegetation takes place one and a half months later than in central Texas. At the beginning of April the prairies, especially on the uplands, are decorated here with the most beautiful flowers at New Braunfels, San Antonio, and Austin. Against the fresh green of meadows, groups of the purest blue lupines (Lupinus texensis 21 [Texas bluebonnet]), mixed with sulfur-yellow, orange-colored, and scarlet-red paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa),22 lilac-flowered phlox (Phlox roemeriana [also known as golden-eyed phlox]), and small, dark red mallows (Callirhoë pedata 23 [palm-leaved poppy-mallow or standing winecup]) often form the most beautiful shades and designs ever devised by an oriental carpet weaver. May brings fruits in addition to the flowers; blackberries,24 two species of wild mulberries, one shrubby 25 and one treelike,26 and a savory barberry (Berberis trifoliolata [agarita]). Wild grapes turn darker. In 19. Lindheimer used the obsolete synonym Cercis reniformis. 20. The English mile is only slightly shorter than the international mile, 1.6093426 kilometers versus 1.609344 kilometers for the international mile, a difference of only 0.14 centimeters or 1/20 of an inch. In other places, Lindheimer referred to German miles and elsewhere to geographical miles. A German mile is about 4.68 international miles and a geographical mile is about 4.61 international miles. The international mile is the standard in the United States, consisting of 5,280 feet. German and geographical miles are converted to international miles in the translation. 21. Lindheimer used the name Lupinus subcarnosus, which most authors used until the middle of the twentieth century. 22. Only the scarlet-red paintbrush is Castilleja indivisa, generally known as the scarlet paintbrush or Texas paintbrush. The sulfur-yellow paintbrush is Castilleja purpurea var. citrina, which is generally known as the prairie paintbrush. The orange-colored paintbrush is Castilleja purpurea var. lindheimeri, which is generally known as Lindheimer’s paintbrush. 23. Lindheimer used the synonym Malva pedata. 24. The most common blackberry in the area being described by Lindheimer is Rubus trivialis, the southern dewberry.

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Agarita, a harbinger of spring, Berberis trifoliolata (Mahonia trifoliolata). Photo by Stan Shebs. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

June the heat begins to become more persistent and everything is rapidly ripening. Corn has milky ears, which are considered to be a delicacy roasted by southerners. Winter rye and wheat are already tied in sheaves in the fields. Birds fall silent in the midday hours and sunlight shimmers in the bright air. In July and August the southern sun asserts itself. At noon the shadow of the head of a standing man falls at his feet and when the breath of the south wind stops, which at this hour is almost regular, one longs for September and its cooler winds. Great refreshment in this hot time is the tremendous number of watermelons that here weigh from twenty to forty pounds. September, October, November, and often the first weeks of December bring friendly autumn days, but one should not think of a German autumn but rather of a late summer. As early as the month of October north winds become heavier and cooler, but only after mid-November 25. This is likely the Texas mulberry, Morus celtidifolia, formerly known as Morus microphylla. 26. This is undoubtedly Morus rubra, the red mulberry.

Springtime in Texas, with bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrush. Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

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do they become so cold that they yellow the leaves of trees. The socalled “Norther” usually occurs only from the end of December to the beginning of February. For weeks before then the south wind often rolls the clouds that have formed over the Gulf Stream inland toward the mountains of Texas until suddenly a reaction takes place in the layers of air. A brief windlessness ensues, then an electric glow on the northern horizon, and suddenly with a violent roar the hurricane-like storm crashes, rolling gray clouds over the mountains and whipping their cold mists through the air as streams of rain. A sudden temperature change of twenty or more degrees Fahrenheit occurs, not often, but sometimes. Such north winds usually last two or four days at most. On the second and third days they are usually the most severe. The rain has then stopped, but with everything so cold, the soil, trees, houses, and household furnishings, we find ourselves everywhere near cold objects that deprive our bodies of their natural warmth. When you are out in the open, where the cold fast-moving air flows constantly through your clothes, it almost seems as if you are exposed naked to the north winds. At any rate, this sensitivity stems only from the fact that we are no longer acclimated to cold. The north wind does not slow down until it has driven all the clouds before it, leaving only a bright sky behind. A fierce Norther that lowers the temperature to below freezing usually only occurs a few times in a winter and constitutes our whole winter, no harder than that under the mild sky of Attica, and we equally as the Greeks would only call the season stormy (cheimon).27 Without a Norther, the thermometer never sinks below freezing. By mid-February the north winds lose their cold and strength and then, alternating with the south winds, form one of the great assets of the state of Texas— everlasting breezes that purify the air and refresh the land. Easterly and westerly winds only blow exceptionally. East wind that sweeps in from the swamps of the Mississippi and from the coasts first brings mist, then steady rain, and if it lasts for a long time it exerts a languid and unhealthy influence upon people as the Spaniards first noticed in San Antonio. The west wind is the rarest in Texas. It comes from the dry plains of northern Mexico and always brings only dry weather.

27. The Greek cheimon means “stormy winter weather.”

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Thunderstorms are not very common in Texas, though they occur more often in the lower country than in the higher especially in spring. Thunderstorms of Texas have the advantage over thunderstorms of Missouri and Illinois in that they do not follow cloudy and cold days as in those states but follow cheerful and mild days here. Furthermore, local thunderstorms have other striking features, for example they often hang for several days over low-lying bottomland woods. Over the seven-mile-wide bottomland forest of the Brazos near San Felipe I once saw lightning and heard thunder for eight days. Another peculiarity of the local thunderstorms is the long rolling thunder that rises and falls between loud and soft and that often lasts for ten minutes, even fifteen minutes, without interruption. Brief thunderclaps, as if suddenly a cannon were fired, as well as often the complete illumination of the weather-bright horizon put Texas and in particular its coastal areas in common with tropical Mexico. Texas sometimes suffers from lack of rain for months, such as in 1846 and 1848. From 1847 to 1848 the whole winter was dry. Even the north winds did not bring rain. The first rains did not fall until April 1848. No grass grew where the prairies were heavily grazed by cattle. The winds brought clouds of dust across the land and the black prairie floor opened up in many crevices.28 There once was a great drought in Texas more than a hundred years ago. The Mexican residents in the west of the country, where only small rivers are found, could no longer find water for their herds. They moved east with their herds and finally found water for themselves and their herds in one of the larger rivers. 28. The Texas Blackland Prairie stretches about three hundred miles from near the Red River northeast of Dallas, east of Waco, east of Austin, to south of San Antonio. Its soil contains black or deep dark gray alkaline clay that is further blackened by char from wildfires. The clay has one of the highest shrink-swell ratios in the world. In wet weather the clay swells, forming a velvety soft gumbo in which wagons, automobiles, and horses can easily get stuck. In dry weather, the clay shrinks to almost brick-like hardness, opening up cracks as much as a foot wide and several feet deep, forming a hazard to horses, wildlife, and people on foot. This alternating shrinking and swelling can cause serious damage to building foundations and the pavement of highways and sidewalks. Nevertheless, these soils are highly fertile because organic matter in the topsoil falls into the cracks and enriches the subsoil. The region is noted for its cotton and okra production. In the next paragraph, Lindheimer described hogwallow prairies, a common name for Blackland and similar prairies in the southern United States in the nineteenth century.

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They called the river Los brazos de Dios, the saving arms of God. The next eastward river had colored water from the red clay of its bed and they called it el Colorado, the red one, but now the names of these rivers are reversed, as everyone knows. The western clear stream is now called Colorado and the eastward muddy one is named Brazos.29 At the same time as that drought, a legend of the Indians that is at least as interesting relates: At that time the earth had been torn into fissures so huge that a man and his horse could have fallen in, and these crevices had been so frequent in some parts of the country that later on the so-called hogwallow prairies had sprung up. The hogwallow prairies are located between lower and upper Texas and their peculiar, regular, undulating formation often looks like the land of an old abandoned cotton field. As these hogwallows are certainly made of a humus black soil, and furthermore since the parallel rows of their ridges are sometimes crossed by quite similar rows, the explanation that the Indians give of their origin seems almost more acceptable to me than a sedimentary one which would first come to mind. Dry and light air is one of the great assets of Texas. Unfortunately, I have had no chance to acquire a hygrometer or barometer. Individual phenomena, however, undeniably indicate that Texas possesses these splendid advantages of climate. Thinly sliced meat (tasajo) 30 gently dries in the air under the famous sky of Jalapa 31 just as it does here. Dead mules and horses, after the wolves have devoured the intestines, often flatten themselves with meat and fur into complete mummies, here as well as there. In 1836 some dead bodies of Mexicans dried up on the battlefield of San Jacinto as well as on the plateaus of Mexico in the last Mexican-American War. How light the air often must be here one can conclude from the observation that often the smoke from a

29. Lindheimer’s account is one of several regarding the reversal of the names for the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. There is considerable historical evidence that Spanish explorers got the two rivers confused. The present application of the two names was set before the end of Spanish Texas in 1821. The red clay Lindheimer mentioned comes from Permian redbeds in northwestern Texas. 30. Lindheimer used the phonetic variant dasago. 31. Jalapa or Xalapa-Enríquez is the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz. Lindheimer had more to say about Jalapa and its environs in essay 7, “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico.”

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Example of smoke hugging the ground due to an air inversion. Photo by Lamiot. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

shotgun, which one shoots in the prairie, does not rise and spread in the air but suddenly sinks to the ground and sits like a foot-high layer of fog. A fire that was started near New Braunfels to burn rubbish and filth spread its smoke across the ground as a barely knee-high layer.32 The purity of the air is clearly shown by its transparency, such that distant objects can be seen more clearly here than in other places. The notable farsightedness of Texans (apart from the practice of it) is certainly also largely based on this pure air. The purity of the air and intensity of light are again confirmed in other ways by the many beautiful primal phenomena of light here in Texas. The zodiacal light, the halo, and even a double moon rainbow, the interior of which is imbued with glorious distinct color circles, are not uncommon in Texas. Sometimes just after the setting of the sun, the western sky is divided into three areas, one blue, one red, and one white, from diverging lines emanating from a base point. 32. The phenomenon Lindheimer described is due to air inversion, when the normal decreasing temperature gradient of the atmosphere with height is reversed such that air near the ground is colder than the overlying warmer air.

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This includes the deep blue of the sky, the magnificent violet over the sea at Galveston, and the green light of the sky in the upper country, both at sunset. Here belong the full-moon nights that are inferior in brightness only to a Nordic day; likewise, the stars flicker and shine often as brightly as in Germany in the coldest winter nights. Other phenomena of light, though often seen in other regions, are certainly of the utmost beauty here because of the pure air and intensity of the light; for example, the red glow of a sunlit smoke from the burning prairies, or the glorious emerald green as crystalline waters flow across a white bed of limestone like the Guadalupe, the Comal, the Salado, the San Marcos, and much of the western waters of Texas. Where these waters have deeper places such that the light can no longer reach to the streambed, the green increases to the deepest blue as beautiful as it can be seen only in southern seas. Dawn in an almost cloudless sky is not connected here with the changing play of colors as in Germany, but even the planets, when they rise before the sun, have a significant dawn like the appearance of a great distant fire. Morning and evening twilight are very short here because of the southern location. For the same reason, the rising moon has raised horns here, as it is depicted on the mosques of the East. The waning moon has down-turned horns here.33 Weird appearances of sailing ships, lakes, and humans sometimes seen on the great prairies of coastal land are not really there, only nothing but mirages, Fata Morgana. This writer has several times here in New Braunfels seen whole landscapes partly raised above the horizon, partly reflected higher in the sky. How this climate of Texas, which I have tried to characterize in the preceding, manifests itself in the well-being of animal existence remains for me to say. 33. This is not quite true. When the sun appears above the moon in the sky, the moon’s crescent opens downward; when the moon is above the sun, the moon’s crescent opens upward. A crescent moon with upturned horns in the western sky in the early evening after sunset is a waxing moon. A crescent moon with upturned horns in the eastern sky before sunrise is a waning moon. The only way a waning moon can have downturned horns is if it is visible in the western sky before the sun sets. Similarly, a waxing moon can have downturned horns if it is visible in the eastern sky shortly after sunrise.

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Year after year our herds live in the open air, and indeed vast wild herds of horses, cattle, and pigs produced in the wild have existed here for centuries unrelated to humans and have become subspecies, not of degenerate races at all, but of horses as shiny and muscular as if they had been nurtured with art and care and a kind of monochrome cattle whose bulls are of great weight with such unusually thick and heavy horns that one might think they are a different species than our domestic animals from which they came. While animals under the Texas sky may be doing well, the new immigrant has much to complain about regarding the rigors of the weather. Of course here, as in Germany, the north wind makes one cold and the sunshine warm and the rain wet and one would have to change the laws of nature if he wanted to have such things different in a different climate. The provisional dwellings of the farmers and the shacks of newly built cities afford no protection against cold, heat, and moisture; but this is not the fault of the sky of Texas. Of course, as the majority of people are morally neither cold nor warm, neither dry nor wet, so they also want to have it in nature; while in a strong healthy man the extremes of weather evoke the inner reaction of a vital force that asserts itself against all external influences. But it is a fact! Where do you see more red-cheeked Americans and healthier children than in Texas? Domestic animals are reared here without a stable and the young brood without a nursery. American families have lived here for years under the shelter of the evergreen live oaks without harm to their health. Our border guards are under the open sky year in and year out. These Rangers as they are called here are volunteer mounted troops who protect us against Indians and thieves. And are these Rangers not as healthy as other human children sitting in the shade in the summer and by the stove in the winter? Is each of these men’s own declaration of independence not written on their forehead, as if they were to say: Stay in your huts, your tents, Let me only hold to my saddle, Over my head only the stars, I’m happy to go far away! 34

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We Texans know only too well that our climate is healthy, especially the climate of central and upper Texas. For those who do, this essay is not written. But for those who are searching: where else on this broad Earth could a place be found free of the noxious pressure of the atmosphere as well as free of the religious demons of spiritual lethargy and the political paternalism of children’s schools. A man is healthy in body and mind and thrives to the greatest perfection in a social and political atmosphere naturally arising from a place. One may enjoy it in the fullness of all possibilities in and of one’s own self. The United States of North America is the lighthearted region where the human spirit first broke through the historic slag of hereditary authorities and, like the silver gaze from the smelting furnace, human rights burst forth from the revolution. In American statesmanship, all the difficulties of a democratic selfgovernment have been overcome. Until now, this had been possible only in some places at some times. What is free here is the individual will as well as the total will, or rather the deed as far as it may reasonably be held to be possible to achieve. All the basic conditions for a dignified undiminished human existence have come together in the Free States of North America more than anywhere else. If health and physical well-being are added in a good climate, then that is truly all that man can demand at the present stage of world-historical development. In no part of the United States, besides the mental and physical conditions, may health and well-being be found united to a greater extent than in mild and fertile Texas, and with conviction I may, in my opinion, apply the old proverb to this land: Ubi bene, ibi patria! 35

34. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Buch des Sängers,” in West-östlicher Divan (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1819). 35. Where life is good, there is my homeland! (or, there is my country or there is my home). There are variations of the Latin, such as Ubi libertas, ibi patria (Where there is liberty, . . . ) and Ubi panis, ibi patria (Where there is bread, . . . ). The closest classical quotation to this saying comes from Cicero in 45 BC, Tusculanae Disputationes V, 108: Patria est ubicumque est bene (My homeland is wherever I am happy).

ESSAY 3

Eine Uebersicht der Flora von Texa# An Overview of the Flora of Texas1

General preliminary remarks I. A common early prejudice was that the flora of Texas was simply a transition zone between the floras of Mexico and the United States and did not have any endemic plants of its own. This prejudice has now been abandoned after the English collector Drummond 2 (in 1834) collected in a part of eastern and southern Texas, after the scientist Dr. Riddell3 from New Orleans searched up the Trinity

1. Toward the end of this essay, Lindheimer noted that it had been thirty years since he had botanized in the area of the Llano River. Blankinship (1907) noted that Lindheimer accompanied a train of settlers to Fredericksburg in 1847 and in September pushed northward to the Darmstadter Colony of Bettina between the Llano and San Saba Rivers. Thus, it can be assumed that this essay was written (or revised) around 1877. 2. Thomas Drummond (1793–1835) was a Scottish plant collector. From 1825 to 1827 he collected plants in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Returning to America in 1831, he collected around New Orleans and in 1833 eventually made his way to Texas, where he spent a year and a half. Most of his plants were described by Sir William Jackson Hooker, who (at that time) was at the University of Glasgow. Drummond died in Havana on his way back to England. 3. John Leonard Riddell (1807–1865) was an American botanist, geologist, medical doctor, chemist, microscopist, and politician. From 1836 until his death he was a professor of chemistry at the Medical College of Louisiana (now Tulane University) in New Orleans. He collected plants in southeastern Texas and along the Trinity River into

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River and into northeastern Texas, Dr. Leavenworth 4 of Florida had botanized along the eastern border of Texas, and finally the Frenchman Berlandier,5 who, it seems, had only been passing through Texas. Neither researchers nor collectors have yet penetrated to many species-rich treasure troves: neither to the terraces of the Guadalupe Mountains,6 nor to the lovely valleys of the Llano and San Saba Rivers, nor to the great salt lakes on the upper Brazos River, to the sources of the Nueces, nor to the desert beyond the Nueces, over which regions the great botanist Hooker says: it is a “glorious field” for the collector.7 II. In Mexico, in the northern United States, and in Texas, I have been struck by the observation that the flora of America surpasses that of Europe disproportionately more by the great number of species than the number of genera. So for example Solidago [goldenrod], Aster [aster], Gaura [lizard-tail], Verbena [vervain], and Euphorbia [spurge] are represented by an extraordi-

northeastern Texas. Lindheimer made Riddell’s acquaintance and visited him in New Orleans in April 1843. Riddell’s plants were described by John Torrey of Columbia University and Asa Gray of Harvard. 4. Melines Conklin Leavenworth (1796–1862) was an American Army surgeon from Connecticut during the Seminole Wars in Florida and later during the Civil War. In 1831 he was briefly stationed in Louisiana, where he collected plants along the Sabine River, probably (as Lindheimer presumed) on both sides. Many of the plants he collected were described by John Torrey. 5. Jean-Louis Berlandier (1803–1851) was a French naturalist, physician, and anthropologist, originally from Geneva. Upon sponsorship by the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, Berlandier joined the Mexican Boundary Commission expedition under command of General Manuel de Mier y Terán into Texas in 1828. Berlandier has been considered the first plant collector in Texas, as Texas was defined in 1828, but prior to Berlandier, Edwin James collected plants along the Canadian River in the Panhandle in 1820 as part of the Long Expedition. Berlandier’s specimens were described mostly by de Candolle. He settled, married, and practiced medicine in Matamoros, served in the Mexican Army in the early part of the Mexican-American War, and later negotiated the peaceful surrender of Matamoros to the Americans. 6. What Lindheimer meant by “Guadalupe Mountains” was not Guadalupe Peak in the Trans-Pecos near El Paso, but rather the Texas Hill Country or Edwards Plateau through which the Guadalupe River flows. 7. Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) was an English botanist, professor at the

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nary number of species. Subspecies and varieties are common and often seem to be hybrids, for example Verbena species that have the most varied intermediate links and transitions breaking through species barriers. III. It may be assumed that in a terraced southeast-facing country, not far from the tropics, the vegetation at the various latitudes must be quite different; but with a small longitudinal difference of often only ninety-five miles 8 and at quite the same height above sea level one cannot help but notice a difference in the diversity of vegetation, even if not familiar with the growth habits of individual plants. It must have another basis than a mere numerical difference in longitude. This striking diversity of flora across the various degrees of longitude of Texas will be less disconcerting if we consider the following characteristics of the country: 1. Along the whole length of the west bank of the Mississippi, as well as the whole Gulf Coast of Texas, there is a band of alluvial land about 45 miles wide,9 then, almost parallel with it, a band 115 to more than 140 miles wide of Tertiary deposits, both bands extending obliquely from southwest to northeast across the state. Beyond these bands, the Cretaceous formation forms the interior of the land and in the middle of it like an island is a 90-mile-long granite region surrounded by Silurian rocks to the north and east.

University of Glasgow, and later director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Hooker made the statement in 1849 about plant collecting in the Amazon. 8. Lindheimer specified an antiquated unit of length known as the deutsche Meile. A German or Prussian mile is 7.5325 kilometers or 4.6805 international miles. The United States uses the international mile. All measurements in the translation are converted to international miles, rounded to the nearest five miles. 9. In this paragraph, Lindheimer switched to another antiquated unit of length known as the geographische Meile. A German geographical mile is 7.420439 kilometers or 4.6108 international miles. Again, all measurements in the translation are converted to international miles, rounded to the nearest five miles.

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2. The isothermal line 10 that lies in the south part of Texas with a few bends extending to 29½ degrees north latitude shows 68°F mean warmth. An isotherm that makes very large bends between the 30th and 34th degrees north latitude shows a mean warmth of 64°F. A third isotherm with large bends between the 32nd and 36th degrees has an average temperature of 60°F. 3. The rainfall is very different in the different parts of the country. A narrow band 70 to 90 miles wide in eastern Texas along the Louisiana border has 44 to 56 inches of annual rainfall. Then follows a wider band that does not reach to Austin but stretches all over the Texas coast that has 32 to 34 inches of rainfall. West of this zone rainfall drops to only 20 to 30 inches and even less closer to the Rio Grande. 4. Hypsometric measurements 11 have shown that Texas is formed of three terraces, the lowest of which is 75 to 140 miles wide along the Gulf Coast and is less than 400 feet above sea level. The second terrace, parallel to the first and about 90 miles wide, is from 400 to 800 feet high; and the third, which occupies the remainder of the northwestern part of the country, has an elevation of 800 to 2,000 feet. The above-mentioned geological, isothermal, and hypsometric characteristics of Texas, as well as the diverse rainfall of the country, I regard as a sufficient explanation of the flora being so different according to the degrees of longitude, as well as the cause of its great diversity.

10. An isothermal line is a type of contour line connecting points of equal temperature on a geographic map. 11. Hypsometric measurements are calculations of the altitude above sea level. In Lindheimer’s day, such measurements involved measuring the boiling point of water, taking into account daily fluctuations of atmospheric pressure measured by a standard barometer.

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IV. It should also be noted that the same species will bloom on the coast earlier than inland. Only 100 to 120 English miles 12 inland from the coast means a difference in flowering from one to one and a half months. V. A peculiar phenomenon is that several plants love two extremes in their habitat, such that they are found either at the seaside and the riverbank, or on rocks in the interior, but nowhere else in between: Yucca treculeana 13 [Spanish dagger], Berberis trifoliolata [agarita], Cylindropuntia leptocaulis 14 [desert Christmas cactus], Dermatophyllum secundiflorum 15 [Texas mountain laurel], Oenothera macrocarpa 16 [big-fruited evening primrose], Vachellia farnesiana [huisache or sweet acacia], etc. The lime-rich beach, which is calcareous due to the quantity of shell debris, as well as the limestone that is found on the banks of rivers probably provides these plants with similar nutrients as that of the limestone mountains of the inner country. As I have now, through my preliminary remarks, laid out the map of Texas as it were in the eyes of my readers, a country lying between thirteen degrees of longitude and eleven degrees of latitude, the question is, how should I, as a botanical tour guide,17 show them the interesting and curious features of the spreading land? Shall I leaf through the

12. The English mile is only slightly shorter than the international mile, 1.6093426 kilometers versus 1.609344 kilometers for the international mile, a difference of only 0.14 centimeters or 1/20 of an inch. 13. Lindheimer consistently misspelled the name as Yucca Treculiana throughout this essay. 14. Lindheimer used the synonym Opuntia frutescens here and elsewhere in this essay. 15. Lindheimer used the synonym Sophora speciosa here and elsewhere in this essay. 16. Lindheimer used the synonym Oenothera missouriensis here and elsewhere in this essay. 17. Lindheimer used the phrase botanischer Cicerone, an old term for a person with knowledge who conducts visitors through a museum or gallery, or more generally acts as a guide to the antiquities and curiosities of a country. The name is derived from Cicero, the Roman statesman of the first century BCE known for his vast knowledge and distinguished oratory.

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herbaria of thousands of dehydrated plant corpses and, amid a flood of technical nomenclature, nurture the interest that I wish to instill in them for my subject? I do not presume to lecture to the scholars of exact science. But in recent times, by popularizing science, people are being introduced into the vestibules of the Temple of Isis.18 This is a meritorious work, which I support with my small contribution and weak ability. Of course, not only the priests of the temple at Sais,19 but all priests warn about lifting the veil on the image of truth, as it was proclaimed before the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. It is not to be feared that my innocent flower and plant report will provide stones to the literary street urchins and thus “break the stainedglass windows” (as Virchow 20 likes to express himself). Cheerfully, I invite my readers to take a botanical field trip through our beautiful Texas with me. Why do I call it beautiful? Is the earth not beautiful everywhere? Where man does not come with his misery! 21 18. Isis was a major goddess in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Her cult became very popular and was incorporated into the Greek and Roman pantheons by the first century BCE. The daily offering rites by her priests before her image were performed out of public view in temples built in the older Egyptian style, but in newer temples built in Greek and Roman times members of the public were allowed into the vestibule of the temple where they could see her image and the offering rites performed by the priests. 19. Sais was an ancient town in the western Nile Delta. The temple there was reputed to be the grave of the god Osiris, primeval mythical king of Egypt and husband of Isis, who resurrected Osiris from the dead at Sais. Plutarch, the first century CE Greek (later Roman) historian, biographer, and essayist, wrote that the shrine of Isis at Sais bore the inscription: “I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.” Today, little remains of Sais. 20. Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (1821–1902) was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, antiracist writer, editor, and politician, best known for his advancement of public health, a field he called “social medicine.” He was a pronounced and radical democrat who advocated a Kulturkampf (culture war) to fight both poverty and disease. 21. “Die Welt ist vollkommen überall, Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual” (The world is perfect everywhere, where man does not come with his misery). Friedrich von Schiller, Die Braut von Messina oder die feindlichen Brüder: Ein Trauerspiel mit Chören (The Bride of Messina or the Enemy Brothers: A tragedy with choruses) (Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1803). Schiller’s play was a theatrical drama that premiered in

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What prevents me from regarding the whole Earth as an English park22 in the grandest style, or as a Sanskrit pradêsa, a Hebrew pardes, an ancient Persian paradaesas, as a pleasure garden created for the enjoyment of men? We begin our brief botanical journey across the land of Texas moving from east to west almost directly on the 30½ parallel of latitude. In the swamps adjacent to the state of Louisiana, in the area of the Sabine and Neches Rivers, the gigantic reed, the Arundinaria gigantea 23 [giant cane], dominates and forms mixed thickets with the fan-palm, Sabal minor 24 [dwarf palmetto], that only the most fearless hunter, one who never loses his direction, can penetrate. The trees are often hung beyond recognition with the gray waving tufts of the socalled Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides). In addition, Phoradendron leucarpum 25 [American mistletoe], Tillandsia recurvata [ballmoss], and a fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides 26 [resurrection fern]) grow on these trees as parasites.27 The damp soil is often so densely covered with Marsilea [water clover] species that it resembles a young clover field. A glorious fire-colored blooming Asclepias [milkweed], five to six feet tall that raises its head above the marshy shrubs is A. himanthophylla n.s.28

1803. The phrase was repeated by the chorus at several places throughout the play. It has become a well-known aphorism in German, with the first line modified to suit the circumstances as Lindheimer did here. 22. An English park is a style of informal and asymmetrical landscape gardening that developed in England in the seventeenth century and spread to the continent and around the world. It replaced the more formal and symmetrical French style of landscape gardening. It was based on an idealized (and imperfect) image of nature represented in idyllic pastoral paintings of landscape artists of that time and was later influenced by Chinese gardens. The 1400-acre Englischer Garten near the center of Munich, Germany, is a notable example. 23. Lindheimer used the obsolete synonym Miegia macrocarpa here and elsewhere in this essay. 24. Lindheimer used the synonym Sabal Adansonii here and elsewhere in this essay. 25. Lindheimer used the synonym Viscum rotundifolium. 26. Lindheimer used the obsolete synonym Polypodium incanum. 27. Only the Phoradendron is a true parasite. The Tillandsia and Pleopeltis are simply epiphytes, air plants deriving their nutrients from the air and water accumulating on the bark of the host. 28. The abbreviation “n.s.” or “n.sp.” stands for “new species” and is used in technical publications to indicate the name of a species that has never been published but that

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Dwarf palmetto, Sabal minor. Photographer unknown. Congaree National Park. (CC BY 2.0)

is formally being proposed and described in that publication. Asclepias himanthophylla was never published anywhere but in Lindheimer’s Aufsätze. The only clues we have to its identity are that it is red or orange flowered, reaches five to six feet tall, and grows in marshes. Also, Lindheimer’s name himanthophylla means “with leaves shaped like a strap.” According to Goyne (1991), Lindheimer evidently discussed this plant with Engelmann, for in a letter to Engelmann dated 19 April 1843, after visiting with Riddell in New Orleans, Lindheimer wrote, “The Asclepias himantophylla [sic], [Riddell] thinks is not something new; it grows quite commonly in the swamps of Louisiana.” He mentions the species again in a letter dated 14 September 1843 in a list of plants he was shipping to Engelmann. Fortunately, among the plants Lindheimer shipped to Engelmann and Gray to be distributed to subscribers in the first set of their Plantae Lindheimerianae Exsiccatae was a specimen Gray designated as #118, labeled by Gray as “Asclepias paupercula, Michx. Swamps near the coast. Stem 4–6 feet high. Root tuberous. June.” A. paupercula is a synonym of A. lanceolata, the few-flowered milkweed, which has bright red-orange flowers. It grows to the correct height in fresh and brackish marshes from New Jersey to Texas, and it has leaves that are linear to lance shaped with long, attenuated tips about four inches long. A. lanceolata is, I believe, the best possible candidate for Lindheimer’s name.

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But let’s move westward to the Trinity River. The forest still has the character of a North American forest, but mixed with very different tree species: oaks (Quercus falcata [southern red oak], Q. alba [white oak], Q. stellata 29 [post oak], and so on), hickory species (Carya), persimmons (Diospyros virginica), and so on, while farther to the west entire forests degenerate, consisting mostly of only one tree species, for example only live oaks, only post oaks (Q. stellata), only mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa 30), only so-called cedars (Juniperus virginica 31 [eastern red cedar]) and farther west only J. ashei 32 [Ashe juniper or mountain cedar]. Along the San Jacinto River and around Houston there is a continuous forest of coniferous trees (Pinus taeda [loblolly pine]). Giant trees of this species can be found sometimes reaching a trunk thickness of five feet and a height of one hundred feet. Near riverbanks are the following characteristic trees: the storax tree (Liquidambar styraciflua [more commonly called sweetgum]) whose trunk grows five feet thick and sixty feet high—it is very leafy, and when it is injured, storax, a pale balsamic resin, flows from it; the sassafras (Sassafras officinale), a laurel-like tree of ten to twenty feet in height (every part of this tree has a pleasant smell and a sweet aromatic taste, but especially the bark of the root has these properties); also the large-flowered magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora [more commonly called southern magnolia]), a stately tree that reaches a trunk thickness of two to three feet and a height of seventy to eighty feet. Its smooth gray bark looks similar to the bark of the beech, while its leaves are leathery, evergreen, six to eight inches long, glossy dark green on the upper side, and rust colored on the lower side. The white flowers, with which the tree is covered for months, are eight to nine inches broad and very fragrant. In the forest thicket, the snowflake tree (Chionanthus virginicus [also called white fringetree]) surprises with its beautiful, snow-white, four-part pendulous flowers eight to ten lines long.33 A treelike blueberry similar in appearance to European species 29. Lindheimer used the obsolete epithet obtusifolia throughout. 30. Lindheimer used an old generic synonym for mesquite, Algarobia. 31. Lindheimer called them “so-called cedars” because they are not related to the true cedars in the genus Cedrus. Red cedars of the genus Juniperus have fleshy cones, while true cedars have woody cones. 32. Lindheimer used the synonym J. occidentalis here and elsewhere in this essay. 33. A line is an obsolete unit of measurement of variously reckoned lengths, originally

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Loblolly pines, Pinus taeda. Photo by Woodlot. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

understood to be one-quarter the length of a barleycorn. It has not been part of the officially authorized British Imperial system of measurement since 1824. Botanists continued to use the measurement, usually as one-twelfth of an inch, into the early twentieth century. Gunsmiths and armament companies also continued to use the measurement, usually as one-tenth of an inch, until those industries switched to the metric system.

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White fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus. Photo by Kristine Paulus. (CC BY 2.0)

has eight- to fifteen-foot-tall stems (Vaccinium arboreum [farkleberry]) and somewhat mealy fruits that ripen in winter. Immediately on the banks of the river, no less impressive than the other giant trees, are cypresses 34 standing in crowded rows with solitary mighty plane trees (Platanus occidentalis [also known as sycamore]) that appear ghostly through the forest darkness with their dazzling white trunks. Since the main purpose of my botanical description is to give an overview of the Texas vegetation, it is clear that this purpose can be more easily achieved for the ordinary observer by reference to the most conspicuous and tallest plants, the trees. As I have shown respect to the woods and trees 35 by the preceding descriptions of the eastern part of

34. This is the bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. 35. Instead of “to the woods and trees,” Lindheimer wrote “dem Sylvanus und den Dryaden.” Silvanus (or Sylvanus) was the Roman patron deity guarding over woods, and the dryads were tree nymphs or tree spirits in Greek mythology inhabiting individual trees or individual types of trees.

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Texas, I now have the heavy duty of describing, if possible, the beauty of the rest of the flora of this part of the country. It might be difficult to arouse interest among my readers; nevertheless, many kinds of inconspicuous plants are cultivated by flower gardeners and used successfully in flower bouquets. Their intrinsic value is overlooked because of the modesty of their appearance, yet they are the relatives and siblings of cereals, the gift of the goddess of agriculture to whom we owe bread and civilization. Garlands of the delicate and shiny-leaved jasmine (Gelsemium sempervirens [also called Carolina jasmine or jessamine]), wrapped over bushes in a moist, shady forest, arouse our joyful pleasure in these beautiful flowering plants. Close to the water’s edge grows the American lily (Crinum americanum [also called southern swamp-lily]), a white-flowering, heavily fragrant amaryllid36 that drops its thick, fleshy seeds into the water from which they are carried and at the first favorable opportunity develop fibrous roots to stay attached and settle somewhere on the shore. In light fertile soil there is the herbaceous erythrina (Erythrina herbacea [more generally known as coral bean]), a dark scarlet legume with a thick, yellow, perennial, edible root and an annual stem up to two feet tall. On the prairie northwest of Houston stands the three- to six-foot-tall Gaura lindheimeri [Lindheimer’s beeblossom], a perennial plant that blooms throughout the summer; its many-flowered, white and red terminal clusters of blooms can be seen from time to time on stems swaying back and forth. Infrequently at the edge of Buffalo Bayou there is Alophia drummondii [propeller flower], an iris-like plant similar in shape to the tiger lily, with ultramarine blue petals with sulfur yellow lines.37

36. An amaryllid is a plant of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, a family closely related to the lilies. 37. Lindheimer called this plant a Morea. The genus Moraea is an African genus of the iris family. In an unsigned article (Die Blumen in Texas: Von einem Texaner) in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, vol. 1(34), 1 July 1853, similar in writing style to other Lindheimer articles and mentioning many of the same plants, the anonymous author mentioned Eustylis purpurea (a synonym of Alophia drummondii) as occurring near Houston and described it as being similar in appearance to the “Tiger Iris (Ferraria tigridia), except that its flowers, instead of being red and yellow, are resplendent with the most beautiful ultramarine blue and sulfur yellow.”

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Lindheimer’s beeblossom, Oenothera lindheimeri (Gaura lindheimeri). Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

I could mention some of the beautiful flowers of this area, red-flowering gentians (Sabatia 38 [generally known as rose gentians]), beautiful Ratibida 39 [prairie coneflower or Mexican hat] and Coreopsis [tickseed] species, Rudbeckia [coneflower or black-eyed Susan] and Helianthus [sunflower] species, but we must not spend too much time in one place as we intend here to give only an overview and not a catalog of the substance presented in overwhelming quantity. Before heading westward on our inland botanical excursion, let’s make a detour to Galveston Island and to the seacoast lying to its west. On the way there we find some interesting things; on the prairie beautiful irises with delicate blue flowers, often in clustered clumps, called by the Americans blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium 40 [specifically the narrow-leaved blue-eyed grass]) and the beautiful light blue 38. Lindheimer used the obsolete misspelling Sabbatia. 39. Lindheimer used the obsolete generic name Lepachys. 40. Lindheimer used the synonym Sisyrinchium Bermudianum.

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Texas star (Nemastylis geminiflora 41 [also known as prairie celestial]; on moist sandy soil gracefully feathered legumes, Sesbania drummondii 42 [poison-bean], a plant native only in Texas and northern Mexico, and the Floridian S. vesicaria 43 [bagpod], and the S. herbacea 44 [big-podded sesbania] with its beautiful pendulous yellow flowers. The coastal prairies are rich in species of Panicum 45 [panicgrass or switchgrass] and Paspalum [crowngrass], among which many new ones will be found. Andropogon glaucum,46 the beautiful blue-gray tinted grass, is a new species. In 1836, when Galveston was mostly uninhabited, there were only three woody plants on the whole island, three stunted individual shrubs of a mimosa 47 (Vachellia farnesiana [sweet acacia]), the so-called three low trees, which served as a point of orientation for ship navigators. In shallow seawater and puddles of brackish water was Utricularia subulata [zigzag bladderwort]. This genus, the water hose,48 is also represented by species in Europe. It has the peculiar property that it raises itself to the surface of the water by means of small air bladders, which can be opened or closed by a movable cover. Ruppia maritima [widgeon grass], a grasslike plant that grows here in saltwater, has a spiral-shaped flower stalk that extends and shortens as the water rises

41. Lindheimer used the obsolete synonym Ixia coelestina. 42. Lindheimer used the synonym Daubentonia longifolia. 43. Lindheimer used the synonym Glottidium Floridanum. 44. Lindheimer used the synonym Sesbania macrocarpa. 45. Many species of Panicum (in a segregate genus, Dichanthelium) are also called rosette grasses. 46. Lindheimer never published this name anywhere except in the Aufsätze. It would be preempted by an earlier Andropogon glaucus, the name of an East Indian grass. Species of Andropogon are generally known as bluestems because of their bluish-gray stems, but the genus has been taxonomically revised and split into several genera. Native representatives include Andropogon gerardii, big bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium, little bluestem, and Bothriochloa saccharoides, silver bluestem. With so little information from Lindheimer, it is impossible to determine to which grass he was referring. 47. “Mimosa” in the general sense means a member of the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. Sometimes recognized as a family in their own right, Mimosaceae, the mimosoid legumes are distinguished from other legumes by their radially symmetrical flowers and numerous showy, prominent stamens. 48. “Water hose” is a literal translation of the German common name for the genus, Wasserschlauch.

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Indian blanket or firewheel, Gaillardia pulchella. Photo by Rhododendrites. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

and falls. Close to the seashore grows a strangely fleshy, low-lying crucifer,49 Cakile geniculata.50 On moist soil near the sea grows a dainty “sundew,” so called because the hairs of its leaves secrete transparent drops that do not dry up even in the sunshine. The species mentioned here is Drosera brevifolia [dwarf sundew]. A prostrate asclepiad 51 growing on soil saturated with saltwater is Cynanchum angustifolium 52 [Gulf Coast swallow-wort]. On dry sandy ground we find the lowlying, large-flowered Oenothera macrocarpa [big-fruited evening primrose], the lovely Gaillardia pulchella 53 [Indian blanket or firewheel], a composite 54 with bright red ray flowers, the tips of which are pale 49. The Cruciferae or Brassicaceae is a large family characterized by floral parts in multiples of four, such that the petals appear in the form of a cross. 50. Lindheimer used the synonym Cakile maritima. 51. An asclepiad is a member of the milkweed family, or in more recent classifications, a member of the milkweed subfamily of the dogbane family. 52. Lindheimer used the synonym Seutera maritima. 53. Lindheimer used the synonym Gaillardia picta. 54. Lindheimer used the very rare and antiquated word (in both German and English)

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Spanish dagger, Yucca treculeana. Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

Syngenesist. It simply means a member of the composite or aster family, Asteraceae or Compositae. The “flowers” of this family are actually whole inflorescences of tiny flowers in a head.

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yellow, Linum berlandieri [Berlandier’s yellow flax], a flax with orange blossoms, and an unsightly Heliotropium (curassavicum) [salt heliotrope]. Farther west, at Indianola, the vegetation assumes a completely different, more Mexican appearance. Small groves of live oaks (called by the Americans forest “islands”) can be found in the neighboring prairie. Near the seashore are solitary or groups of a Yucca eight to ten feet tall with a palm-like trunk, which often has several short branches and three- to four-foot-long leaves, the tip of which is provided with a hard and pointed spine. In April, this plant produces a large threeto four-foot flower spike, which often carries more than five hundred lily-like, white fleshy flowers that shine like porcelain. The fruit of this species (Y. treculeana [Spanish dagger]) is edible and tasty. Close to the beach are bushes of various shrubs, such as Berberis trifoliolata [agarita], a very tasty barberry, which has a thorny leaf similar to the German holly; Forestiera acuminata [eastern swamp privet], a shrub belonging to the olive family; several species of buckthorn (buckthorn family); and shrubby persimmons (Diospyros texana 55 [Texas persimmon]), sapote prieto of the Mexicans, which bear a juicy, very sweet fruit, but with muted taste for lack of fruit acid. These are intermixed with the thin, upright, long-stemmed shoots of Cylindropuntia leptocaulis [desert Christmas cactus]. Under the protection of these shrubs are often a small stinging nettle (Urtica chamaedryoides 56 [heart-leaved nettle]), Nicotiana repanda 57 [fiddle-leaved tobacco], a white-flowering tobacco, and a beautiful red-flowering leguminous perennial with two- to four-foot upright stems (Erythrina herbacea [coral bean]). A few peculiar dense bushes, ten or more feet wide and up to six feet tall, are formed by the large-limbed Opuntia engelmannii [Engelmann’s prickly pear], whose lower limbs turn into a round trunk. The immovable rigidity of these cactus bushes gives the impression of having a corallike structure, more mineral than vegetal. A very lovely sight on this beach is afforded by the small groves of a legume-bearing tree (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum [Texas mountain laurel]), which here achieves 55. Lindheimer used the synonym Diospyros Mexicana here and elsewhere in this essay. 56. Lindheimer used the synonym Urtica purpurascens. 57. Lindheimer used the synonym Nicotiana Roemeriana.

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a stem thickness of four to six inches and a height of ten to fourteen feet. It has evergreen, glossy, pinnately compound leaves and is covered in springtime with bouquets of butterfly-flowered, dark blue, extremely fragrant flowers. When I entered this area for the first time, when it was still unscathed by human hands, I was overcome by a feeling that must have been similar to what Fénelon58 intended to produce in his Telemachus with his description of Faerie Island.59 Now let’s move away from the coast. On alluvial land, the most conspicuous plants are the large and beautiful specimens of Echinocactus texensis [horse crippler] with flat, or even spherical, heads eight to twelve inches thick and with beautiful rose-colored flowers and scarlet fruits. A little farther away from the water is Sabal minor [dwarf palmetto]. More upstream are the large Yucca and Opuntia previously mentioned, but not as prevalent as near the sea. Not often found is the palm S. mexicana [Mexican palmetto]. The ground beneath the bushes is covered with the mentioned Urtica, Phacelia [scorpionweed or phacelia], and Lesquerella 60 [bladderpod] species. The soil of the prairie is a black-hued topsoil with individuals of the same Opuntia. The predominant tree on the rivers in the lower country and in individual groups on the local prairie is Quercus virginiana 61 [coastal live oak]. This live oak is such a valuable tree that we cannot help giving it our special attention. It is an evergreen tree found only in the southernmost states of the North American Union. It is of very different growth, and its shrublike variety, called Q. maritima,62 often produces 58. François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) was a French archbishop, theologian, poet, and writer, most noted as the author of Les aventures de Télémaque (The adventures of Telemachus), publicly published in 1699. Fénelon was appointed by Louis XIV to be tutor to the seven-year-old duke of Burgundy, at that time second in line to the throne, and he wrote a number of works such as this to guide his young charge. 59. Fénelon’s Faerie Island, the home of Calypso, was where Telemachus and his Mentor were shipwrecked, much like the father of Telemachus, Ulysses, who had departed the island just before Telemachus arrived (according to Fénelon’s story). 60. Lindheimer used the outdated generic synonym Vesicaria here and elsewhere in this essay. 61. Lindheimer used the synonym Quercus virens. 62. This is no longer a recognized species distinct from Quercus virginiana. Along the Texas coast, sea winds and salt spray cause stunting in live oaks, and they lean away from the direction of the wind and spray. But there is strength in numbers and once one

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broad bushes. At the lower part of Texas rivers near their mouths the live oak achieves its finest growth and its straight trunk reaches a considerable height, sometimes seventy feet. On rocky ground, in the upper country, it has a broader growth and old trees have a gnarled thick trunk. The wood of this tree is very firm and heavy, dark brown and even black brown. The oblique surface, which is produced by the slash of a sharp American ax or by the diametric cut of a fine saw on this wood, shows no pores like the wood of the German oaks, but is smooth and shiny like polished horn. Bullets shot down against the trunk do not penetrate, but only make a small depression in them and bounce back. The toughness and hardness of this wood are so great that wheel hubs made of it, surrounding the iron axles of mill wheels, wear longer comparable to brass wheel hubs. Live oak wood is the most valuable for shipbuilding, it is also the best firewood, its bark makes the best tanning agent, and its acorns are not only the best mast for deer and pigs but also, used as coffee, provide a more pleasant drink, like the German acorn species. Higher up in the country Quercus nigra 63 [water oak] and Q. falcata [southern red oak] are mixed with the live oak on rivers. But let’s return from our trip to the coast to the Buffalo Bayou area of Houston and continue our botanical excursion westward. On the prairies west of Houston, the flora has many species of plants that do not occur east of Houston, such as two species of wild indigo, Baptisia alba [white wild indigo], a leguminous shrub one to two feet tall, and B. leucophaea [yellow wild indigo], just as tall and yellow flowering; also Penstemon cobaea 64 [prairie beardtongue or foxglove penstemon], which has flowers that resemble the German foxglove (Digitalis purpurea); and the Texas nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium [silver or silver-leaved nightshade, white horsenettle, or trompillo]) with light blue blossoms.

tree becomes established, its progeny are able to germinate in the shelter of the original tree, promoting more progeny, and so on until there is a dense copse of leaning, stunted live oaks. 63. Lindheimer used the synonym Quercus aquatica. 64. Lindheimer used the (commonly misspelled) synonym Pentstemon Digitalis.

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On the way to the Brazos River, about forty English miles from Houston, the vegetation begins to change noticeably. Coniferous forests gradually cease and are replaced by other species of trees along the rivers, notably an elm peculiar to western Texas (Ulmus crassifolia [cedar elm]), a stately tree that reaches a trunk thickness of one and a half feet and height of forty feet. Its wood is not weatherproof as it easily rots in the open air, but if it is dried and protected from rain it acquires a hardness such that you cannot hammer in a nail without predrilling. Furthermore, two species of hackberry (Celtis reticulata [net-leaved hackberry] and C. laevigata 65 [sugarberry]) begin to grow here, which grow into large trees. Their white wood is so uniform in texture that it is particularly suited for carved works such as ox yokes, bowls, spoons, etc. The little fleshy, pea-sized, sweet fruits are loved by children, birds, and pigs, but cause obstructions 66 when overenjoyed. On our way to the Brazos River, we encounter the Brazos bottomland forest, which is seven miles wide. It has the most substantial tree growth in which elms dominate and also large swampy spots that are densely overgrown with reed (the aforementioned Arundinaria). On the western side of the Brazos, the prairie has many plants that do not exist on the eastern side: for example species of Dalea 67 [prairie clover], Lesquerella [bladderpod], the magnificent Penstemon murrayanum [scarlet beard-tongue], a figwort whose whitish leaves contrast so much with the deep scarlet bloom, as well as Euphorbia [spurge] species. Particularly striking is the E. marginata [snow-on-the-mountain], up to six feet tall, whose long drooping flower bracts have a broad white margin. You can see these euphorbias shimmering from afar like a Milky Way in the prairie. Seen up close, this weird mile-long strip of euphorbia is nothing but an old unused wagon road on which the freight wagons coming eastward from the Colorado spread seeds stuck to their wheels. On the western side of the Brazos there is also the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera), a low shrub that often covers whole stretches 65. Lindheimer used the synonym C. Texana. 66. Lindheimer Germanized the English word “obstructions” as Obstructionen. It is unknown whether he was talking about an airway obstruction, Luftwegverschluss in today’s medical diagnoses, or an intestinal obstruction, Darmverschluss, but probably the latter. 67. Lindheimer used the generic synonym Petalostemon.

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Snow-on-the-mountain, Euphorbia marginata. Photo by Tom Lebsack, Texas Wildbuds, http://www.texaswildbuds.com/. Used by permission.

of moist prairie. By decoction, one can extract the fragrant wax, but probably only in very small quantity. When riding through such a place a noticeable fragrance spreads. On the same longitude with the capital Austin, but at the northern border of the state, there is in the so-called Cross Timbers 68 an extremely useful tree, the Maclura pomifera [Osage orange or bois d’arc], so called because of the fist-sized, pitted, spherical yellow fruits that look completely like a big orange.69 This tree is usually called bois d’arc here, for it supplies extremely elastic wood to the Indians for 68. The term “Cross Timbers” refers to a fairly narrow strip of land (five to thirty-five miles wide) stretching north-northeast to south-southwest from southern Kansas, across central Oklahoma, and into Texas as far as the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. In Texas this vegetation type splits into the East Cross Timbers and the West Cross Timbers, separated by the Grand Prairie. It is a well-known regional landmark, noted for its dense and stunted dominant vegetation of post oak and blackjack interspersed with open savannas. The denseness of the vegetation was a hindrance to early travelers. Ecologically, it is a transition zone between eastern forests and the relatively treeless Great Plains. 69. Lindheimer used a synonym for the Osage orange, Maclura aurantiaca. The specific epithet means “resembling an orange”; hence his phrase beginning with “so called.”

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Mesquite, Prosopis glandulosa. Photo by Don A. W. Carlson. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

their bows; but because of this elasticity, it is also the best material for fine wagons. Grown as a shrub, it is cultivated throughout the United States because of its sharp thorns and the dense hedges that it forms. The land between the Brazos and Colorado used to have beautiful forests of the fragrant red cedar (Juniperus virginiana [eastern red cedar]) that are now mostly cut down. The vegetation takes on a more Mexican character west of the Colorado. Continuous mesquite groves (Prosopis glandulosa [honey mesquite]) occur. While eastward the mesquite was only shrubby, one finds trees of this species with trunks more than a foot thick and thirty feet high. Its reddish-brown resinous wood does not rot easily. It is used for fencing and firewood. The gum that the tree exudes has the quality of gum arabic.70 Its long pods contain a pulp similar to the carob,71 serve as a popular food for horses and cattle, and have saved many a hiker’s life in cases of need. 70. The true gum arabic comes from Old World acacia trees. 71. Lindheimer used the German common name Johannisbrot, referring to the carob (Ceratonia siliqua), which is native to the Mediterranean region. There are two leg-ends

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Other mimosas and especially cactus species appear with the Prosopis. In the river groves, the black walnut (Juglans nigra), valued for furniture, grows with poplars, willows, lindens, and other trees. The rocky ridge that stretches westward from Austin is densely overgrown with cedars (Juniperus ashei [mountain cedar]), which provide the most durable fence wood and construction lumber for the western part of Texas. J. ashei differs from J. virginiana [eastern red cedar] in growth in that it is branched from the base, whereby the cedar thickets often become almost impenetrable and on hot summer days spread an almost intoxicating smell of resin while giving only poor shade. These forests are the favorite hideout of animal predators and roving Indians. In northwest Texas, these cedar forests are common. Many interesting plants characteristic of Texas are found in them. By listing the names of these plants individually, I could only give the botanist a summary of the vegetation, while the distinguishing description of each one would occupy too much space in our discussion. I have to confine myself to the most characteristic plants, for we are now approaching one of the richest botanical fields of Texas, the area west of the Guadalupe River. It is characterized by many cactuses, members of the mimosa subfamily, and a large number of shrubs. Five species of wild grapes occur here. From several of these, a full-bodied drinkable wine is made by the farmers for their home needs. Vitis aestivalis [summer grape], on shady banks of streams, ripens in August. Vitis labrusca [fox grape, but see note] 72 bears fruit with extraordinary ease. A number of good varieties grown from

about the origin of the German name: first, that the Sovereign Knights Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, founded in 1048, is said to have been responsible for the spread of the carob tree in cultivation; second, that John the Baptist is said to have been nourished by the fruits and seeds of the carob during his sojourn in the desert. 72. Technically, Vitis labrusca, the fox grape, does not occur naturally in Texas. What Lindheimer had in mind was probably the more southern and closely related V. rotundifolia, the muscadine grape. However, the cultivated varieties Lindheimer lists are cultivars or hybrids of the fox grape.

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seeds of this species are cultivated in the United States, e.g. the Catawba, Isabella, Shuykill, and others. Vitis rupestris [sand or mountain grape], upright three to four feet tall, not creeping, has a small sweet berry that ripens in July. Vitis cinerea 73 [graybark or Spanish grape], berries small, matures late in the fall. Vitis vulpina [frost grape, but see note]. Berries seven to eight lines74 thick. On shady riverbanks, climbing high on trees.75 Five species of yucca occur here. The Yucca treculeana [Spanish dagger] sometimes has a trunk over twenty feet high. This region produces twenty species of cactus, of which fourteen are peculiar to it.76 Of beautiful flowering shrubs, I begin with Dermatophyllum secundiflorum [Texas mountain laurel or mescalbean], which also occurs on the coast. Its coral-red beans are generally considered poisonous. The Indians use it as an intoxicating remedy. Half a bean is said to produce this effect, a whole one should be dangerous to enjoy. Styphnolobium affine 77 [Eve’s necklace or coral bean] is a beautiful flowering tree with large clusters of purple butterfly-flowers. Aloysia gratissima 78 [common beebrush or whitebrush] is an extremely delicate, fine-leaved, tall, thin-branched bush that flowers several times a year and whose flowers spread a fine vanilla odor. Eysenhardtia texana 79 [Texas kidneywood], a tall leguminous shrub, is also covered with fragrant flowers two to 73. Lindheimer used the name Vitis cordifolia, which is mostly a synonym of V. vulpina. However, he distinguished V. vulpina in the next paragraph. V. cordifolia var. helleri is a synonym of V. cinerea, which is quite common in the Texas Hill Country west of New Braunfels, and that, in my opinion, is what Lindheimer intended. 74. As mentioned in note 33, a line is an obsolete unit of measurement equivalent to one-tenth or one-twelfth of an inch. 75. Vitis vulpina is an eastern species not very common in Texas. What Lindheimer possibly meant here was the very common V. mustangensis, the mustang grape, which has large fruits, as Lindheimer indicated, and commonly climbs high into trees. 76. This is a considerable understatement, even if considering only the Edwards Plateau. 77. Lindheimer used the synonym Sophora affinis. 78. Lindheimer used the synonym Lippia lycioides. 79. Lindheimer used the (misspelled) synonym Eisenhardtia amorphoides.

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Texas mountain laurel, Sophora secundiflora (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum). Photo by Kretyen at Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

three times a year. Ptelea trifoliata, the hop bush [also known as the common hoptree], has fruit that is used as a substitute for hops; its flowers, but not its leaves, are very fragrant. Ungnadia speciosa [Mexican buckeye], a shrub or small tree, is a beautiful red-flowered buckeye 80 whose fruit 81 is very tasty but poisonous. Two to three of the small seeds can be eaten without ill effect, but too much produces terrible vomiting and other serious conditions. Another chestnut-like shrub is the beautiful yellow- and red-flowering Aesculus pavia [red buckeye]. The pulverized leaves and seeds of this shrub are used to stun fish in standing waters so that they can be caught by hand. Its roots are used 80. This is not a true buckeye (genus Aesculus), but its small black seeds resemble the larger chestnut-colored true buckeyes. 81. Actually, the fruits are semiwoody and hardly edible. It is the shiny black seeds that are poisonous.

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as a substitute for soap. Cercis canadensis var. texensis 82 [Texas redbud], a kind of Judas tree,83 has a beautiful red flower. Styrax platanifolius [sycamore-leaved snowbell] is a fragrant beautifully flowering species of storax. Late in autumn the Ageratina havanensis 84 [Havana snakeroot] blooms. The Vachellia farnesiana 85 [sweet acacia], which is a shrub on Galveston Island, becomes a big tree here. The Senegalia roemeriana 86 [round-flowered catclaw] has bright yellow mimosa-like flowers. The Mexican persimmon (Diospyros texana [also called Texas persimmon]), which occurs in the lower country only as a shrub, here becomes a stately tree often with a foot-thick trunk, whose black heartwood indicates its relationship with the ebony. Three shrubs belonging to the family of buckthorns are characteristic of the local bushes and trees, Colubrina texensis [Texas hogplum], Condalia hookeri [Texas bluewood], and Ziziphus obtusifolia [lotebush]. The first is a shrub peculiar to West Texas; the second is sometimes a shrub, sometimes a tree whose wood is used as a blue dye; and the third is distinguished by its sharp and long spines which terminate all its branches. Ehretia anacua 87 [anacua or knockaway] is a shrub or tree with very rugged evergreen leaves that are used by the Mexicans as a repellent by rubbing them on the skin. The yellow berries of the tree are a fruit beloved by birds and children. Guaiacum angustifolium [Texas lignum-vitae] has very heavy, greenish-brown wood. Arbutus xalapensis 88 [Texas madrone] is a shrub or tree with very beautiful fragrant flowers and smooth red-brown bark. These last three shrubs clearly show the transition to the Mexican flora. With the omission of a rather large number of herbaceous plants and beautiful flowers, which are partly new and partly characteristic, I will 82. Lindheimer used the synonym Cercis occidentalis. 83. The Judas tree, Cercis siliquastrum, is native to southern Europe and western Asia. Like its American relative, it is noted for its prolific display of bright pink flowers in early spring before its leaves emerge. It is given this name from the folk belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from a tree of this kind. 84. Lindheimer used the synonym Eupatorium ageratifolium. 85. Although earlier in this essay he had correctly named this plant Vachellia Farnesiana, here Lindheimer used the synonym Acacia Farnesiana. 86. Lindheimer used the synonym Acacia Roemeriana. 87. Lindheimer used the (misspelled) synonym Ehretia ellyptica. 88. Lindheimer used the synonym Arbutus Texanus.

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mention only a few that are particularly striking: Cucurbita foetidissima 89 [stinking gourd], a gourd with thick perennial roots, long tendrils running on the ground, large, grayish-green leaves, and fist-thick, globose, hard-shelled, yellow pumpkin-like fruits; further, Thamnosma texana 90 [Texas desert rue] is also a strange, very aromatic plant, being the only representative of the citrus family on the continent of America.91 According to scientific investigation, Krameria lanceolata [trailing krameria], with long, horizontal, woody roots, has completely the medical powers of the Peruvian ratany (Krameria lappacea 92). Furthermore, the Capsicum annuum,93 the small cayenne pepper [also known as chile pequin], is a perennial bush with pea-sized, very sharp-tasting fruits that are used both for sauces and other foods and also used as a remedy for intermittent fever. An extract of the fruits in alcohol is used externally for cramps and rheumatic ailments. If we go farther west, between New Braunfels and San Antonio we meet the Cibolo River (cíbolo is the Indian name for buffalo) which in summer months in many places is only a dry rocky bed while the water flows subterraneously underground through the rugged limestone. Ponds and lakes form only in places, while the bed farther up and downstream is filled with running water.94 In the dry riverbed

89. Lindheimer used the synonym Cucumis perennis. 90. Lindheimer used the synonym Rutosma Texana. 91. This is hardly correct. Other members of the Rutaceae, the citrus family, native to Texas include the Texas torchwood, Amyris texana; barreta, Helietta parvifolia; common hoptree, Ptelea trifoliata (mentioned by Lindheimer in the previous paragraph); common Hercules’-club, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis; Texas Hercules’-club, Zanthoxylum hirsutum, and others. 92. Lindheimer used the synonym Krameria triandra. Peruvian ratany or rhatany is a useful astringent in the form of a gargle or lozenges, or as an ingredient in tooth powders. In powdered form, it is also used to color wine ruby red. 93. Lindheimer used the synonym Capsicum baccatum. 94. The Cibolo, like many other regional streams, crosses the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. Upstream from the recharge zone, rainfall collects in streams because the underlying geology is impermeable. As the streams cross the recharge zone, highly fractured limestones are exposed at the surface, allowing streamflow to infiltrate and percolate directly into the aquifer, often draining the entire streamflow of smaller streams. At the Balcones Escarpment or Fault Zone, the water-bearing strata of the Edwards Aquifer are exposed, producing large and significant springs such as San Felipe Springs in Del Rio, Las Moras Springs in Brackettville, San Pedro Springs and Comanche Springs near

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are found some plants which are peculiar to the upper mountainous region, and whose seeds have evidently been carried down by the intermittent water flow. In deep clear ponds of the Cibolo, the Nelumbo lutea 95 [American lotus], which is also present in some other parts of the United States, has such a striking appearance that, wherever one meets it, one cannot view it without admiration. Imagine lonely clear ponds and lakes with large groups of one- to two-foot-wide circular leaves supported by petioles attached in the middle like umbrellas and whose many-petaled, lily-like, pale yellow, fragrant flowers are three times as large as those of Nymphaea odorata [American white water-lily]. Such a mass of lotuses has the appearance of something artificially made, yet at the same time puts our mind into a pure enjoyment of nature, which gives rise to a strange antithesis of contradictory feelings in our consciousness, but which soon dissolves into pleasure by giving the apparent paradox of this appearance assimilated to older views and thus enriched by a new one. The area between the Cibolo and the city of San Antonio usually consists of prairie and open mesquite woods. In the last ten years, tall shrublike mesquite bushes have invaded this area, dominating the scenery. Even before we reach San Antonio, we encounter thick growths of mesquite bushes and other different shrubs overgrowing the land. Many woody plants become thorny shrubs there. This is the beginning and the first appearance of the chaparral so infamous in the northern flora of Mexico that plays such an important part in the attacks of robbing and murdering bands of Indians and Mexicans. Against leg injuries riders wear wide leather overpants of tanned, hairy calf- or goatskin (called “leggins” here).96 Nutritious mesquite grass (Aristida [three-awn grass],

San Antonio, Comal Springs in New Braunfels, San Marcos Springs in San Marcos, and Barton Springs in Austin. Most of San Antonio’s municipal water supply comes from the Edwards Aquifer. Unlike sand and gravel aquifers that simply store water, the Edwards is a karst aquifer on a type of limestone that dissolves in water, producing larger and larger openings for the underground water. While some Edwards Aquifer water may barely move, in other areas water may move miles in a single day. The Edwards Aquifer has been described as the world’s largest underground river. 95. Lindheimer used the synonym Nelumbium luteum. 96. These, of course, are chaps, from the Mexican Spanish chaparreras.

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Bouteloua97 [grama grass], among others) grows under these bushes throughout the winter and is an excellent food for animals. So far our botanical journey has skirted along the foot of the country’s third large terrace. As we proceed north, climbing a rocky slope covered with cedar woods, we reach the third terrace. A mostly rocky plain with several fertile valleys expands before us. The botanist will be pleased to see many peculiar plants. Notably striking is a Dasylirion [sotol], belonging to the lily family, a pineapple-like plant that loves stony boulders and rocky soil. It forms a large bush of narrow, ribbon-shaped, spiny-edged leaves attached directly to the root. Its white tender heart is so beloved by bears that one unmistakably recognizes the proximity of bears to the demolished leaves, for which the plant is also called beargrass by the Americans.98 The delicate heart of the plant can also be used by humans to make a vegetable similar to cabbage. Rhus virens, an evergreen sumac,99 is another new species100 peculiar to this region and Mexico. The Comanche Indians have long known and used this plant as a smoking tobacco under the name kinnikinnick.101 On vertical rock walls grows the green-flowering small tobacco (Nicotiana repanda 102 [fiddle-leaved tobacco]). Also on vertical rock faces grow two Mexican plants (Eucnide bartonioides [yellow stingbush] and Chrysactinia mexicana [damianita daisy]). On dry hillsides and at forest edges grow thickets of a four- to five-foot-tall multistemmed shrub very improperly named Prunus rivularis [creek plum or Tawakoni plum]. I used to 97. Lindheimer used the outdated generic name Atheropogon. 98. While Lindheimer referred to a Dasylirion (sotol), one cannot help but wonder whether he was actually referring to a related Nolina, which is usually the plant Americans today call bear-grass. 99. Evergreen sumac is indeed the common name for Rhus virens, also known as tobacco sumac. 100. As with other names he mentioned, Lindheimer never himself published new names with descriptions of any new species until the publication of his Aufsätze. However, Asa Gray in 1850 named this very species Rhus virens and gave Lindheimer credit for the name, citing it as “(Lindheimer, Mss.).” The Lindheimer “manuscript” that Gray saw and to which he refers seems to have been written information contained with Lindheimer’s specimen. (See appendix 1 as well as note 103 about Prunus rivularis.) 101. Kinnikinnick is derived from Delaware or some other related Algonquian language. The Comanche speak a Shoshonean language. 102. Lindheimer used yet another synonym for the fiddleleaf tobacco, Nicotiana saxicola.

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call them P. tawakonia103 because the Tawakoni Indians104 loved the small cherry-like fruit that contains a pleasant acidity when cooked with honey. It is also very popular with the local townspeople who cook it with sugar into a very pleasant compote and into preserves that can be stored for a long time. The Garrya [silk-tassel], which occurs here on the sloping side walls of ravines, is a very dark green, multistemmed shrub four to five feet tall, of gloomy melancholy appearance. The spe103. When Adolf Scheele named and described Prunus rivularis in 1848, he added this paragraph (quotation marks in the original): “Gesellschaftlich an Bachrändern, seltener, aber jedesmal in Menge zusammenstehend auf Hügeln. Strauch 3 – 6' hoch. Frucht kugelig, hellroth, angenehm säuerlich, von der Grösse einer Kirsche bis zu der einer Mirabelle, ½–1" dick. Die Tawakony-Indianer sollen die Früchte, mit Honig gekocht, sehr lieben. Die Texaner nennen sie Tawakonyplum.” Lindheimer. (“In thickets on creek edges, rarely, but always in a mass together on hillsides. Shrub 3–6 feet high. Fruit globular, bright red, pleasantly sour, from the size of a cherry to that of a mirabelle, ½–1 inch thick. The Tawakony Indians are said to love the fruits cooked with honey. The Texans call it Tawakonyplum.” Lindheimer.)

Asa Gray, in 1850, acknowledged the priority of Scheele’s name and added: 389. P. rivularis, Scheele in Linnaea 21. p. 594. P. Tawakonia, Lindheimer, Mss. (which name was doubtless appended to the specimen received by Scheele.) Banks of streams and margins of bottom-woods, forming thickets near the water, rarely on higher places, Upper Guadaloupe, and between Comale and the Colorado. March, in flower; June, in fruit. ‘Shrub from two to six feet high. Fruit ripe in June, of the size of a cherry, or a little larger, acidulated, cherry-red. The Tawakony Indians boil them and eat them with honey. Called Tawakony Plum.’ Lindheimer.

The “improper” naming to which Lindheimer alludes is the specific epithet rivularis (pertaining to streams or creeks). This has led to the modern common name for this species, “creek plum.” As every modern Texas botanist knows, this species hardly ever grows along creeks. It characteristically grows in thickets on hillsides above creeks. Yet in the notes Lindheimer appended to the specimens, it must have been ambiguous whether “seltener” (rarely) referred to creek edges or to hillsides. Botanists may be stuck with Scheele’s priority specific epithet, but they could start calling it “Tawakoni plum” in the same way they refer to Scheele’s Yucca rupicola (“rock-dweller”) as “twisted-leaf yucca” (after all, Lindheimer suggested it be called Yucca tortifolia [“twisted-leaf”]). 104. The Tawakoni are a Native American people closely related to and allied with the Wichita and Waco, and they originally lived mostly in northern Texas and southern Oklahoma.

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cies is new,105 and apart from it there is only one other species in all the United States in California.106 Cedar trees appear here on mountains and in valleys as forests, live oaks as single trees and bushes, and mighty cypresses on the rivers and streams. Streams and rivers here are as clear as the waters of the European Alps. If we continue northwest on our way to the Llano River, we meet a local German settlement near the confluence of Sister Creek with the Guadalupe107 and then another on the Pedernales River at Fredericksburg. Along the way we reach more than two thousand feet above sea level along the watershed divide between the Colorado and the Guadalupe. The view from there is wild and romantic. On the northern descent of this plateau we have the prospect of a broad forested valley, and beyond it the horizon is bounded by barren conical and colored mountains, on whose side walls one can clearly distinguish horizontal strata, and which therefore often have the appearance of upside-down spinning tops. Near Fredericksburg are granite formations and rock reefs in some places, but it is only to the north of Llano that there is a more extensive granite region of vertical rock walls and of sloping, somewhat inclined surfaces of red granite, which are often polished mirror-smooth by sharp granite sand that water or wind have scoured over these areas since time immemorial. The vegetation on dry rocky ground that we encounter in this region consists partly of cedar woods, partly of scattered live oak woods, with bushes of sumac species, stunted live oak bushes and other shrubbery. Characteristic of this area is the aforementioned Dasylirion that often covers whole stretches with its whitish-green bushes, and several species of stemless yuccas, namely one with twisted leaves (Yucca rupi105. It was named in honor of Lindheimer by John Torrey in 1857, Garrya lindheimeri Torrey, Pacific Railroad Reports 4(5): 136, 1857. Today, it is considered a variety or subspecies of Garrya ovata. This is probably an example of Lindheimer’s self-deprecating humor – the “gloomy melancholy appearance” referring to the person the plant was named after, Lindheimer himself. 106. This is not quite correct, but the additional species were based on collections made later than Lindheimer’s time. 107. Sister Creek is the official name used by the US Geological Survey. Lindheimer called the stream Sisterthal-Bach (literally, Sister Valley Creek). Today, descendants of the German settlers there make up the unincorporated farming and ranching community of Sisterdale.

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cola 108 [Texas yucca or twisted-leaf yucca]) and a bushy one bearing entire leaves with filaments of fibrous material at the edge like interwoven spiderwebs (Y. intertexta).109 Where the soil is sandy, there are often extensive post oak woods (Quercus stellata), such as near Fredericksburg. The Llano River is dominated by a willow (Salix nigra [black willow]) that has remarkably slender tall trunks with thin ascending branches. In the post oak woods near Fredericksburg, the sight of an old German acquaintance, the Achillea millefolium [yarrow], surprises us. The area of Fredericksburg is rich in various species of Artemisia [wormwood, mugwort, or sagebrush]. Of cactuses there are several new species of mammillarias [globe cactus or nipple cactus], and some beautiful mallows, notably the Callirhoë pedata 110 [palm-leaved poppy-mallow] with fringed petals over an inch long. The root of it is collected by the Indians as food, being edible and pleasant in taste, like the roots of Psoralea esculenta [breadroot or prairie turnip]. An excellent gentian is the Centaurium beyrichii 111 [mountain pink] growing on rocky ground near Fredericksburg. It is very similar to the German C. erythraea,112 the centaury, but it forms a multistemmed bush crowded with a large expanse of delicately red flowers. On the Llano there are some interesting plants of which I will name just a few, such as Phemeranthus aurantiacus 113 [orange fameflower], a new species of beautiful purslane, and Pomaria jamesii 114 [James’s holdback], a strikingly beautiful legume with yellow petals and red stamens, which was formerly known only from the chalk mountains at the source of the Arkansas River. Baccharis texana [prairie false willow], a 108. Lindheimer used the synonym Y. tortifolia, a name that John Torrey credited to Lindheimer in 1858 (see appendix 1). 109. No such species name has ever been published. Based on the “fibrous material at the edge” reference, the most likely candidate would be Yucca constricta, Buckley’s yucca. 110. Lindheimer used the name Callirhoë digitata, but that species does not occur in the Hill Country around Fredericksburg. Based on his citation of fringed petals, the most likely species is C. pedata. 111. Lindheimer used the synonym Centauridium Drummondii. 112. Lindheimer used the synonym Erythraea Centaurium. 113. Lindheimer used the synonym Talinum aurantiacum. 114. Lindheimer used the synonym Hoffmannseggia Jamesii.

Scarlet hedgehog cactus, Echinocereus coccineus. Photo by Succu. (CC BY 3.0)

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Ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens. Photo by DiverDave. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

shrubby composite, grows on dry granitic soil and granite rocks, often covering extensive areas. In the granite region is the magnificent Echinocereus coccineus 115 [scarlet hedgehog cactus] growing singly and thriving on bare granite, forming broad bushes whose surface is covered with dazzling red flowers. It has been thirty years since I botanized a summer and autumn in the area of the Llano. At that time I was not able to travel farther north. All that remains for me now is to talk about the farthest west of Texas. In the west, Texas borders on Mexico and it can be assumed that at this border the flora completely takes on a Mexican character. Magnificent representatives of this flora can be found on Texas soil, such as the beautiful Parkinsonia aculeata [Jerusalem thorn], a treelike leguminous shrub with extremely finely feathered leaves and full of beautiful golden yellow hanging flower clusters; the Cylindropuntia imbricata 116 [tree cholla] is also a treelike, branched cactus; and the 115. Lindheimer used the synonym Cereus Roemeri. 116. Lindheimer used the synonym Opuntia arborescens.

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Carnegiea gigantea 117 [saguaro, but see note] a giant cactus, which grows in a column up to sixty feet high before dividing once into a pair of naked branches. Of the bignonia family there are the Chilopsis linearis [desert willow], a tree up to twenty-five feet high with willow-like leaves and beautiful violet-red bignoniaceous 118 flowers, and the Tecoma stans [yellow trumpetbush] with upright bouquets of lively yellow bignoniaceous flowers at the tips of its many stems. And, finally, I must mention the splendid Fouquieria splendens [ocotillo], a shrub so peculiar that it forms a family of plants of its own, the Fouquieriaceae. It consists of many branchless stems up to ten feet high, with crimson flower spikes at their tips.

Final reflection If the enjoyment of the plant world has driven us from the coast to the granite region and from the Mississippi to the Rio Grande, it is well worthwhile to investigate what actually has aroused this pleasure in our minds regarding the plant world. Is it the endearing aroma of fragrances? This does not occur with all plants. Is it the purity and harmony of colors? That may well be the case, but it is not the main reason because even plants that do not pleasure our sense of color we appreciate for the beauty of their figure. For example, I’ll just mention the lesser club moss, the Selaginella apoda 119 [meadow spikemoss], which, with its leaflets spread out on the damp ground, looks like a dainty arabesque.120 Of course, this does not yet answer our first question. We have merely postponed the question, like a lawyer who has

117. Lindheimer used the name Cereus giganteus, which is a synonym of Carnegiea gigantea. The saguaro does not grow naturally in Texas, nor any closer than the southeastern corner of Arizona. Since Lindheimer never visited this part of Texas, he must have been relying on secondhand reports. It is also possible that by the late 1870s the saguaro may have been grown under cultivation in El Paso. 118. The Bignoniaceae family consists mostly of tropical woody plants with large showy flowers. The desert willow, yellow trumpetbush, and red-flowered trumpet creeper extend northward into temperate regions. 119. Lindheimer used the synonym Selaginella apus. 120. An ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, originally found in ancient Islamic art (Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/arabesque).

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not yet found the correct grounds of proof and appeals for a postponement. Only when we have discovered the general reason that forms the beauty of the plant, then we will have answered our first question from the bottom up. If we examine more closely our sense of well-being in the shapes of plants, we shall find that this is not only evident in the mathematical exactitude of the leaf, flower, fruit, and other forms of plant parts, but it is also based on the dimly perceived principles of the position of all the different parts of the plant. Here we recall the law of the so-called leaf arrangement, which the ingenious Schimper 121 found and showed that this arrangement, which always takes place along a spiral line, can be expressed in different plant species by different fractions of this spiral. The whole appearance of the vegetable world moves within the limits of geometric and arithmetic laws, and yet there is the greatest possible freedom of formation of the individual such that none of them is the monotonous repetition of the other. Our pleasure in the shapes of plants is based on the pleasure of the intimate union of the strictest laws with the greatest possible freedom. This is one of the noblest moral feelings at its most basic, and for that reason grants such pure joy and satisfaction.

121. Karl Friedrich Schimper (1803–1867) was a German naturalist and poet, best known for his work on phyllotaxis, the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem.

ESSAY 4

Die kürbi#artigen Gewächse in Texa# The Gourd-like Plants in Texas1

Various plant genera are counted among the gourd-like plants (Cucurbitaceae), for example gourd species (Cucurbita), cucumber species (Cucumis), calabashes or bottle gourds (Lagenaria), balsam apples (Momordica), watermelons (Citrullus),2 the lineages of Bryonia [bryony], Melothria [melothria], and Sycios [bur cucumber], and formerly the passionflowers (Passiflora).3 Gourd-like plants have few genera and species but many more varieties and hybrids in comparison with other plant families. The fact that 1. This essay was first published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, vol. 1(11), pg. 1, on 21 January 1853. It was edited and portions extensively revised for publication in the Aufsätze. In the Aufsätze version, Lindheimer described an event about thirty years ago of squashes crossing with the indigenous wild gourd and producing fruit that was very bitter. In the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung version, the same event is described as happening about five years ago; therefore the revisions were made about 1878. Differences from the text appearing in the Aufsätze essay will refer to the original as the NBZ article or version. 2. The NBZ article omitted “the lineages of Bryonia, Melothria, and Sycios” and continued with simply “the passionflowers (Passiflora) and others.” 3. At the time of Lindheimer’s original article in the NBZ, the passionflowers were considered to belong to the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae. By the time the Aufsätze was published, most botanists treated the passionflowers as a separate family, the Passifloraceae; hence Lindheimer’s qualification of “formerly.” Today, genetic and biochemical studies indicate that the passionflowers are more closely related to the violets and willows.

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gourd-like plants are more of a southern plant is shown by the distribution by climate of the wild-growing species of this family that occur on the North American continent. In Canada there are only two wild species of gourds, in the northern states as far south as Ohio and Pennsylvania there are only four species, while in the southern states, including Texas and Florida, at least nine species of cucurbits 4 are indigenous.5 We can reasonably conclude from this that the southern states of the Union, and especially Texas and Florida, that have the most species of wild-growing cucurbits must also have a favorable climate and a favorable soil for the cultivation of the crops of this plant family.6 If we look at the investigations of Dr. T. W. Harris 7 of Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the pumpkins and squashes are indigenous ancient crops of Native Americans. Harris says: “Later botanists believed that most species of these crop plants had come to America from Asia, and especially from eastern India. This is an error, for these plants were known neither to biblical nor to Greek or Roman authors; the writers of the Middle Ages, too, did not know the pumpkins and squashes, while mentioning other gourd-like plants. It was only after the discovery of America that these cultivated plants became known in Europe. Travelers first found them in the West Indies, Peru, Florida, and even on the coast of New England, where they were cultivated by 4. A cucurbit is simply a member of the family Cucurbitaceae, the gourd, squash, or melon family. 5. The NBZ article had “bis einschließlich Texas und Florida sich wenigstens fünfzehn Arten finden” (up to and including Texas and Florida at least fifteen species can be found). As noted above, at the time of the original article in the NBZ, Lindheimer was including species of passionflowers in that count. 6. The NBZ article added here: “und so zeigt es sich auch, daß die Kürbisse, Gurken und Melonen sammt den eßbaren Früchten der erfrischenden Granditas (Passiflora incarnata) auf das beste hier gedeihen” (and thus it turns out that gourds, cucumbers, and melons, together with the edible fruits of the refreshing granditas [Passiflora incarnata] best grow here). It then continued from that phrase to the end of the first sentence of the third following paragraph, omitting the two paragraphs about Dr. Harris. 7. Thaddeus William Harris (1795–1856) was an American entomologist, botanist, and librarian of Harvard University. The earliest quote of Dr. Harris that I could find similar to what Lindheimer quoted was in a report of the Patent Office for 1854 published sometime in 1855, two years after this article appeared in the NBZ. However, the two-paragraph quote did not appear in the NBZ article, only in the Aufsätze essay published in 1879. The similarity of that quote to the translation from Lindheimer’s German published here is remarkable, differing only in minor phraseology.

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the Indians before settlement of Europeans had taken place. The old botanists of the first century after the discovery of the New World, or rather the West Indies, were the first to describe these plants and give them names that clearly testify to their native origins. The misapplication of calling the original people of America Indians led later botanists to misinterpret the East Indies and Asia as the fatherland of pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) and squash (Cucurbita melopepo).8 “From the study of the history of plants, I first turned to the study of species of the same, and every year for this purpose I have cultivated and examined and tested all kinds of them that I have been able to maintain. All known named cultivars of pumpkins and squashes originate in America and they represent three different groups. The first group comprises the summer squashes that have hard shells when ripe, the second group the winter squashes and pumpkin whose fruit stalk has five furrows, and the third group the winter pumpkins and squashes with short, cylindrical, wrinkled (not furrowed) fruit stalks. This last group was originally only at home in tropical and subtropical areas.” These investigations of Dr. Harris only further reinforce our earlier claim of the fitness of the climate and soil of Texas for the cultivation of cucurbits,9 and thus it turns out that gourds, cucumbers, and melons, together with the edible fruits of the refreshing granditas 10 (Passiflora incarnata [also known as maypop] best grow here. Watermelons weighing forty pounds and more are not uncommon here.11 In a gar8. Pumpkins and squashes belong to the same species, Cucurbita pepo. There are three subspecies. Subspecies fraterna is a wild form in northeastern Mexico. Subspecies ovifera contains three varieties: var. texana (wild populations in Texas); var. ozarkana (wild populations in the Mississippi valley); and var. ovifera, which in turn is divided into an acorn squash group, a crookneck squash group, a scallop squash group (such as pattypan, the original melopepo group), and a straightneck squash group. Subspecies pepo is divided into a cocozelle squash group, a pumpkin group, a vegetable marrow group, and a zucchini group. Some taxonomists have recognized ten or eleven varieties instead of the subspecies and groups presented here. 9. The NBZ article picks up again at this point, omitting the previous two paragraphs and the beginning of this sentence. 10. I cannot verify this Spanish name. It is possible Lindheimer meant granadilla or grenadilla. 11. The NBZ article said: “Wassermelonen, welche 42 Pfd. und darüber wogen, habe ich schon mehrere hier gesehen” (I have seen several watermelons that weighed 42 pounds and more).

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den in this town, a gardener 12 has harvested thirty-eight pumpkins from a single plant of the cushaw (the so-called potato pumpkin),13 each weighing about twenty pounds. Several years ago, a farmer in the Comalstadt area near New Braunfels harvested 14 from a single vine, which was growing over the branches of a tree lying in the water, sixteen pumpkins, none of which weighed less than thirty pounds. From the Cibolo Settlement roughly nine English miles from here, a giant pumpkin was brought to New Braunfels several years ago. It had the shape of a flattened ball, three feet wide and a foot and a half thick, and weighed over one hundred pounds.15 (It is not necessary here in Texas to dry pumpkins cut into small slices to keep for the winter, as is done in the northern states, for it is easy to protect fresh pumpkins in abundance in grain storage houses against the low local frosts and they can be kept throughout the winter.) There are many benefits and uses that the pumpkin family grants to southerners. One of the most useful pumpkin species is the aforementioned cushaw, or potato pumpkin. It is less sweet than other pumpkin types, but it is a popular dish boiled as a vegetable or baked into bread. Above all, the countless varieties of squashes provide excellent vegetables that, with the appropriate additions and preparations, almost reach the quality of cauliflower. The small orange-yellow smell apple,16 which is grown in the northern states mostly for the sake of its fragrance,17 has here hybridized with 12. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer identified the gardener: “Dieses Jahr hat Herr Pohlmann dahier auf seinem Stadtlot . . .” (This year on his town lot here, Mr. Pohlmann . . . ). 13. The cushaw, cushaw pumpkin, silver-seed gourd, or Japanese pie pumpkin is Cucurbita argyrosperma, a large, round to ovoid squash that usually has mottled gray vertical stripes and a slightly curved neck. It was formerly known as C. mixta or C. moschata. An heirloom variety, Tennessee potato pumpkin, is similar in size and shape but has creamy white skin with faint green stripes. 14. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer identified the farmer: “Vor drei Jahren ärntete Herr Eggeling in Comalstadt . . .” (Three years ago, Mr. Eggeling harvested in Comalstadt . . . ). 15. The NBZ article said nothing about any giant pumpkin from the Cibolo Settlement and omitted these two sentences, continuing with the parenthetical sentence. 16. Lindheimer’s smell apple is very likely a smell melon. The smell melon is also known as dudaim melon, apple melon, pocket melon, wild muskmelon, vine peach, vine pomegranate, plum granny, and probably many other names. It has been known under

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Maypop or passionflower, Passiflora incarnata. Photo by PumpkinSky. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

the muskmelon (Cucumis melo) and produces a very valuable variety that is far larger than the usual smell apple, is better able to endure a dry summer than other cucurbits, and has a mixture of the acidity of the smell apple with the sweetness of the muskmelon producing an apple-like flavor. The local smell apple hybrid is an extremely pleasant dish whether raw, steamed, or baked. The beautiful large passionflower 18 (Passiflora incarnata [maypop]) is often wild in Texas (for instance, in the woods of Whiteoak Bayou the name Cucumis melo var. (or subsp.) dudaim but is no longer recognized as distinct from the species. The smell melon is also a weedy pest of corn, peanut, and cotton production in the South. People nevertheless still grow it for its attractive and fragrant fruits. 17. The NBZ article added: “meist nur zum Zierrat und des Wohlgeruchs wegen gezogen wird” (mostly for the sake of decoration and fragrance). 18. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer added: “mit Früchten von der Größe eines Hühnerund selbst Gänse-Eies” (with fruits the size of a chicken egg and even a goose egg).

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near Houston, in bushes at San Pedro [Spring]19 near San Antonio, and in bushes on the Guadalupe below New Braunfels). It is easy to cultivate as it has a perennial root. It is very applicable to arbors as it also provides a dense wall of foliage in addition to its beautiful flowers. Its fruits cannot be compared with any German species.20 They are most similar in taste to Mexican limes and are pleasantly sour and refreshing. In Rapp’s old colony in Pennsylvania,21 oil was extracted from pumpkin pits, which, of course, would require an excess of labor that in America is only available to obscurantists.22 In the tierra caliente of Mexico 23 there is a kind of pumpkin that has very large seeds, and which is grown only for these seeds; but the fun-loving Mexican does not use these seeds (pepitas) to press out oil. These seeds are peeled, crushed, and mixed with water to make a drink that tastes as delightful as almond milk. At public dances in and around Veracruz this drink is served free of charge. Undoubtedly, this pumpkin species could also be grown in Texas. Many other things that the family of cucurbits offers to the southerner could be enumerated: for instance, sugar and syrup from the juice of watermelon; confections (preserves) of the solid flesh of watermelons and smell apple; feed for horses, pigs, and cattle; and travel bottles,

19. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer specified “San Pedro Quelle” (San Pedro Spring), while the article published in the Aufsätze omitted “Quelle.” 20. The “German” species to which Lindheimer referred was probably Passiflora edulis. It is actually a tropical vine and not native to Germany. The closest any species of Passiflora comes to Germany is P. caerulea, the blue passionflower or Blaue Passionsblume, a South American vine that has become established in Spain. 21. Johann Georg Rapp (1757–1847) was the German-born founder of a communal religious sect known as the Harmonists or the Harmony Society. After persecution in Germany, Rapp and about eight hundred followers came to America, founding the communal towns of Harmony, Pennsylvania; Harmony (later New Harmony), Indiana; and finally Economy, Pennsylvania. The Harmony Society lasted about a hundred years, from roughly 1805 until it dissolved in 1906. Rapp’s old colony would be the first town of Harmony in Pennsylvania. 22. Lindheimer was here referring to the practice of some religious groups of obscuring or withholding knowledge from the general public, such as the effort needed to extract the oil. 23. Lindheimer defined this term, as well as the drink and dances, in detail in essay 7, “My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico.” The phrase refers to eastern Mexico’s tropical lowlands.

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milk jugs, ladles, and water buckets provided by the various varieties of hard-shelled Lagenaria (gourds of the Americans).24 A very beautiful type of summer hat for women that looks like an elaborate braid is supplied by the bleached cell tissue of a special pumpkin that the Americans call “dish rag gourd.” 25 We may mention a few other uses of the cucurbits that are necessary to everyday life. The shells of large round bottle gourds in Mexico are used for duck catching. The duck catcher sticks his head in such a shell and keeps his body hidden under water. He can sneak up close to the ducks, which he then grabs by the legs and pulls under the water to put in a sack.26 Bottle gourds are not good as flasks for storing spirits in a hot climate. Very strong alcohol that I had brought with me in a gourd during a trip to Mexico had evaporated so much by the second day that only an insipid-tasting water was left; but it is this ability to evaporate that makes these gourds particularly suitable for keeping water fresh. Another interesting use of gourd shells surprised me as I descended into a rocky barranca27 in tropical Mexico. While the sea breeze softly rustled the lofty crown of a royal palm, and at the bottom of the ravine the finely pinnate leaves of a treelike fern trembled over a clear brook, three talkative laundresses stood in light costumes with half a gourd shell protecting their heads from the vertical rays of the tropical sun. Sancta simplicitas! 28 This picture reminded me vividly of the beautiful light effects of a landscape by Claude Lorrain,29 where under a group of tall trees a company of bathers rises from the clear waters.30

24. The NBZ article added: “ein schon seit den frühesten Zeiten hier von den Ureinwohnern cultivirtes Gewächs, welches jetzt an vielen Orten verwildert vorkommt” (a plant cultivated here since the earliest times by the indigenous peoples, which now appears wild in many places). 25. This would be the luffa or loofah, either Luffa aegyptiaca or Luffa cylindrica. 26. The next paragraph was missing from the NBZ article. 27. A barranca is a deep gully or arroyo with steep sides (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 28. Sancta simplicitas means “holy innocence,” often used ironically in reference to another’s naïveté (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 29. Claude Lorrain (ca. 1600–1682) was a French painter of the Baroque era in Italy and one of the earliest to focus on landscape painting. I have been unable to identify the specific painting to which Lindheimer refers. 30. This last sentence was missing from the NBZ article.

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Texas gourd, Cucurbita texana (C. pepo subsp. texana). Photo by Charles T. Bryson, USDA Agricultural Research Service. (CC BY 3.0 US)

The small wild Texas gourd (Cucurbita texana) 31 is excellent for keeping mice and insects away from seeds stored inside it. Its narrow neck can easily be closed with a cork and on its outside you can write the name of the contents. Of the native wild cucurbits that grow here, the American spiny cucumber (Cucumis anguria [also known as the West Indian gherkin]) is particularly worthy of mention. It can be used for salad and for making salt cucumbers after being blanched in a little warm water and rubbing off the soft spines with a coarse cloth. A very useful and often cultivated species of cucurbit is undoubtedly the cucumber, which provides ample harvests in Texas.32 In some boun31. Today, this is considered a variety of Cucurbita pepo, the species of pumpkins and squashes. 32. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer added considerable information about the cultivation of cucumbers: Ihr Hauptfeind ist hier die Trockenheit des Sommers, aber durch einige Pflege kann man den Ertrag der Gurke auch trotz der Trockenheit des hiesigen Sommers so vermehren, daß ein einziger Stock dieser Pflanze mehr Früchte bringt, als eine Familie verzehren kann. Ein in die Erde gegrabenes Mehlfaß wird in seiner unteren Hälfte mit kleinen Steinen angefüllt (am besten Geröll aus Flüssen) und in seiner oberen Hälfte mit guter Dammerde. In diese Dammerde pflanzt man einige

American spiny cucumber, Cucumis anguria. Photo by Eugenio Hansen, OFS. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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tiful years farmers bring whole wagonloads of cucumbers to the local towns and the price for them is often no more than fifteen cents for a big full bucket. When cultivating gourd-like plants, one should be especially wary of producing bad hybrids by closely planting different species, or of breeding out the good qualities altogether. A small example of this took place years ago at Mill Creek, in Austin County, where a watermelon had crossed with the outwardly similar variety of the so-called pig melon33 and lost its flavor. A similar thing happened here about thirty years ago in a field 34 where all the squashes (of the species Cucurbita ovifera and C. melopepo) had crossed with the indigenous wild Texas gourd 35 and

Gurkenkerne, von welchen man, nachdem sie aufgegangen sind, die schwächeren ausreißt und nur ein oder zwei kräftige Pflänzchen stehen läßt. Wenn nun diese Pflänzchen größer werden und über den Raum der Fassesöffnung herauswachsen, so mache man 12 Fuß rings um das Faß ein wagrechtes Gerüst von Stangen, welches 6 Zoll von der Erde entfernt ist, über welches sich dann die größer werdende Gurkenpflanze lagern kann. In das Faß schütte man dann alle Tage einen Eimer voll Wasser. Die untere Lage von Steinchen dient dazu, daß das überflüssige Wasser abziehen, und nachher auch dazu, daß das auf dem Boden des Fasses gesammelte Wasser wieder als Dunst aufsteigen könne. (Its main enemy here is the dryness of the local summer, but despite this, with some care it is possible to increase its yield so that a single vine of this plant yields more fruit than a family can eat. A flour barrel dug into the ground is filled in its lower half with small stones [gravel from rivers is the best] and its upper half is filled with good topsoil. Some cucumber seeds are planted in the topsoil, from which, after they have germinated, the weaker ones are culled leaving only one or two vigorous little plants. If these seedlings grow larger and grow out of the mouth of the barrel, make a horizontal frame of poles twelve feet around the barrel and six inches above the ground over which the growing cucumber plant can be supported. Then pour a bucket full of water into the barrel every day. The lower layer of pebbles serves to remove the excess water, and subsequently also allows water collected at the bottom of the barrel to rise up again as humidity.)

33. Citrullus colocynthis, a native of the Mediterranean region, is sometimes called pig melon, but more commonly colocynth. The plant outwardly resembles a watermelon plant, but it bears small hard fruits with a bitter pulp. It is widely used in traditional medicine and its seeds have been found in archaeological sites dating back to 3800 BC. 34. In the NBZ article, Lindheimer identified the field as owned by Mr. von Coll and noted that the event happened about five years before the NBZ article, making it about thirty years before the Aufsätze essay was published. 35. Cucurbita pepo var. texana.

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became extremely bitter. Watermelons and cucumbers make each other worse. In some parts of southern France, muskmelons and cucumbers are planted in the same fields, worsening both species. In the East Indies and the foothills of the Cape of Good Hope, melons crossbreed so quickly that you have to get new seeds almost every year. This is attributed to the southern position of these countries; but if that were the case, since the same causes must have the same effects, melons should also degenerate in Suriname and in the West Indies, which is by no means the case. On the contrary, I believe that the rapid degeneration of melons in the East Indies and the Cape is due to the usual causes, namely by crops planted too close to wild cucurbits in which foraging bees carry foreign pollen worn on their hairy bodies into the flowers of the purebred melons. But if one properly supervises the crossing of varieties, then one can constantly pursue different variations. On a journey through northern Persia, Gmelin36 described and depicted fifteen different varieties of melons. In Texas, too, it would be worthwhile to compile a monograph of the cucurbits, which will certainly be valuable if we want to make the effort to create valuable hybrids in Texas. But what good does all this fine talk of granditas, melons, and pumpkins mean to the local Germans: “If only I had some potatoes and turnips and sauerkraut, I’d prefer them right now!” 37 This dissatisfaction is a fundamental feature of the human mind. In the north we dream of the paradise of the south: Do you know the land where the lemon grows, In darkened leaves the golden orange glows? 38 36. No fewer than five members of the Gmelin family were botanists. The most traveled was Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755), German naturalist, botanist, geographer, and professor at Tübingen, who explored much of Siberia as well as the region around the Caspian Sea, including northern Persia. His Flora Sibirica described 1,178 species, of which he illustrated 294. 37. A literal translation of this German proverb hardly does it justice. Perhaps “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Or possibly the modern television commercial: “I want it all, and I want it now.” 38. This is from “Mignons Gesang,” one of many songs derived from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s apprenticeship), book 3, chapter 1 (1795–1796). Franz Schubert composed two versions of this song. Lindheimer made “lemon” and “orange” singular, whereas Goethe made them

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And if we are in the tropics, where the orange, pineapple, banana, and sapote ripen, then we wish for the apples and pears of the north. It is a great wisdom of life to extract its charm from the present every time. Would you roam forever onward, See the good that lies so near! 39 But even this dissatisfaction of man, where every possession immediately reappears as a defect,40 has its good. Without this dissatisfaction, we would be modest and content. This modesty and satisfaction may be virtues of fatalistic and ascetic professors, but they are not virtues of the aspiring and republican man. Always wanting something else and something better as soon as we recognize it, and always ready and able to recognize the better, we may be driven by the changing desires of our personal interests until we find out that our personal and private interest alone is not enough to make us happy.41

plural. Goethe’s original full first verse: Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn, Im dunklen Laub die Goldorangen glühn, Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht? Kennst du es wohl? Dahin, dahin Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn! (Do you know the land where the lemons bloom, The golden oranges glow in the darkening gloom, A gentle wind blows from the deep blue sky, The myrtle stands still and the laurel stands high? Do you know it? O, take me there, With you, my beloved, O, take me there!)

Both Lindheimer’s singular and Goethe’s plural translations are original. 39. These are the opening lines of a poem entitled “Erinnerung” (Memory). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1827) vol. 1, pg. 67. Translation is original. 40. The NBZ article added: “und eine neue Sehnsucht erregt” (and a new longing excited). 41. The following paragraph did not appear in the NBZ version.

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Fortunate the person who, as in legend, can rise like the bird of paradise above the clouds and thunderstorms of the lower regions of daily life and endeavor and can gaze into the horizon undaunted by the farthest distances. Fortunate the person who acts and lives only in the interest of all humanity, for he already participates in the eternal life of humanity itself, and in the hope of joyful fulfillment of the ever higher and nobler purposes and tasks of its likeness. [In place of the previous paragraph, this article ended in the NeuBraunfelser Zeitung with the following four paragraphs.] So we Germans in the South will not be content with [word obscured by a paper tear] comfort with what nature almost voluntarily offers, such as cucumbers, squashes, and melon species. With effort, hobby, and expense, we are constantly working to create all sorts of useful fruit and vegetables. This insufficiency and the restless pursuit of something different and better, which is so peculiar to the German character, may soon lead us to the political and social field. This field is now a garden in which one builds the popular nourishing sweet potato with the satiric nettle and the biting onion, or a battlefield where we fight for our dearest interests in our elections. But I cannot be a standard bearer if there is not a group to lead. You must take the time to vote on election days, and you must take the time to tell yourself beforehand what and for whom you are voting. To get into the politics of the pumpkins, as I have done in this essay, may seem strange, just as strange as the old Cato concluding all his speeches in the Senate: “Carthage must be destroyed!” 42 To be sure, some people prefer to see the public newspapers, instead of talking about public affairs, speak to the moment of only “boot polish, shooting stars, and animal diseases,” as Heinzen puts it so boldly in his “Bureaucracy.” 43 42. This is a reference to Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), Roman senator and historian, who purportedly ended every speech in the Senate with some variation of the phrase “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” (Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed). 43. Karl Peter Heinzen (1809–1880) was a German revolutionary. When two news­ papers to which Heinzen contributed were banned, he wrote Die preußische Bureaukratie

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Incidentally, it is not so different and alien as it might appear at first sight whether we plant noble fruit trees and cultivated plants or make good laws. Both are for the coming generations. Our children would hardly thank us if we gave them only degenerate instead of noble fruits, and instead of sweet melons only ones bastardized, watery, and bitter of taste, just as if we had bequeathed bad laws and perishable institutions.

(The Prussian Bureaucracy), which was confiscated immediately on its appearance and led to a criminal investigation. Fleeing to several European countries, Heinzen eventually ended up in the United States, where he founded the newspaper Pionier in Louisville, Kentucky, which he continued to publish (writing most of the articles himself) for the rest of his life (moving the paper to Boston in 1859), continually denouncing slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law, clericalism, and isolationism and advocating for free land for settlers, equal rights for African Americans and women, easier access to citizenship, and penal, judicial, and educational reform.

ESSAY 5

Ueber Viehzucht und Ackerbau in Texa# About Livestock and Agriculture in Texas1

In Germany and in almost all of Europe it is taken for granted that agriculture cannot be operated successfully without livestock kept in stables, which supplies the necessary fertilizer. Here in America, and especially in Texas, one relies on the inexhaustibility of the virgin soil and on the labor required for stabling and fertilizing, while the numerous cattle herds seek their sustenance from the still undeveloped land itself. Up to forty years ago, and even later, it was almost universally accepted that farmland in the United States needed no fertilizer. Eastern states, however, have already learned that many of their fields that once yielded a hundredfold crop now yield scarcely twentyfold and that some arable land, now mostly depleted of nutrients, is no longer worthwhile being cultivated and has to be left to forest growth, that of a lean-soil-satisfied and self-planted conifer (old-field pine of the Americans, Pinus taeda L. [loblolly pine]). Ordinary people without any chemical or physiological education take for granted the fact that plants must find their nourishment nowhere else than from the air and from the soil in which they grow. The 1. In this essay, Lindheimer said that he had been observing the vegetation of Texas for forty-two years. Lindheimer came to Texas in 1836, putting the date of this essay (or its revision) at 1878.

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nutrients that plants derive from the air are supplied again and again to them through that movable element; the situation is different with the nutrients that plants absorb from the soil by their roots. If these constituents are withdrawn from the soil by continual harvests and not restored, the soil must become poorer and the harvests more meager each year. A very simple experiment to distinguish those substances of a plant that it has received from the air from the minerals that it has received from the soil is to burn the plants. The mineral parts remain as ashes and clearly show what minerals the plant in question needed for its development. During the forty-two years in which I have observed the wild vegetation here, it has struck me that the change in vegetation is probably not due solely to the herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs, because in fenced fields in which no livestock grazed a complete change in the prevailing weeds is often seen in the course of a few years. For years there were simply wild native species over my fenced fields, then the wild yellow turnip (Daucus pusillus [American wild carrot]), the

Buffalo-bur nightshade, Solanum rostratum, is an invasive species that increases with heavy grazing. Photo by Dcrjsr. (CC BY 4.0)

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spiny grass (Cenchrus echinatus [southern sandbur]), and the Solanum rostratum 2 [buffalo-bur nightshade] began sequentially to dominate. Later certain species of grass, scattered Helianthus annuus 3 [common sunflower], and Croton capitatus 4 [hogwort] appeared mainly from the stock of weeds in other fields. This peculiar change of the basic vegetation, this mass migration of plants, seems to me partly to have the same cause as the migration of animals and the migration of peoples, namely the desertion of an area that is no longer able to nourish its inhabitants. Nearly all plant families leave a barren depleted sandy area until at last only the frugal Pinus taeda takes possession of the soil and with its deeply penetrating roots brings potash closer to the surface and makes the soil fertile again. If the population of the United States of North America continues to increase for the next one hundred years at the same arithmetic rate as the rising ten-year census lists indicate for the past century, and at the same time the local system of agriculture persists, then by the next centennial celebration the drained land will hardly be able to feed the inhabitants of our depleted republic. Some statisticians see this fateful crisis occurring within the next fifty years. The vineyards planted on the Rhine and in Hungary by the Roman Emperor Probus5 as early as 276 AD can serve as a splendid example of the effect of careful cultivation and fertilization on virgin bearing capacity. Now, after sixteen hundred years, they yield just as rich a grape harvest as in the time of Tacitus 6 and the old German invasions of those regions. But with what careful care have these vineyards been cultivated? Every year barges on the Main and Rhine transport manure to the vineyards of the Rheingau.7 These fertilizers are mixed with soil at compost heaps that, after careful preparation, is carried on the backs of vintners to the steep terraces and slopes of the vineyards. 2. Lindheimer used the synonym Androcera lobata. 3. Lindheimer used the synonym Helianthus Centicularis. 4. Lindheimer used the misspelled synonym Croton ellyticum. 5. Marcus Aurelius Probus (232–282) was Roman emperor from 276 to 282. 6. Marcus Claudius Tacitus (ca. 200–276) was Roman emperor from 275 to 276. 7. The Rheingau is a small region in the German state of Hesse on the north side of the Rhine, stretching about twenty miles between the towns of Wiesbaden near Frankfurt to Lorch am Rhein. The region is famous for its wines, especially its Rheingauer Riesling, and for its many establishments for consuming those wines.

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Hillside vineyard along the Moselle River, a tributary of the Rhine, in Germany. Photo by Friedrich Petersdorff. (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE)

Animal husbandry is almost entirely independent of field cultivation in the United States. It is an agricultural system of robbery that is simply damaging in its consequences on the land and its people. The export of immense herds of cattle and horses that took place overland from the western part of Texas to Kansas was 37,400 head in 1867, was greater in each following year, and in 1873 reached its height of 164,829 head. In addition, large quantities of cattle were also transported by ship. In any case, cattle alone worth more than a million dollars have been exported annually, not counting horses. The livestock trade of Texas was therefore a rich source of profit for the state. But profit is the only positive side of this industry—it has many negative sides. This vast system of cattle ranching, not only by those in Texas but throughout the United States, requires farmers to surround their fields with costly fences, which in their total value cost more than all the appraised farm buildings in the whole Union. The destruction of forests, the squandering of valuable timber and firewood, and the reduction of rainfall so useful to agriculture are the direct injurious consequences of this wastefulness.

Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi) is a native tallgrass prairie plant that grows to heights of more than six feet. Photo by Jennifer Briggs / US Fish and Wildlife Service. (CC BY 2.0)

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One might object that animal manure at least benefits pastures. This may well be the case on a small scale. Much is lost, however, from the fertilizing power of this manure by evaporation and drying, and the damage that a grazing animal causes year after year to the pasturage itself is far greater than the slight use of its fertilizer. First and foremost, grazing destroys all year-round forage plants because it does not allow their seeds to reach maturity. Fortunately, many grasses have a perennial root, but when they and other forage crops are constantly eaten away by the herds, bitter and inedible weeds, like large euphorbias, wormwoods, sunflowers, salvias, cockleburs, and so on, gain the upper hand and little edible food remains for domestic animals. This has been the case for many years with many prairies east of the Brazos. Thirty years ago, the vast prairies southwest of New Braunfels were as dense as a cornfield with a tall useful grass species, the sugary beardgrass (Andropogon gerardi 8 [big bluestem]), which was densely found in fenced areas and used for hay. Another disadvantage of the overgrazed state of cattle in Texas is that the animals form paths leading to every watercourse, which then serve as rivulets after rain, and at last develop into ravines and gorges. By means of these channels they prevent the absorption of rain, at the same time that they carry the runoff of water and at any rate are the cause of flooding on the rivers had these western settlements not taken place. But all these independent disadvantages of agriculture, and especially of West Texas livestock, should be regarded only as insignificant considering the social and moral disadvantages. We do not want to consider here the murdering and robbing raids of the Indians, which affect mainly the herdsmen dwelling on the frontier; for we should not hold these savages accountable from our social and moral standpoint. Quite rightly the most outspoken chief of the Comanches, when I once criticized all Indians of stealing, replied that we should not judge their stealing and robbing from our viewpoint because they had no other way to acquire property other than by taking it away from other people. Indians are thus on the level of unthinking beasts of prey and pronounce their own death sentence. In their view, they may consider their raids as exploits and themselves as heroes, much like Odysseus 8. Lindheimer used the synonym Andropogon furcatum.

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and Diomedes, who stole the horses of King Rhesus,9 or like Hercules, who stole the cattle of Geryon.10 We must not burden them with the demoralization that is brought about in Texas by this ranching economy and herding way of life. (On the Pannonian Steppe11 in Hungary almost the same evils take place under similar circumstances.) This demoralization is due almost entirely to the white population, except for the small fraction for which the Negroes are responsible because they must necessarily have the same duties with the same rights that have been given to them along with the whites. Much less can we accuse Mexican cattle thieves for their raids than our dishonorable republican government, which allows itself to be kicked with impunity by impotent Spain and disorganized Mexico. With self-irony, therefore, Brother Jonathan12 is depicted by the Americans with pointed tail and hat turned backward, just as the Jew Schmuhl is portrayed in the comedy Unser Verkehr,13 where his father says to him: “Schmulchen, let 9. Rhesus was a king of Thrace (southern Bulgaria and European Turkey today) who came to the aid of the Trojans in Homer’s Iliad with a valuable herd of horses. After capturing a Trojan spy who revealed all of Troy’s allies and which tents they occupied, Diomedes and Odysseus raided the Trojan camp, killing Rhesus and stealing all his horses. 10. Geryon was a mythical and monstrous giant who dwelt somewhere in the far west of the Mediterranean. Stealing Geryon’s cattle was the tenth labor imposed on Hercules to expiate his crime of slaying his own children in a fit of madness. 11. The Pannonian Steppe is a grassland ecosystem covering much of the modern state of Hungary. The Hungarian name for this grassland is Puszta. Lindheimer used the German name, Pußta. 12. Brother Jonathan began in the early 1800s as a fictional personification of New England wearing striped pants, waistcoat, and stovepipe hat, often opposed by John Bull, the fictional personification of Great Britain. He was gradually replaced by Uncle Sam by the late 1800s. Even the standard outfit of Brother Jonathan was assumed by Uncle Sam. Contrary to what Lindheimer said, Brother Jonathan was usually portrayed sympathetically. To portray him with a devil’s tail and backward hat seems more a southern portrayal of a Yankee. 13. Unser Verkehr: Eine Posse in einem Aufzuge (The company we keep: A farce in one act; some authorities translate the main title as “Our social circle”) was a farcical play or burlesque originally outlined under the title Die Judenschule by Karl Borromäus Alexander Sessa (1786–1813), a German physician and amateur dramatist, for one of his patients, the German actor Ludwig Devrient (1785–1832). It was originally performed in Breslau in Prussian Silesia in 1813, one year after passage of a Prussian law that removed restrictions on Jews from practicing certain occupations and from living in designated ghettos, which made Jews more visible in German society. After Sessa’s

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yourself be stupid, let yourself be pushed around, but get about tending to your business!”14 The demoralization resulting from this unscrupulous livestock ranching has spread over West Texas, as witnessed by the many crimes in every session of our district courts. Most murders and lynchings are done by and against cattle thieves. Depredations by thieves and murderers, or by citizens united against them, terrorize whole counties. It was that way not so long ago in Mason County. And the burning of the Blanco County Courthouse was only instigated to destroy the many charges against cattle thieves. In the courthouse of Hays County, for the same reason, the records of the court had been thrown in a heap and doused with kerosene to burn them. To defend this West Texas ranching lifestyle it is often argued that large tracts of land are not suitable for agriculture but only for livestock. That may be partly true, but certainly only in a limited sense. It is almost

death Devrient took the play to Berlin, where it premiered as Unser Verkehr at the Berlin Opera House in 1815. The play was blatantly anti-Semitic, depicting grotesque caricatures of Jews, with actors using a contrived and heavy Yiddish accent in their delivery. The story line involved a family anxious for their children to assimilate into German society and succeed in the world. However, the Jewish characters were portrayed as utterly calculating, insincere, and self-delusional about assimilation. The play mocked the Jewish accent, their commercialized marriages, and how all encounters and relationships seemed to involve financial competition. Berlin audiences howled with laughter. Historians today consider the play to have been a significant step in the public awareness and acceptance of anti-Semitism in Germany that would eventually lead to the Nazi Holocaust. A paperback reprint of the play is available online through Walmart and Amazon. It may also be downloaded from the Elektronische Dokumente of the Universitätsbibliothek of Goethe-Universität Frankfurt at http://publikationen .ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/20922. 14. I can find no character named Schmuhl in the play. Rather, the father was Abraham Hirsch and his son was Jacob. The actual text from the conclusion of the first scene of the play was: Gaih! Gaih! - Loss dich tretten von de Leit, loss dich warfen aus de Stuben, loss dich verklagen bey de Gerichte, loss dich setzen ins Hundeloch, loss dich binden mit Strick und Ketten, loss dich peitschen, loss dich martern halb taud! Aber du musst doch werden raich! (Go! Go! Let yourself be stepped on by people, let yourself be thrown out of rooms, let yourself be denounced to the courts, let yourself be pushed into dog kennels, let yourself be bound with cords and chains, let yourself be whipped, let yourself be martyred half to death! But you must become rich!)

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the same as the objection formerly made against the abolition of slavery in the South, that cotton could then no longer be grown, which later proved to be untrue. In any case, a very large part of western Texas is still useful for agriculture, viticulture, and mining, and only immigration and capital are needed to exploit the natural resources; but the great land speculators and our narrow-minded and impractical legislatures, which are influenced by those speculators, are the stumbling blocks of our progress. They are obstructing immigration and capital by laws that are unfavorable to both. It seems to us to be a horrible barbarism that the Greater Mongols, in 1223 of our era, at their Kirultai (Imperial Assembly in which public affairs were discussed), proposed to slay all the inhabitants of the land of China and to convert its fields to pasture grazing, because they believed they could best use the land in this way. In its consequences, however, the behavior of our government and great land barons is quite similar to the thirteenth-century Mongol policy.

ESSAY 6

Ein Verbrechen der texanischen Regierung mit einem Anhang über die hiesigen Indianer A Crime of the Texas Government with an Appendix about the Local Indians1

Historia testis temporum, lux veritatis.2

The untamed desire for land ownership and land speculation in order to acquire wealth are the sources of much dishonesty, fraud, false claims of inheritance, document forgery, perjury, and other crimes in the United States, and especially here in Texas. Beati possidentes ! 3 Happy are those who have driven their sheep to dry land.4 Public opinion will soon no longer ask by what means this has happened. 1. Lindheimer cited Texas legislation passed in 1876 in this essay. 2. Lindheimer quoted five of the first six words of a famous Latin saying (omitting vero, “truly”): “Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur?” (History is truly the witness of the ages, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice but the orator’s can entrust her to immortality?). Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC), De Oratore (55 BC), book 2, chapter 9, section 36.

Sam Houston, friend of the Cherokees. Photo by Mathew Brady, ca. 1861. (PD-old)

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Right from the beginning of the Republic of Texas, crimes of land ownership were commonplace. When the revolution broke out between Texas and Mexico, it was of paramount importance to secure friendship with the Indians. Among the Indian tribes who had immigrated to Texas from the United States were more than a thousand warriors and if they had turned their weapons against the Texans they would have inevitably decided the fight in favor of the Mexicans. The districts 5 of San Augustine and Nacogdoches therefore sent a deputation to the Indians, in which Houston 6 and Rusk 7 participated. These negotiators told the Indians that all American surveyors had been ordered to keep away from their lands and not to make any survey marks on them, and it was intended that white men should not disturb them by seizing their land. At the suggestion of the district council of San Felipe, one man was elected by each of the other district councils and those elected formed

3. “Blessed are those in possession!” The Latin phrase was originally Greek, Μακάριοι οι κατέχοντες (Makárioi oi katéchontes), from Euripides (fifth century BC), Greek play-

wright of tragedies. Others have translated it as “Blessed are those that have (for they shall receive even more).” 4. This seems to be a reference to the tendency of sheep to develop foot rot on wet ground. It is also another way of saying “blessed are those in possession.” 5. Lindheimer called these “counties,” but counties were not formed until after Texas won its independence. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, the smallest units of government were municipalities, rather large districts embracing several villages or settlements surrounding a central town or village. The government of a municipality was vested in an ayuntamiento or council (Lindheimer called these “committees”) composed of at least one alcalde or judge, various regidores or aldermen, a council attorney, an alguacil or sheriff, and an escribano (secretary, court clerk, and notary public combined). Because of possible confusion in implying that a Mexican municipality consisted of only one town, I have chosen to translate Lindheimer’s “county” as “district” and Lindheimer’s “committee” as “council.” 6. Sam Houston (1793–1863) was at that time a Cherokee citizen, and his wife, Diana Rogers Gentry, was a mixed-blood Cherokee. Houston had already been the sixth governor of Tennessee and would later become commander-in-chief of the Texas Army, first and third president of the Republic of Texas, US senator from Texas, and seventh governor of the state of Texas. 7. Thomas Jefferson Rusk (1803–1857) was at that time a resident of Nacogdoches. He would later become secretary of war for the Republic of Texas, US senator from Texas, and president pro tempore of the US Senate.

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a Permanent Council,8 the governing body of the provisional government. This was in October 1835. Indian affairs caused much concern to this council. The position of the Indians was uncertain and threatening. Thirteen years earlier, hopes and promises had been made to them and since that time they had been in possession of their lands and their numbers had grown. The Cherokees 9 lived a day’s ride northwest of Nacogdoches, the Shawnees10 lived between the Cherokees and the Neches River, and the Coushattas 11 lived east of the Trinity. As we said above, a deputation was sent to them by the eastern councils to discuss with them. The spokesman for the Indians was a free Negro named William Covens 12 who on all occasions had proved himself honest and devoted to the Texans. On 14 October 1835, Houston wrote to these Indians that they should have their land above the royal highway13 between the Neches and Angelina, so that all their villages were enclosed in it. On 26 8. Lindheimer called this a “Central Concilium.” The translation calls it by the name used by the Texas State Historical Commission in the Handbook of Texas. It consisted of thirty-one delegates and was the governing body of Texas for three weeks in October 1835 until a quorum of all the other ninety-eight district representatives could be gathered in San Felipe. 9. The Cherokees are an Iroquoian people originally from Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and surrounding states. Between 1790 and 1820, traditionalists among the tribe began moving westward to Missouri and Arkansas. An offshoot of the Arkansas contingent settled on the Red River in Texas as early as 1807. Sixty families led by Chief Bowles or Di’wali settled in the Dallas area around 1820 and then moved southeastward to at least three and possibly as many as seven towns in the area north of Nacogdoches. The Cherokees repeatedly petitioned the Mexican government for title to their settlements, but the Mexican government delayed. By 1835, ownership of the Cherokee tribal lands in Texas was still unresolved. Lindheimer called them Cherokies. 10. The Shawnees are an Algonquian people originally from the Ohio Valley in western Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Just as the Cherokees did, bands of traditionalists began drifting westward around 1790, eventually settling on land granted by the Spanish government in southeastern Missouri. Shawnee support for the British in the War of 1812 led to a crushing defeat and a mass migration to their traditionalist relatives in Missouri. But the Missouri Shawnees, after finding themselves once more in the United States after the Louisiana Purchase, had already moved away from their Spanish grant to settle with the Cherokees in Arkansas and eventually in Texas, where they were in 1835. Lindheimer called them Chonies, elsewhere Shawnies. The Texas Shawnees eventually became the Absentee Shawnees of Oklahoma today. 11. The Coushattas (or Koasatis) are a Muscogean people of the Upper Creek Confederacy originally from central Alabama and were closely associated with the related

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October he invited the Permanent Council to come to San Felipe where he wanted to report on his relations with the Indians. These promises kept the Indians from acting hostile toward the Texans. The facts are the following: In 1822, long before a colonist settled in eastern Texas or any colonization treaty had been made to colonize those areas, the Cherokees immigrated to Texas. They built a village north of the city of Nacogdoches in an area that was then uninhabited. On 8 November of that year, the Cherokees reached an agreement with the current government that some of the chiefs should go to Mexico with their interpreters to make an agreement with Iturbide14 regarding the country on which their settlement was located. At that time, the Cherokees were guaranteed the peaceful rights of their possessions and their harvests as well as the privileges of native-born people. The chiefs went to Mexico and the imperial government satisfied them. Whether this was done in writing or verbally does not change anything. On 22 March 1832, Colonel Piedras 15 was ordered by the political leader 16 to place the families of the Cherokees in personal possession

Alabama (or Alibamu) tribe. After the defeat of the French in the French and Indian War in 1763, the Alabamas and Coushattas moved westward to Louisiana and by 1780 had entered Spanish Texas. With the support of the Spanish authorities, they established at least three villages in the Big Thicket area of San Jacinto and Polk Counties, where they were found in 1835 and are still found today. Lindheimer called them Cooschatties, elsewhere Coschatties. 12. Lindheimer appears to be the only person reporting on this individual. 13. The Camino Real, King’s Highway, Old Spanish Road, or Old San Antonio Road ran from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to San Augustine in Texas, then to Nacogdoches, Alto, and Crocket, passing north of Bryan and on to Bastrop, New Braunfels, and San Antonio. 14. Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Arámburu (1783–1824) was a Mexican Army general who led the coalition that took control of Mexico City, decisively gaining independence for Mexico in 1821. He was selected to be president of the Regency of Mexico for the next nine months and then had himself proclaimed emperor of Mexico for the next ten months before abdicating. After fourteen months in exile, first in Italy, then in England, Iturbide returned to Mexico and was executed only five days later. 15. José de las Piedras (died 1839) was commander of the Mexican forces in Nacogdoches from 1827 to 1832. He later settled in Matamoros. 16. This would have been during the administration of Anastasio Bustamante, fourth president of Mexico.

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of the land they held. In the empresario authorization17 that was later given to David Burnet,18 those lands that were already assigned to the Indians were excluded. For thirteen years 19 the Indians had undisputed possession of their lands. They were not intruders to the detriment of whites, for the Indians had prior possession of the land. The Mexican government recognized them as an agricultural people with Mexican privileges. Colonel Bean20 was legal agent for the Cherokees and other Indian tribes. Never was a doubt raised against their ownership. Everyone considered their ownership right and lawful. To add even more weight to this title, the Consultation 21 of November 1835 (when Texas was weak and its freedom threatened) literally spelled out the following: “We solemnly declare that we will guarantee to them peaceable enjoyment of their rights to their lands, as we do our own. We solemnly declare that all 17. An empresario was a land agent or contractor working for the Mexican government to bring colonists to Texas and settle them there. In return for the settlement of a specified number of families on the grant, the empresario would receive a handsome amount of land as payment. 18. Lindheimer’s assertion that the empresario grant to Burnet came after Piedras granted personal possession of land to the Cherokees was mistaken. However, the grant did come after the meeting with the Mexican government in 1822. David Gouverneur Burnet (1788–1870), originally from New Jersey, later Ohio, came to Texas in 1826 and received an empresario grant to settle three hundred families north of the Old Spanish Road around Nacogdoches that he was forced to sell to other investors in 1830 for failing to recruit the required number of families. He later operated a sawmill on Galveston Bay, become interim president of Texas in 1836, and was second vice president of the republic from 1838 to 1841. 19. Lindheimer meant from the 1822 delegation of the Cherokees to Mexico City until the events of 1835. 20. Peter Ellis Bean (sometimes Ellis Peter Bean, Pedro Elias Bean; 1783–1846), originally from Tennessee, was a Texas filibuster (a freebooter, adventurer, or pirate engaged in inciting insurrections or revolutions in Latin American states). He was captured by the Spanish in 1801, escaped after ten years, and by 1815 was a colonel in the Mexican insurgent army against the royalists, again escaping to Louisiana the next year. After Mexican independence, Bean returned to Texas in 1823, had his Mexican Army commission renewed, and became Indian agent in Nacogdoches for East Texas tribes. 21. The name “Consultation” was chosen to avoid the revolutionary connotations that the word “convention” implied in Mexican politics. Originally set to convene 15 October 1835, it was delayed until 1 November before a quorum of delegates could assemble in San Felipe. For the last three weeks of October, the Permanent Council governed Texas.

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land grants, surveys, and locations of land that are within the aforementioned limits of the lands inhabited by the Indians are wholly null and void.” 22 To make this promise even more binding, the Consultation decided that each member of it, as a pledge of loyalty by the Texan people, should sign his name. They did so, and among these names are those of Wharton,23 Waller,24 Martin,25 Houston, Zavala,26 Patrick,27 Henry Smith,28 Grimes,29 J. W. Robinson,30 Mitchell,31 Millard,32 and 22. The actual declaration read: “We solemnly declare, that we will guarantee to them [the Cherokees] the peaceable enjoyment of their rights to their lands, as we do our own. We solemnly declare, that all grants, surveys and locations of lands within the bounds hereinbefore mentioned, made after the settlement of the Indians, are, and of right ought to be, utterly null and void; and that the commissioners issuing the same be, and are hereby, ordered immediately to recall and cancel the same, having been made upon lands already appropriated by the Mexican government.” H. P. N. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, vol. 1 (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1898), 546. Signers of the declaration appear on pg. 547. 23. William Harris Wharton (1802–1839), originally from Virginia and Tennessee, was a leader in the Texas Revolution and a noted orator. Gammel’s Laws of Texas mistakenly lists John A. Wharton, William’s son, as a signer instead of William, but John was eight years old in 1835. 24. Edwin Waller (1800–1881), originally from Virginia and Missouri, was an independence activist who later surveyed the street system for the new capital in Austin and was the first mayor of Austin. 25. Wyly (or Wiley) Martin (1776–1842), originally from Georgia, was an American soldier in the War of 1812, then alcalde for Stephen F. Austin’s original colony. He later became a judge and legislator. 26. Manuel Lorenzo Justiniano de Zavala y Sáenz (1788–1836) was a Mexican physician from Yucatán, a patriot closely involved in writing the Mexican constitution of 1824, and minister to France. Opposition to Santa Anna forced him to resign and come to Texas, where he owned land and where he supported Texas independence. Zavala would later become the first vice president of the republic. 27. George Moffitt Patrick (1801–1889), originally from Virginia, was a physician and early supporter of Texas independence. He later served in the Texas Army. 28. Henry Smith (1788–1851), originally from Kentucky and Tennessee, was a Texas farmer and became the first American-born governor of Mexican Texas, serving during the revolution. An early supporter of independence, Smith was leader of the war party at the Consultation. He later served in various political positions and died in California looking for gold. 29. Jesse Grimes (1788–1866), originally from North Carolina and Tennessee, was a soldier in the War of 1812 before settling on a farm in Texas. He later became a county judge. 30. James W. Robinson (1790–1857), originally from Indiana and Arkansas, was an attorney, Texas settler, and provisional governor of Texas after Henry Smith was removed.

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other distinguished men. They certainly did not intend to deceive the Indians and thereby buy their neutrality until the war was over. The objection that the Consultation had no power to make that promise is trivial and absurd. President Lamar,33 in his message on 21 December 1838, forwarded that and other inane reasons against the ownership of these Indians. The main reason for the expulsion of these Indians was none other than that many Americans wanted to own their good lands themselves. Texans were first to break the treaty of 1835. The ink was scarcely dry on the paper when people were already seen in the Indian Territory locating land and surveyors measuring it, even while so many citizens were serving in the army and absent from home, in spite of the decree of the Consultation of 13 November 1835 that forbade locating and surveying lands. The Cherokees were accused of robbing and murdering settlers. The Killough family was cruelly murdered.34 Only three or four of them escaped and were taken by the Cherokees to the settlements, where, as

He was later a San Jacinto veteran and a Texas Supreme Court judge and then moved to California, serving in various political positions in San Diego. 31. Asa Mitchell (1795–1865), originally from Pennsylvania, was an early settler and farmer in Texas. He was later a San Jacinto veteran and eventually lived in San Antonio. 32. Henry Millard (1796?–1844), originally from New York, Missouri, Mississippi, and finally New Orleans, was a Texas businessman and founder of Beaumont. He was later a San Jacinto veteran and a public servant in Beaumont and Galveston. 33. Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar (1798–1859), originally from Georgia, was the first elected vice president of Texas and the second president. The message Lindheimer mentioned was President Lamar’s first formal address to the Texas Congress. 34. Isaac Killough Sr. moved to Texas from Alabama in late 1837 with his extended family (his four sons and two daughters, their spouses, and their families), settling near Larissa north of Jacksonville in Cherokee County, unaware that the land was claimed by the Cherokees in a treaty with Texas negotiated the year before. The Killoughs built homes, cleared land for crops, and planted their fields. The Texas Senate refused to ratify the treaty, causing anger and resentment in the Indian community. The Killoughs fled to Nacogdoches but returned to harvest their crops when they felt safe. On 5 October 1838 a band of hostile Indians attacked, killing or carrying off eighteen, including Isaac Sr. Seven survivors reached Lacy’s Fort, forty miles south, three days later. A man named Hawkins, an earlier settler from Alabama, may have encouraged the attack. One of the survivors recognized him in Indian garb. General Rusk was unable to prove Hawkins’s involvement. The Killough Massacre was the largest and last Native American attack in East Texas.

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the war secretary claimed,35 the Cherokees, by their cunning representations, charged the crime to prairie Indians and treacherous Mexicans. If one wishes to judge in this matter on the grounds of mere probability, as the war secretary did, the statement of the Indians deserves more credence than the opinion of the war secretary, who was more likely aligned with land-sharks than with the Indians. Another welcomed accusation against the Cherokees was the interception of a letter from Manuel Flores36 to the chiefs Mush and Bowles.37 If a correspondence had taken place between these chiefs and the government of Mexico, it is striking that in the presented letter Big Mush is addressed as the commander and Bowles as Lieutenant Colonel, indicating that the writer knew these chiefs very poorly. Another, and perhaps even shallower, reason to expel the civilized Indians was that the Delawares,38 Shawnees,39 Caddos,40 Kickapoos,41 35. General Rusk was serving as the Texas secretary of war at the time and issued the report about the Killough Massacre. 36. This Mexican Indian agent named Manuel Flores was not the same as the hero who led the Texas Cavalry in the Battle of San Jacinto. The letter to which Lindheimer referred was discovered either in April 1839 when a Mexican agent was killed near the Red River or in May when a party of Texas Rangers defeated a group of Mexicans and Cherokees on the North San Gabriel River north of Austin, both events related to the brief Córdova Rebellion that year. 37. Chief Bowles or the Bowl (Di’wali) was the principal chief of the Texas Cherokees in 1839 and therefore the commander, while Mush or Big Mush (Gatunwali) was the civil chief and hence a subordinate of Chief Bowles. The captured letter indicated the positions were reversed, bolstering Lindheimer’s assertion that the letter was fake. Di’wali was about seventy-five years old in 1839. 38. The Lenapes or Delawares are an Algonquian people originally from New York, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. By 1758 they had been pushed westward to Ohio and Indiana and from there to Missouri and Kansas. By 1820, several bands of the Delawares had settled in eastern Texas and became associated with the Caddos and Cherokees. 39. The Shawnees are described in note 9. 40. The Caddos are a confederacy of perhaps as many as twenty closely related tribes originally living in Louisiana, eastern Texas, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma, and they constitute their own language group (along with a few plains tribes like the Pawnees, Wichitas, and Tawakonis). They remained neutral through most of their contact with Europeans. By 1839, they had been expelled from Louisiana and relocated with kinsmen in Texas. 41. The Kickapoos are an Algonquian people originally from southeastern Michigan. After the War of 1812, they accepted a reservation in Kansas, but the more traditional

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Biloxis,42 Creeks,43 Wichitas,44 Muscogees,45 and some Seminoles 46 had established many villages during the previous spring and summer and had planted many large fields with corn, beans, peas, and so forth apparently preparing for an alliance with Mexico and for a war with Texas. A commission was sent by the government of Texas to the Cherokees to persuade the Indians, if possible, to make a peaceful removal for which they would be paid a good price for their improvements. Whether anything at all should be paid for the land was not said. The Indians did not agree to a settlement. Colonel Burleson47 was ordered by Lamar to bring together four hundred men; Colonel Landrum’s 48 regiment from East Texas was brought in, as was the reg-

among the tribe drifted south to Spanish Texas, where they were in 1839. Even then, the most traditional among the tribe were already drifting farther south into northern Mexico. 42. The Biloxis are a Siouan people originally from southern Mississippi and Louisiana. They were greatly decimated by diseases after white contact. They gradually drifted westward to Texas, where they became associated with the Caddos. 43. The Muscogees or Creeks are a large confederacy of tribes originally from the southeastern United States. After the Creek War or Red Stick Rebellion was crushed by Andrew Jackson in 1814, many Muscogee tribes drifted westward to Texas or southward to Florida. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary spells the name with a “k,” Muskogee, but the tribal website spells it with a “c.” 44. The Wichitas are a Caddoan people originally from Kansas, western Oklahoma, and northwestern Texas, where the main part of their tribe resided in 1839. Lindheimer called them Ouchies. 45. Lindheimer called these the Maskopies and seemingly distinguished them from the Creeks, but no other tribal name even closely resembles his name. 46. The Seminoles are Creek Indians who drifted southward into Florida after Jackson defeated the Creeks in 1814. They developed their own, separate tribal identity. 47. Edward Burleson (1798–1851) was originally from North Carolina, Missouri, and Tennessee. He had almost continuous military experience from the War of 1812 until the Mexican-American War. He arrived in Texas by 1830 and by 1839 was in command of the Frontier Regiment. He was later a vice president of the republic and senator in the first state legislature. His burial site later became the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. 48. Willis H. Landrum (1805–1865?) was originally from Tennessee. He moved to Texas in 1834 and commanded a mounted regiment of gunmen from East Texas in the summer of 1839. General Douglass ordered his regiment to march up the west side of the Neches River and they missed fighting the Indians.

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iment of General Rusk 49 from Nacogdoches. The whole force was under the command of Brigadier General Douglass.50 The Indians were invited to deliver their gunlocks and emigrate to their brothers in Arkansas. On 15 July 1839, the negotiations were broken off, and on the evening of this and the following day the Cherokees were forcibly expelled from their lands, pursued for several days, and their villages and crops burnt down. The loss of the Indians in dead and wounded is said to have amounted to about one hundred, and that of the Texans five dead and twenty-seven wounded.51 In this way, “the difficult question,” how to break sacred contracts and drive the Cherokees out of their rightful possession, was solved. After their expulsion the Cherokees are said to have made several murderous raids. Who can blame them? Americans would have done the same in their place, and we do not want to deny this accusation; but it is also true that Cherokees, who suffered from want of everything, often returned to their fields only to collect a few seeds, notably from melons and pumpkins, and were shot down by the Americans. These same Cherokees, who were driven out of the state like wild beasts, have now established a liberal free-school system in the Indian Territory in which the Hon. S. S. Stephens,52 a half-blood Indian, a self-made man, and earnest friend of education, is superintendent of public education. His salary is $700. The interest of the school fund, which is formed by the proceeds of the lands sold to the United States, 49. Thomas Jefferson Rusk (1803–1857) was a lawyer originally from South Carolina and Georgia. He settled in the Nacogdoches area and, as noted previously, worked with Sam Houston to negotiate the Cherokees’ neutrality during the Texas Revolution. He was appointed secretary of war and was a San Jacinto veteran. He later became chief justice of the Supreme Court, and he and Houston were elected the first two US senators from Texas. 50. Kelsey Harris Douglass (1790–1840) was a merchant originally from Tennessee. He served in the Texas Congress. Little else is known of him. 51. The statistics of this battle, known as the Battle of the Neches in present-day Van Zandt County, were as Lindheimer related except that the Texas wounded were twentyeight. Among the dead were Chief Bowles and Big Mush, and, as was the custom, the bodies of enemy dead were allowed to rot on the battlefield after being stripped of souvenirs. The Cherokees and associated tribes fled to relatives in Indian Territory in Oklahoma, though not necessarily as a group. 52. Spencer Seago Stephens (1835–1912).

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Comanche Feats of Horsemanship. Oil on canvas by George Catlin, ca. 1834. Photo by Smithsonian American Art Museum. (PD-1923)

is quite sufficient to maintain free schools, in which 2,500 children of the Cherokees enjoyed the necessary instruction in the year 1874. Meanwhile, our Texas legislature has loaned our significant school fund to railroad speculators who do not even pay the interest and in 1876 our legislature placed our free-school system under the influence of the wealthy who prefer not to contribute to the education of the poorer classes, under the influence of the clergy who do not want to leave the cultivation of their flock to the laity, and under the influence of private schools that do not want to have any competition from free schools, thus crippling and destroying our free-school system. Does it not look like the most infamous hypocrisy, if you spend a lot of money as the United States government does to civilize wild nomadic Indians, who may still practice cannibalism, to get used to farming and permanent residences while you drive civilized Indians who already practice agriculture and livestock from Florida to Texas to Arkansas?

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The former is, however, of interest to Indian agents and suppliers who cheat both the government and the Indians, while the second procedure is in the interest of land speculators. These wild Indians are different from the civilized ones. I have met both types of these Indians personally. The Comanches,53 Lipans,54 Karankawas,55 and Tonkawas 56 are among the former, the Cherokees, Coushattas, and Delawares among the latter. I have spoken to one of the most distinguished chiefs of the wild Comanches, Santa Anna.57 The medium of our conversation was the Spanish language, as the Comanches rarely understand English. Santa Anna was a tall, well-built man of sound judgment. He came several times to the German colony at Fredericksburg with a number of families of his tribe, received gifts, and made a contract with the Germans. About this relationship, he said to me: “You cannot make war with the whole world; you always have to be on a peaceful footing with a part of the people. We want to go to war with the Mexicans and the Bluejackets (US soldiers), but we want to live with you in peace and we want to sell you horses, mules, and Mexican women.” When Santa Anna was in Fredericksburg and the whole town was full of Indians and their wives and children, I asked him if we should fear that the Indians would steal things from us. He said: “The warriors will probably steal nothing, but perhaps the women will; but you should not judge the Indians by your views because they have no idea 53. The Comanches are a Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan people originally from eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma, most of northwestern Texas, and northern Chihuahua. 54. The Lipans or Lipan Apaches are a southern Athabascan people originally from Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas. 55. The Karankawas were a Native American people with no known linguistic relatives, originally from the Texas coast between Houston and Corpus Christi. Some speculate their language may have been Coahuiltecan. In 1858, the last remaining Karankawas in Texas were exterminated from their only remaining refuge on Padre Island. By 1891, the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard declared the Karankawas to be extinct as an organized tribe. Genetic descendants may still exist in coastal Tamaulipas. Lindheimer called them Kavankuas. 56. The Tonkawas are a Native American people with no known linguistic relatives, originally from Central Texas. Some speculate their language originally may have been Algonquian. Lindheimer called them Tonkawais, elsewhere Tonkawäs. 57. Santa Anna (ca. 1800–1849) was war chief of the Penateka band of the Comanches.

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that you can acquire property in any other way than to take it from someone.” My two-year-old son Eugen58 was a lively child who liked to walk naked in the open air. Santa Anna took a special liking to the child and offered me two beautiful mules and a young Mexican woman for the boy, who of course was not for sale. For a drill bit and some drills the Darmstadt colony 59 negotiated for a still very young Mexican girl, who was handed over to my wife for supervision. She escaped from us several times, but was repeatedly captured and I scolded her: “titschi teiwo!” naughty girl. Mr. Hermann Spieß later had the child raised here in New Braunfels and she has now been his spouse for thirty years. According to his testimony she has always been devoted to him with love and childlike confidence. Their children were ostracized because they resembled Native American papooses. Their heads were covered with coal-black hair at birth. At that time, in Fredericksburg, I made the acquaintance of a Comanche approximately eighteen years old. This young man believed that white people had a tool by means of which one could easily open all locked doors and he very much wished to possess such a tool, because on his first raid, which he had taken to Mexico as a boy, it had cost him untold effort to hammer a locked door with a heavy stone; when he had succeeded, he met a Mexican inside the hut; over his left arm he had draped a serape to protect himself and with his carbine rifle he lay in to the attack, shooting but missing the Indian who then murdered him; he took his pleasure with the woman, cut her body and murdered her child—and the young man told me all this with the kind of naïveté as a dandy would report a joyride.

58. Max Eugen Lindheimer was born 15 February 1847. 59. Lindheimer failed to indicate which Darmstadt colony. The Darmstadt Die Vierziger (the Society of Forty), later known in English as “Forty-Eighters” after the 1848 revolutions in Europe, established several so-called Latin Settlements in Texas in order for the German colonists to devote themselves to German literature, philosophy, science, classical music, and the Latin language. The settlers were classically educated intellectuals, but by no means farmers. The colonies attempted in Texas were Castell, Leiningen, Bettina, Schoenburg, and Meerholz in Llano County; Darmstädtler Farm in Comal County; and Tusculum in Kendall County. Today, only two of the communities still have residents.

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Dr. K. E. von Baer 60 (in his publicized speeches) doubts that Indians ate lice. Not only did I often watch this lice eating on my own, but, as a very special kindness by an old Indian woman, I was offered lice to eat from the collar of a little girl’s cloak. As far as the cannibalism of the wild Indians is concerned, it has certainly decreased greatly and, where it still occurs, is kept secret by the Indians. Years ago in San Antonio, Comanches returning from a raid were seen with human arms hanging from their saddles. A band of Indians who had murdered a German wagoner named Kunkel were pursued by the Ranger Captain Highsmith 61 who surprised them in their camp at the Catfish Crossing of the Llano 62 and killed them all. In their camp they found the jacket and an arm of Kunkel’s. Here above New Braunfels, on the banks of the Guadalupe, the Tonkawas had a camp that was much visited by the New Braunfels inhabitants. One day there was a big party in this camp. The Tonkawas had secretly slaughtered a captive Indian and cooked his flesh. I asked them to let me try some of the meat. They made every effort to talk me out of eating a slaughtered human. They said it was the flesh of a Waco Indian63 whom the Americans had killed several years ago (Es el carne de un Waco, que los Americanos mataron 64); it was smoked and stank very much (mucho hede 65) and only pregnant women ate it so 60. Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer, Edler von Huthorn (1792–1896) was a Baltic German (Estonian) naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, explorer, and the founding father of embryology. 61. Samuel Highsmith (1804–1849), originally from Kentucky and Missouri, settled his family at various places, first near Gonzales, then Bastrop, and finally Austin. He served in the army during the Texas Revolution and during the Córdova Rebellion and saw action in the Battle of Brushy Creek, the Battle of Plum Creek, and the Mexican-American War. At the conclusion of that war, Highsmith became a captain of the Rangers and won a notable battle over the Wacos on the Llano River in 1847 and over the Wacos again on the Pedernales the following year. I can find no record of a German wagoner named Kunkel. 62. Catfish Crossing on the Llano River is at the community of Castell, about twenty miles west of Llano. 63. The Wacos are a Caddoan people closely related to the Wichitas and Tawakonis, originally from north-central Texas. Their principal village was located on the Brazos River at present-day Waco, Texas. 64. “It is the meat of a Waco that the Americans killed.” 65. “It stinks very much.”

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their children would inherit the hatred of the Wacos. The obscene display of individual body parts of the slaughtered Indian showed clearly, however, that one was dealing here with fresh and not smoked human flesh. I have dwelt a bit longer on the subject of wild Indians touching many unspeakable topics. I had to do that in order to avoid being accused here of portraying Indians only from their most favorable side. I could mention a few words of note given to me by these children of nature. When I once intended to travel with a poor Indian tribe through the wilds of Texas, these people were quite ready to help me, but made the correct remark that I could not take with me the many drying papers (for pressing plants) on their raids. At the beginning of our New Braunfels settlement, when the local area was still quite tractless and unsafe, I was driven by curiosity to see the area that lies beyond the rocky slope covered with an almost impenetrable cedar forest that closes off the view to the north of New Braunfels. With difficulty I reached the hill. My faithful obedient horse had done amazing things. In front of me lay a broad plateau overgrown with sparse grass that had the appearance of a large and beautiful park with individual clumps of trees, in the background of which the landscape ended with a mountain range. Lost in the sight of the beautiful area, I found myself suddenly near a band of Indians. They were surprised that I had climbed the rocks with my horse and said I had a good horse; but they noticed immediately that the two hammers of my double rifle were cocked and they asked me about the cause of it. I answered them “Caution is good” (cuidado es muy bueno!). They smiled and said I was right. In a cold northern wind, I encountered in the mountains an Indian who was almost completely naked and barely protected from the cold by a woolen blanket. I asked him if he was not freezing. He asked me if my face was cold. I said: No. Then he answered me: “I am all face.” If the adventurous accounts of travelers and romance writers and novelists about the Indians can arouse the interest of the readers, then perhaps I must not fear that I become boring as I represent the individual stages of the primordial development of an Indian who invented a written language for his people without any knowledge, yet one that possesses significant advantages over many other written languages.

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This inventor is none other than the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah.66 He was a half-blood Indian. He was later called “Gist” after the name of his father, a German.67 He hardly knew his father, nor did he know German or English. The Indians believed that the written language of the white people was a mystical gift of the Great Spirit. Sequoyah claimed that writing was merely an ingenious invention that could just as well be made by the red man if he tried. Sequoyah may well have noticed from the beginning that the Cherokee language has some special properties that made his endeavor difficult. It is almost impossible to write an Indian word correctly with English language characters, as the English alphabet is not sufficient. Even the name of the Cherokee Nation cannot be spelled correctly in English or German. An “r” does not occur in the Cherokee language. The Cherokees call themselves Chalaque, which is pronounced so that it sounds as if Schalakke.68 Gist’s first attempt was, of course, to find symbols for words that he usually drew or carved in bark. Through the symbols he could talk to a person who was in another room. Of course, these symbols multiplied in an alarming way. Certainly this was an unfortunate attempt in a language that, like the Indian language, makes words so easily composed of parts. Also, 66. Sequoyah was born about 1770 and died in 1843. Lindheimer consistently spelled his name Se-quo-Yah. Sequoyah signed his name with four symbols in the Cherokee syllabary, which in today’s standardized transliteration would be Ssiquoya, or ᏍᏏᏉᏯ in Cherokee. 67. There are several competing accounts of Sequoyah’s life and ancestry. Since only one can be true, the rest are speculative or fabricated. His mother was undeniably Wuteh, a known Cherokee (but one authority says she was a half-blood named Wuteh Watts). One source identified Sequoyah’s father as a peddler from Swabia named Guyst, Guist, or Gist. Another said the father’s name was George Gist. A third identified the father as Nathaniel Gist (1733–1812), a Continental Army veteran from Maryland, the son of Christopher Gist (1706–1759), a British colonial explorer and surveyor. Several authorities said the father was a fur trader. Yet another claimed Sequoyah was the “son of a Scotchman.” A very early article in the Cherokee Phoenix (1828) asserted his father was a half-blood and his grandfather a white man. Finally, a person claiming to be a descendant of Sequoyah has asserted he was a full-blood Cherokee. 68. In the standardized transliteration of the syllabary, the name is Tsalagi, or ᏣᎳᎩ in Cherokee.

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no such language can be successfully taught by a dictionary if people’s memory does not become stronger than it is now. Three years of hopeless struggle to create a written language in this way made him recognize the true elements of the language. Is it not an admirable fact that in a few years, without books and without a teacher, a man who belongs to a race that we call savage developed what the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Greeks used throughout the ages? Sequoyah discovered that the language consists of some musical sounds we call vowels, and dividing sounds we call consonants. In the determination of the vowels he wavered during the progress of his discoveries, but ultimately chose six: a, e, i, o, u, and the guttural a.69 These vowels had a long and a short sound except for the guttural one. He then considered the consonants and examined the number of their compounds in order to form all the sounds for the words of his language. He first assumed 15 consonants, but chose 12 because g and k in his language were actually just one sound more like k than g and d like t. These 12 consonants are g, h, l, m, n, qu, t, dl or tl, ts, w, y, z.70 It can be seen that if one multiplies these 12 consonants by 6 vowels, one can put together 72 different compounds or syllables. Adding to this the vowels, which can also form syllables by themselves, you get 78 syllables. His alphabet, however, was not yet complete, as the sibilant s occurs in many sounds in the Cherokee language. Because of this sound, he would have had to multiply his alphabet, which is a syllabary, by many characters. He avoided this mischief by using the sign (Ꮝ) 71 for such 69. This is the schwa, the unstressed central vowel (as in: a moment ago), represented by the symbol /ə/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In modern transliterations of the syllabary, it is represented by an upside-down v (that is, pointing upward), or for English audiences a regular v. 70. Lindheimer listed u as both a vowel and a consonant. The consonant is today represented by w in the standardized transliteration of the syllabary and is shown as such in the translation. What Lindheimer listed as the consonant z is today represented by s in combination with a vowel. The silibant s he described in a following paragraph is today represented by s in combination with another consonant. 71. The symbol is difficult to portray using Roman letters. Lindheimer tried to show it as 00, while others have suggested the infinity symbol.

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Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary showing the original script forms and the later printed forms. Sequoyah’s Hand Syllabary, GM 4926.488, Archives of Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Used by permission.

compounds containing s. To express the variable sound g, k, he added a symbol. Since the syllable na can also be aspirated, he added symbols for nah and kna,72 and by also inventing signs for the different sounds of d and t, and for dla and tla, he produced a syllabary consisting of 85 characters. Scientific men were surprised that such a verbose language consisted of only 85 different syllables. However, this small number of different syllables comes mainly from the fact that each Cherokee syllable ends with a vowel, or with a nasal tone, and that this language has no double consonants, except tl or dl and ts and the compounds with the sibilant s, for which the alphabet provides. To give an example of this symbolic font, let us use the name William H. Seward,73 who published the Emancipation Proclamation in the Cherokee language, and was written as ᏫᎵᏎᏩᏖ 74 standing for the syllables wi li se wa te (Wili Sewate). Since no first letter can be given in a 72. Kna is pronounced with a kh sound (similar to a German ch) at the beginning rather than a hard k. 73. This was undoubtedly William Henry Seward (1801–1872), US secretary of state from 1861 to 1869, former governor of New York, and US senator. 74. Lindheimer used the Roman lettering O P 4 G 6, approximating the shape of the Cherokee symbols.

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Iconic painting of Sequoyah with typeset syllabary. Lithographer: Lehman and Duval; copy after a painting by Charles Bird King that was lost in a fire in the Smithsonian in 1865. Source of photo unknown. (PD-old)

syllable alphabet, the Cherokee translator probably did not know what the H meant, and therefore left it out altogether.75 It was in 1821 that the American Cadmus 76 completed his alphabet. In it he used many letters of the English alphabet and numerals. During his investigations, he had received an English spelling book, from which he borrowed many signs. He turned some of them over, others he changed or added something.77 But he had no knowledge of what sounds they signified in English, which is clear from the use he made of them. 75. Also, since no word can end in a consonant, the final “d” in Seward’s name became a separate syllable, te. 76. Cadmus was the mythical founder and first king of Thebes in Greece. He is also credited by the ancient Greeks with introducing the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks. 77. Lindheimer may have confused two things here. Sequoyah’s original syllabary in 1821 was handwritten and the symbols were elaborately and beautifully calligraphic. In 1828, Elias Boudinot (1802–1839), Cherokee educator, was selected by the Cherokee General Council to produce and edit a newspaper in the Cherokee language. Boudinot

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It is very true that Sequoyah’s daughter was his first pupil of this writing. Very quickly, like all the other Cherokees who tried, she learned to read and write using this writing. When Sequoyah revealed his invention to the nearby resident agent, Colonel Lowry,78 who was a man of knowledge, he was reluctant to believe it and suspected that the whole thing relied on memory and that the signs had no relation to the sounds. Like all the benefactors of their race, he was laughed at by people who were unable to understand him. The rapid progress of this written language among his people, however, soon provided the evidence of its excellence. The extraordinary speed with which it was learned was like a miracle. An English reporter said, “My observation is that it takes a year or two, and sometimes longer, for a child to learn to read and write English, but in the Cherokee language, a child learns to read and write in a few days. Once one has mastered the Cherokee alphabet, it is beyond any of the difficult spelling issues that need to be overcome in English.” Georg Gist became part of his people’s deserved recognition and honor. Shortly after his invention, written communications established a link with the portion of the Cherokee Nation who lived in their new home in Arkansas. Eager to spread his invention, Gist walked hundreds of miles to teach his art. In 1823,79 the General Assembly of the Cherokee Nation voted for the mintage of a large silver medal for Georg Gist, in recognition of his discovery. On one side of the medal were two pipes, the ancient symbols of Indian religion and laws. On the other side was a man’s head. The following inscription was on the medal: worked with the Reverend Samuel Worcester (1798–1859) to create and cast type that could then be printed, and later in 1828 the two began publishing the Cherokee Phoenix. The handwritten Cherokee syllabary does not resemble English or Roman lettering at all, but the type that Boudinot and Worcester created does. It is unknown how much input, if any, Sequoyah had in developing the printed type version of the syllabary. 78. John Lowry was a Cherokee who led a detachment of Indians when Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. He may have been the son of a Scots trader of the same name. He was a signer of various treaties with the Cherokees in the years that followed and may have been one of the representatives of the Cherokees to President Madison in 1816. 79. Other sources indicate that the vote came in 1824. The date on the medal is 1825.

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“Presented by the General Council of the Cherokee Nation for the ingenious invention of the Cherokee Alphabet.” 80 Missionaries immediately made use of his invention. His alphabet was tabulated and provided with English explanations. Reverend Worcester 81 tried to establish the basics of a grammar, and Mr. Boudinot 82 and others set up a dictionary. In addition to the Bible, a number of books were printed in that language, as well as from time to time various newspapers, calendars, hymnals, and psalmbooks. In his later years, though almost seventy years old, his energy had not yet weakened. Since Gist did not want to submit to the prescribed practices of Christian confession, some narrow-minded clergy claimed that Gist was a heathen and that they were sorry that the Bible had been translated into his language. They continued to regard him as an ignorant savage while he maintained a proper judgment about himself as well as about them.

80. The full English inscription on the medal at Sequoyah’s home in Oklahoma says: “Presented to George Gist by the General Council of the Cherokee Nation for his ingenuity in the invention of the Cherokee Alphabet.” 81. Samuel Austin Worcester (1798–1859), originally from Vermont and the son of a printer, was a Congregational minister and missionary to the Cherokees. He worked with Elias Boudinot to build a printing office, buy a press and ink, cast the syllabary into type, and begin publishing the Cherokee Phoenix (Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi, or ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ in Cherokee) on 21 February 1828 (the Phoenix has since been revived and is still published today in print and on the internet). Worcester and others were arrested for violating a Georgia state law prohibiting white people from living on Indian land without a state license. (The state wanted to control troublemakers like missionaries and educators from interfering with the state’s interest in expelling the Cherokees and seizing their land.) In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the US Supreme Court ruled that only the federal government, not states, could deal with Indians and vacated Worcester’s conviction. Neither the state nor President Jackson complied with the ruling. (An apocryphal quotation from President Jackson was: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”) Once finally released, Worcester moved his family to Indian Territory, set up the first printing press there, and continued preaching. The Cherokees named Worcester Atsenutsi, the messenger, or ᎠᏤᏄᏥ in Cherokee. 82. Elias Boudinot (born Gallegina Uwati, or ᎦᎴᎩᎾ ᎤᏩᏘ in Cherokee; 1802– 1839), educated in Connecticut, was part of the ruling elite of the Cherokee Nation in the 1820s and 1830s. He initially took the English name David Uwatie; later his brothers used the name Watie. Around 1820, he met Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, president of the American Bible Society and formerly second president of the third Continental

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In his old age, he set himself the task of writing a book in which he wanted to establish the affinities and differences of the Indian languages. Books were not accessible to him, but our brave Indian philosopher was not deterred by any obstacles. He procured some merchandise suitable for the Indian trade, loaded it on an ox wagon with his food and camp equipment, took an Indian boy as a wagon driver and companion, and traveled among the wild Indians of the plain and the mountains on a philological cruise like none that has ever has taken place. One of the remarkable experiences he had was the kindness he found everywhere among the savages, who everywhere enabled him to pursue his research within the tribes. One should not be surprised at the fact that these savages are more grumpy and taciturn toward whites when one considers that almost all scientific and religious researches of the whites squint with an eye for land acquisition. So Gist made several trips and his longest was his last. There was a rumor in the Cherokee Nation that part of the nation was living somewhere in New Mexico 83 and that it had separated itself even before the whites arrived in America. Sequoyah felt he had to do this and hoped to find this part of the nation on his forays. He had camped on the crest of the Rocky Mountains, he had wandered through the valleys of New Mexico, drifting about in the adobe villages of the Pueblos and among the brown unkempt people who are neither Spaniards nor Indians and speak a jargon that is neither Spanish nor Indian.

Congress. The two so impressed each other that Gallegina asked for and was given permission to adopt the elder statesman’s name. With Reverend Worcester, Boudinot (the Cherokee) edited the Cherokee Phoenix from 1828 to 1832. Boudinot advocated that the Cherokees should obtain the best possible terms with the United States for removal from Georgia by approving a binding treaty. In this, he was opposed by Principal Chief John Ross and other Cherokee leaders. In 1836, Boudinot and twenty-one others signed the Treaty of New Echota, binding the Cherokees to removal. After moving his family to Indian Territory and being reunited with his friend Reverend Worcester, Boudinot and two other prominent leaders in the west were assassinated in 1839. Thereafter, Boudinot’s younger brother, Stand Watie, and his followers engaged in an escalating cycle of violence with John Ross and his followers until 1866. 83. One wonders whether Lindheimer intended Nord-Mexico, North Mexico. See the next paragraph of text.

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It was late in 1842 when our wanderer, feverish and with his oxcart broken down, stopped near San Fernandino 84 in northern Mexico. Fate intended his work to perish with him. A little of his work was saved, but not enough to enable anyone to develop his ideas. Poor care, exertion, and lack of medical help contributed to his end, and the greatest man of his race now sleeps not far from the Rio Grande.85 Congress in Washington once talked about retrieving his remains and erecting a monument over them, but this was postponed indefinitely.86 However, the legislature of the small Cherokee Nation included in its general grants a $300 pension for his widow, and this is the only literary pension in the United States.

84. In 1827, the town’s name was changed to San Fernando de Rosas, and in 1868 it was changed again to Zaragoza. It is about thirty-five miles southwest of Piedras Negras in Coahuila. Piedras Negras is across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas. 85. The purported descendant of Sequoyah, mentioned in note 67, alleges that Sequoyah survived, settled in Texas, and is buried somewhere near the modern community of Cherokee in San Saba County. 86. In 1938, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, J. B. Milam, funded an expedition to find Sequoyah’s grave in Mexico. The scholars embarked from Eagle Pass, Texas, in January 1939. They found a grave site near a freshwater spring in Coahuila but could not conclusively determine whether the grave site was that of Sequoyah.

ESSAY 7

Meine Reise und Aufenthalt in Mexiko My Travel and Sojourn in Mexico1

For many years, and recently once again, I have been asked to report in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on my experiences and observations during my travel and sojourn of one and a half years in Mexico. I take up the pen with hesitation and reluctance. I am aware that I can only report my inward feelings and outward experiences that may have practical value and that perhaps may be interesting to the lives of other, or even just a few, like-minded people. There is also the distaste for writers of certain pulp novels and Texas travelogues who, even if reporting what they have actually experienced, through their preposterous fantasy and false descriptions, can nevertheless be suspected of exaggeration if they should occasionally report something unusual. 1. This essay was serialized in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung in ten installments beginning on 2 October 1857, vol. 5(45), pg. 1, and continuing until 11 December 1857, vol. 6(3), pg. 2. Lindheimer also refers to comments made by Sartorius and others “twenty-three years ago,” which would date those comments to 1834, the year Lindheimer traveled to Mexico. The breaks at which each subsequent installment began are indicated in subsequent notes. Lindheimer also noted that he was writing “this report at the request of a party that intends to emigrate from Texas to Mexico” but did not identify that party. Later he referred to “a number of my dear readers” and to the “gentlemen who asked me for this report” in the plural. The financial details that Lindheimer reported would have been of interest to persons interested in a business investment.

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But to the point: In a forest in St. Clair County 2 in the state of Illinois stood an abandoned log cabin that eight young men, mostly newcomers, had chosen as temporary residence. Not far away was the hospitable farm of Mr. Engelmann,3 a master forester, who had recently immigrated from the Bavarian Rhineland 4 with a large family. The eight young men took their meals there. I am sure each of the eight will still remember with pleasure the moment when the ox horn resounded through the forest and called us to meals with the friendly family that, like almost all families, consisted of more than just male members. Great carefully planned hunting parties on which little game was shot, rather more productive individual hunts of prairie chickens, and from time to time a happy banquet to which the neighbors were invited shortened our time in a pleasant way. As pleasant as this aimless and idle life was to all of us for a while, it was sheer idleness,5 and eating out of someone else’s purse was not the purpose for which I had come to America. The forest and the prairie

2. St. Clair County, Illinois, is directly across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. The county seat, Belleville, attracted a large number of German immigrants in the nineteenth century. 3. This was Theodore Engelmann Sr., the uncle of George Engelmann (1809–1884). In 1834, George was living with his uncle’s family before setting up his medical practice in St. Louis. George was strongly interested in botany and would later promote Lindheimer to the botanist Asa Gray of Harvard, sponsor Lindheimer’s plant collecting in Texas, and be Lindheimer’s contact in the Engelmann-Gray-Lindheimer partnership that resulted in Plantae Lindheimerianae. The location of Theodore Engelmann’s hospitable farm has been identified by Minetta Altgelt Goyne as the 360-acre Hilgard farm at Turkey Hill in Shiloh Valley about five miles east of Belleville. Among his family was his daughter Sophia (Sophie) Dorothea Engelmann, who was engaged to marry Gustav Koerner, an attorney and later a judge, Union brigadier general, diplomat, and statesman, who was among the eight young men in the abandoned log cabin with Lindheimer. 4. The Bavarian Rhineland, also known as the Bayerische Rheinkreis, was the region of Germany on the west bank of the Rhine between that river and the modern borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, and French Lorraine. It had been ruled by the Bavarian royal house since the thirteenth century and continued to be administered by Bavaria, even though disjunct from the main part of that state, until the reorganization of West German states in 1946 drew new state boundaries. Today, it forms the southern half of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz). 5. Lindheimer used the Italian phrase far niente, which means “doing nothing.”

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had already put on their pale autumn dress and an occasional Norther warned of the coming winter. The roof of our old log cabin was so patchy that we could make astronomical observations from our beds and the big fireplace warmed the room so little during the last cold winter that a certain doctor,6 who wrote notes daily, had to use two feathers, warming one after the other so the ink would not freeze while writing. Who can blame us, facing the prospect of a North American winter, that a cold terror 7 overcame us and an irresistible longing for the south overmastered us. A great drinking session was held one final time for which, in 1834, supplies had to be brought a day’s journey from St. Louis. A long table was formed by taking the doors of our large log cabin off their hinges and in the evening the courtyard stood full of saddled horses, as if a squadron of cavalry had arrived with our drinks, and our long table was seated with cheerful revelers. A few days later, six of the company,8 who expected to be the forerunners of a southern emigration, took passage on a steamboat down the Mississippi. Originally, we had planned to make a tour on foot through Texas and Mexico. In New Orleans, we were struck by the sight of many fresh orange trees in the gardens, tall-stemmed bananas in the orphanage courtyard, and the tall, and only, palm to be found in New Orleans (on Dauphine Street). What we did not enjoy were the mosquitoes and bugs that were plaguing us still in October in New Orleans. Once in New Orleans, we encountered an adventurer who would reappear several times in Texas and later in the Mexican revolutions, none other than the Baron von Seefeld.9 This man was a great imposing

6. This was George Engelmann, mentioned earlier. 7. Lindheimer used the Latin phrase horror frigidus, literally “a cold terror.” 8. According to Douglas Hale (2005), these were Ernst Decker, Wilhelm Weber, Friedrich Mirus, Eduard and Otto Friedrich, and Lindheimer. The two who remained behind were George Engelmann and Gustav Koerner. 9. At the time of Lindheimer’s journey, the only Baron von Seefeld known was Julius von Seefeld (Julius Johann Carl Eduard Theodor Baron von Seefeld; 1802–1878), who was a Baltic-German landowner and civil servant in Russian Latvia. Various biographical sources for the Baltic states mention no excursion by him to America. The person

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figure with significant strength. At the time, he was supporting himself in New Orleans by giving fencing lessons and guitar lessons, and painting portraits. We spoke with Seefeld about our plan to go to Texas. He warned us against it and advised us to wait until Texas became part of the United States, which most likely would not be very long. He thought we would do better to enlist in the Free Corps10 that he was recruiting on behalf of Bustamante.11 Despite our adventurous project, and probably also adventurous appearance, we had little desire for Seefeld’s offers, just as we had little desire for another offer that was made to us at that time, namely to help find the hidden treasures of the pirate Lafitte.12 If the first offer was to politically freeboot, or if it was a matter of personal fraud against us, the latter offer’s intentions were clearly piratical. An old, good-natured sailor, who happened to have overheard my conversation with the treasure hunter in a Spanish oyster bar, later took me aside and told me it was most likely that a crew had already been recruited and a schooner outfitted, allegedly to seek the treasures of Lafitte, or to serve as a caper against the Mexicans who would soon go to war with Texas. But ultimately, once at sea, we might find that piracy was the sole purpose of the expedition and it would then be impossible to rid ourselves of the gang. When we left Illinois, our intention was to travel by foot through Texas and northern Mexico well armed and supplied with a pack mule to Mexico City where letters of recommendation had been given to us. We soon gave up the plan to travel through Texas when, on our encountered by Lindheimer may have been an imposter (not unheard of at the time) seeking fame and/or fortune. 10. These were, essentially, private mercenary armies of volunteers, common in Europe in the nineteenth century and even well into the twentieth. In the parlance of Lindheimer’s day, they were filibusters, and probably no better than freebooters or pirates except, maybe, for haphazard military discipline. 11. Anastasio Bustamante (Trinidad Anastasio de Sales Ruiz Bustamante y Oseguera; 1780–1853), politician and army general, was president of Mexico three times, 1830– 1832, 1837–March 1839, and July 1839–1841. 12. Jean Lafitte (ca. 1780–ca. 1823) was a French pirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico. He was supposed to have buried treasure in many locations from Louisiana to Central America. Many such rumors focus on Galveston Island.

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arrival in New Orleans, our party diminished by half with three of our companions returning to Missouri and Illinois.13 The journey through Texas appeared to us to be impossible and we could find neither a map of Texas nor any articles or news of that country in the bookstores of New Orleans. Moreover, we were told that recently a company of Poles tried to travel to Mexico by land through Texas and that all were slain by the Indians, except one who had returned to New Orleans in wretched condition. We must confess that, in our impatience to learn something reliable about Texas, the meager and utterly erroneous reports that there were in New Orleans at the time made us very angry. But what could one expect to hear about Texas at that time in New Orleans? A full ten years later when there was a regular postal service between here and there ignorance still prevailed among the people in New Orleans about Texas conditions, which was truly astonishing. This is still the case to the present day about remote locations in the United States. Since I and my two traveling companions were particularly interested in Mexico with its tropical regions, we decided to sail from New Orleans to Mexico and then try to make the journey through Mexico to Texas. We soon found a small schooner that was about to travel to Veracruz. The schooner’s cargo consisted of American chairs and dried fish. For sixty dollars per person we took a so-called cabin passage on this small vessel. However, in order to be admitted to the state of Mexico, one had to have a pass from the Mexican consul in New Orleans, which station at that time, due to this sideline, must have had a not insignificant income because such a pass cost three dollars per person. As we arrived on board the small ship, we were astonished to find besides us three travelers another four. There could be no question of a stay in the cabin for the passengers because it was barely big enough for the captain. Our lot was half a dozen miserable bunks in steerage between the chairs and dried fish. Our traveling party, not the chairs and dried fish, but that of an old Spanish colonel who had emigrated from Mexico upon its declaration of independence and a lively, swaggering 13. The returning travelers were Decker, Weber, and Mirus. Lindheimer continued his travels with the Friedrich brothers (Hale 2005).

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Gascon14 who owned a plantation in Mexico, was quite agreeable compared to the remaining company of two young French dandies who were heading straight to Mexico to make their fortune there. In addition, our captain was one of those disgusting Yankees who seemed to have little understanding even of his presumed trade, navigation. After a night of great extravagance for the captain, he arrived on his ship on the morning of departure still half intoxicated and with burnt hands (with which he had fallen into a fireplace). Even before leaving the Mississippi we had several accidents. First we sideswiped another ship, and then we ran aground on a shoal with the front of our ship. As a result, the whole cargo was moved from the front part to the back to get off the shallows and during this operation, so inconvenient to the passengers, one of our sailors took the good opportunity to escape to the nearby shore and rid himself of the unpleasant captain. The crossing of the Gulf that was estimated to take four days lasted eleven days due to bad weather and the captain’s ignorance. How inadequate his knowledge was could readily be seen, for he made no observations and he did not even use the books found in his cabin. He had nothing to do with Meier’s moon tables and when I talked to him about his American edition of logarithmic tables, whose preface did not even mention Vega,15 he scornfully shoved them aside and opened a book with great self-satisfaction in which simple pictorial views of the coastline of the Gulf were represented and said: “That is my bible.” On the first day of our Gulf cruise, a storm wave washed away all our stock of live poultry from the deck. The result was that we only got very bad fare from then on. We certainly would not have complained except that the Spanish colonel (an old man who deserved better food) 14. Gascony is a historical region in southwestern France. The demonym for its inhabitants (Gascon in English) in several languages has transferred in meaning to indicate a person prone to exaggeration or swaggering. Here, Lindheimer modified the German demonym (Gaskogner) with a different word for swaggering or blustering (bramarbasierend). 15. Out of approximately six thousand stars visible to the naked eye under optimal conditions, fifty-eight “selected stars” are given special status in the field of celestial navigation. The daily position of these selected stars is given in nautical almanacs, aiding the navigator in efficiently performing observations on them. Of the selected stars in the Northern Hemisphere, Vega and Capella are among the brightest and the most commonly used, and conveniently they are almost 180 degrees apart in the night sky.

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Port of Veracruz, showing ships moored to metal rings set in the walls of the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa. Passengers and cargo were unloaded to small boats and carried to the sandy shore in front of the city. Etching by Thomas Moran, 1884. Photo by Cleveland Museum of Art. (CCO 1.0)

and the Gascon remarked that the captain was eating better for himself than we did. The two of them, therefore, complained strongly to the captain who ran into his cabin with great anger and came back cursing and brandishing a saber in each hand. This Chinese bluster aroused general laughter and especially the derision of the Gascon. Full of rage, the Yankee yelled, “Your tongue is too long!” Whereupon the Gascon replied, “In Veracruz your tongue will be too short.”

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Pico de Orizaba, or Citlaltépetl, is the highest mountain in Mexico and third highest in North America. On clear days it is visible to ships at sea approaching Veracruz. Photo by David Tuggy. (CC BY-SA 2.5)

After entering the poor harbor of Veracruz and anchoring our ship to one of the large copper rings that are for this purpose set into the outer walls of the fort of San Juan de Ulúa,16 we passengers immediately boarded a boat that took us, leaving behind our baggage, from that unpleasant ship to shore. At that moment, I turned my face westward toward the new land. Here, at a latitude of 19 degrees, it still seemed to be full summer and yet on the distant horizon I noticed a tremendous snow-covered mountain (the 17,372-foot-high Orizaba17). I told this 16. The fort of San Juan de Ulúa is a complex of fortresses, prisons, and a palace built on an island (now a peninsula) protecting the harbor of Veracruz. The island was named by the early explorer of the Mexican coastline Juan de Grijalva in 1518. The local inhabitants called the island Kulúa or Culúa, and Grijalva added the name of St. John. Construction of the complex was begun in 1565 and after Mexican independence it became a symbol of Mexican resistance to foreign invasions and occupations since everyone entering Mexico by sea had to come (or finally leave) through Veracruz. 17. Pico de Orizaba or Citlaltépetl is now measured at 18,491 feet or 5,636 meters above sea level. It is the highest mountain in Mexico and third highest in North America. It is also ranked as the second most prominent volcanic peak in the world after Mount Kilimanjaro (prominence being a measure of how distinctly the mountain stands out against its surroundings, that is, its independence from other high peaks nearby). Orizaba is less than one hundred miles inland from Veracruz and on clear days is visible at sea.

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to one of my traveling companions, who was so convinced of the impossibility of this apparition that he did not look and said that I could not fool him in such a stupid way. I and my two traveling companions had taken with us only our rifles. These we had to immediately hand over to the custom house because we did not have a weapon permit. The only inn for Europeans who did not yet speak Spanish was kept by a Frenchman who lived not far from the port. We went directly there. Veracruz was an expensive place at the time. For very frugal food we paid two dollars per day. For three bottles of porter,18 of which only one was drinkable, three dollars. To wash each garment, twenty-five cents. Havana cigars were forbidden to be imported and yet they could be bought at all tobacconists for twenty-five cents apiece. How much smoking is nationally characteristic of Mexicans can be seen in the fact that at many stores flares hang all day long for the convenience of the temporary tobacco smoker. In case you want to light a cigar on the street, you ask the first well-dressed passerby for his burning cigar, which is handed over gracefully at once, for which the recipient usually thanks with a tip of the hat. Moreover, the bulk of the paper imported under heavy tax from Spain also provides evidence of the general tobacco smoking of the whole nation, for this paper is not used for writing and printing but for cigarettes smoked by men, women, and children. While we had satisfied our first curiosity in the ancient streets of Veracruz, whose houses are all made up of massive two-story stone buildings with flat roofs, our traveling companions, the colonel and the Gascon, had brought a lawsuit against our ship’s captain at the Alcalde.19 Our entire ship’s company found itself together again in the courtroom. The complaint was made and the colonel and the Gascon each gave a long vivid speech in Spanish in which they described our sufferings and the Yankee’s arrogance against the passengers. This time these two men appeared against the ship’s captain in very surprising form. The colonel wore his colonel’s uniform, whose epaulettes were 18. Porter is a type of dark beer, often referred to as stout. 19. Lindheimer seemed to use Alcalde as the name of a place, but it is actually a person, the chief municipal magistrate or judge of a political unit in Spanish countries; therefore here it is the courtroom where the alcalde holds trials.

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studded with diamonds, and the Gascon wore a Mexican captain’s uniform. The Yankee had become very meek by this time and the Gascon remarked to him: “Is my tongue longer now?” Due to his bad treatment of us and his poor hospitality, the captain was ordered to repay us half of our passage fee. This happened immediately through the merchant house for which the schooner had carried cargo, without any formalities, without instruction, without assistance from constable or sheriff, but solely on our application at the house.20 We had not yet determined where we wanted to travel from Veracruz. We had letters of recommendation to Mexico City. If we had immediately started our journey there, which was partly a very expensive and at that time rather dangerous journey, we would have seen something of the most beautiful region, the tierra templada,21 only on the fly. Fortunately, we also had letters of recommendation to the German colony that is about three days’ journey from Veracruz in the most beautiful part of the tierra templada near Córdoba.22 To get to the colony by the easiest route, which lies off the main road to the city of Mexico, we were advised by a Veracruzian merchant house to travel with a mule caravan from Veracruz to where the road to the German colony leaves off from the main road and from there to be taken to the colony by a guide.23 Meanwhile, until such a caravan left Veracruz, we still had a few days to look around the city. All the houses and the low city walls are built of coral rock, including the harbor breakwater, which is in decay and should cost two million dollars. The streets are wide and clean, with corner posts 24 on the street 20. Beginning with the next paragraph, the second installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 9 October 1857, vol. 5(46), pg. 1. 21. Lindheimer defined this term several paragraphs later. It referred to land lying between 3,000 and 5,000 feet above sea level. 22. Córdoba (current population 140,896) lies about 110 kilometers west-southwest of Veracruz on the modern main highway from Veracruz to Mexico City. The German colony that Lindheimer traveled to was about 90 kilometers northwest of Veracruz and about 140 kilometers north of Córdoba. 23. Routes have changed significantly since Lindheimer’s day, as he discussed when he began to describe his travel route. 24. The word Lindheimer used, Eckpfeiler, means “cornerstones” or “corner posts.” I suspect they bore the names of the streets.

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corners, and iron cannons are planted around the public fountains, where the sea air and the hot climate have already had such destructive effects that fist-sized rust holes are found on the sides. We did not see much of the well-known splendid finery of rich Mexicans during the few days of our stay in Veracruz. Women from wealthy estates hardly ever appear on the streets. Only a few times did we encounter wealthy Mexicans coming from the countryside into the city. Their horses had harnesses studded with silver and embroidered with gold and the horseman had finger-thick golden cords around his broad-brimmed pointed hat, and the precious capa25 was worn around the shoulders, usually a brown or black cloth coat or velvet coat lined with silk. In addition, he wore light blue, very wide breeches that were densely covered on the sides with silver buttons (medios, reales, or rich with doubloons26). Under these breeches wide white linen underpants were worn that were likewise on display because the wide outer pants were always unbuttoned to the knee. The footwear consisted of half boots that usually had a different color than black and were never lacking big spurs. A striking feature in the streets of the city is the tameness of vultures. It is the smaller black species. These birds seem to know that they are protected by Mexican law because they only reluctantly avoid the people of Veracruz. While I was alone at the beach in front of the city, watching the mussels and wrack species washed up by the sea, the great flocks of waterfowl, especially pelicans and red spoonbills, moving back and forth along the coast, and for the first time saw the sea-urchin alive in its element, my two traveling companions happened to have a little adventure that could have been very bad for them. Both wore mustaches, which in Mexico is common only for soldiers. When they came to the entrance of a fort by the city, they went confidently into it and the sentry guard standing there, who considered them officers, not only let them pass freely but also presented 27 before them. As they looked around the fort quite blithely, suddenly a man came to them and said: 25. A capa is a circular mantle or cloak (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 26. These were Mexican coins. A medio was half a real, and a doubloon was thirtytwo reales. Later, Lindheimer gave a value of twelve and a half cents to a real. 27. This is a form of salute while holding a weapon, as in presenting arms.

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“It is fortunate for you that you are Germans and that I have met with you, because entering this fort without permission is punishable by death. If you were Yankees, you would have to endure at least a few years’ detention in the fortress. Come quickly with me out of the fort. I am a German myself, my name is Holzinger and I’m a colonel in artillery.” This was how we first became acquainted with Holzinger,28 who, as the readers of the newspaper should remember, was mentioned in the Texas war of 1836 and who bravely held to his cannon in the last Mexican war in Veracruz such that he earned the recognition of the Americans. This Holzinger, by trade a carpenter from Mainz,29 had gained military honors in Mexico in one of the earlier Mexican revolutions by defending a gorge in a very brave manner with some cannons; and therefore a grant had been given him by the state on the river Guasacualco 30 south of Veracruz. Several times Holzinger visited us in our inn and occasionally tried to persuade us to settle on his grant. He told us a lot about the rich fishing and the precious woods that you only need to fell to get them to market.31 However, Holzinger could not move us with the beautiful mahogany, ebony, cedar, Campeche wood, or guaiacum that he described to make a settlement attempt on the coast below 17 degrees

28. Juan José Holzinger (born Johann Josef Holzinger near Mainz; died 1864) was a German-born mining engineer, captain of engineers under Santa Anna, and colonel of artillery with General Urrea during the Texas Revolution. Holzinger was credited with saving the lives of many captured Texans but could not prevent the Goliad Massacre of 27 March 1836. Captured and taken to Velasco after the Battle of San Jacinto, he was released within a few days with the gratitude of the Texas government for his generous treatment of Texas prisoners. During the Mexican-American War, he led a spirited artillery defense of a city gate during the American siege of Veracruz in 1847. The Americans appointed him governor of the occupied city just a few days later. 29. Lindheimer was repeating a thirdhand, long-held (even today by the Handbook of Texas), but mistaken belief about Holzinger’s trade. He was educated as a mining engineer and traveled to Mexico employed as such, but he came to Santa Anna’s attention when he built a house for him. Obviously he knew carpentry, enough to build a house, but he was not, by education or training, a carpenter, and Santa Anna did not make him a captain of carpenters. 30. In the next paragraph, Lindheimer identified this river as the Coatzacoalcos on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. 31. Lindheimer probably meant by floating the logs downriver. The Coatzacoalcos is navigable for much of its length, as are some of its tributaries.

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north latitude. (If Holzinger is still alive and in possession of his grant, he could probably soon bring about a settlement on it since we in North America became aware that the road along the Guasacualco or Coatzacoalcos and Chimalaya32 would take four and a half days’ journey less than through Panama to get from New York to California. Even the visionary Cortés highlighted this trade route to the Southern Ocean and the East Indies and as early as 1521 Gonzalo de Sandoval investigated this recently conquered part of the mainland.33 In 1771 cannons in Veracruz were discovered to have been cast in Manila. Investigations carried out at the time revealed that these guns came to Tehuantepec by sea, then were brought up the river Chimalpa,34 then carried across six leagues by land, reembarked on the Río Alcaman or Malpaso,35 and down this river to Guasacualco, and finally arrived at Veracruz. This discovery led the then Viceroy of Mexico to once again call the attention of the Spanish Cabinet to the importance of the Tehuantepec isthmus. Even in 1824 proposals were made by the Republican Congress 36 to connect the two seas. Everything failed, however, due to the rivalry of the powerful Veracruz.37) Since we stayed only a few days in Veracruz and since we still could not speak Spanish, I had little opportunity to get acquainted with the

32. This river cannot be identified. 33. Gonzalo de Sandoval (1497–1528) was a Spanish conquistador. He investigated the region of the Coatzacoalcos only after subduing the natives and conquering the region. 34. River names have changed over time in Mexico, and the same river may have different names even today in different areas of the same state. Lindheimer used the names of streams from the official report on the origin of the cannons that was commissioned by the Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix. That report may have meant the stream known today as the Río los Perros. From its headwaters it is a short distance to significant tributaries of the Río Coatzacoalcos flowing toward the Gulf. 35. Either one of these names may refer to the stream known today as the Río el Corte, the primary navigable tributary of the Río Coatzacoalcos. The headwaters of some of its major tributaries are only a short distance from the headwaters of the Río los Perros. 36. Here, Lindheimer meant the Congress of the Republic of Mexico. In other essays he clearly meant the Congress of the United States, but in 1824 there was no Republican Party in the United States. 37. Lindheimer meant the rivalry of Veracruz as a port over potential ports in Tehuantepec.

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native people. Some friendly clerks dressed in white linen from head to foot kindly introduced us to their German coffeehouse and pool parlor, but those did not amuse us very much. So we three travelers were left with nothing more interesting than that each of us crossed the city and then we shared our experiences in the evening. Of course that was not much, but since every little experience in the new country was interesting to us the time passed rather pleasantly. One of us saw a mule driver who had loaded a few bags of charcoal on his beast and on this occasion learned that Veracruz is quite poor in wood. Cooks are so spoiled that they only want to cook with a charcoal fire. The fishermen in Veracruz form a guild and regularly go to sea fishing when the weather permits. The most profitable catch is that of a kind of cod (róbalo blanco) 38 that is salted and dried. The most beautiful fish brought in by the fishermen that were always fresh in the taverns seemed to me to be a kind of redfish (salmon), often so large that two men had to carry one fish.39 The military in Veracruz consists largely of local convicts because being conscripted from the higher elevation of the tierra fría 40 to the garrison of Veracruz or San Juan de Ulúa is almost equal to a death penalty. What struck us about this very European-dressed military was that the soldiers tied cloths around their heads under their helmets and the helmets were set in a dazzling white layer of canvas, both to keep the effects of the tropical sun off their heads. Also remarkable in this military is the really musical talent of the drummers who knew how to represent on their drums in a surprising way the different melodies of their national songs. But the constant shouting and answering, almost childishly, of the line of posts along the city wall during the night kept us awake. 38. The Mexican róbalo blanco or róbalo común is Centropomus undecimalis, the common snook or sergeant fish. 39. In the Gulf of Mexico this is most likely the northern red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus. A ten-year-old snapper can be a meter long and weigh fifteen kilograms. A sought-after game fish, it is also beautiful, commercially important, and delicious. 40. Lindheimer defined this term in a later paragraph. It referred to land above five thousand feet in elevation.

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On an open plaza was a golden inscription on a large public building in which the Constitution of 1824 was mentioned. At that time, of course, it no longer had any validity.41 This constitution was modeled on that of the United States of North America, yet in its third article its death sentence was already pronounced from the outset. The Roman Catholic apostolic religion was declared the sole state religion and any other worship was forbidden. Not far from this building was a narrow, dark alley whose name corresponded entirely to its ancient appearance, for it was called Calle de la Inquisición. Finally the desired day of departure appeared to us. A caravan of a few hundred mules had arrived in Veracruz destined to bring a shipment of quicksilver, contained in thick iron cylinders, to the mining district.42 Before our departure Holzinger got us our rifles again and had our passes issued with permission to carry weapons in our defense (portar armas para su defensa). Another favor offered to us by a clerk, namely to save our money so that we might not be robbed on the nottoo-safe journey, was deferred for, we said, what good could our money do us saved in Veracruz if we were killed? As long as we were alive nobody could take it so easily. The clerk thought that he had major greenhorns 43 in front of him. If we had saved the money in Veracruz we would have simply taken a letter of credit or bill of exchange from a well-known merchant house.

41. Beginning in May 1834, President Antonio López de Santa Anna began issuing a series of declarations and manifestos designed to convert Mexico from a federal system of government to a centralized system of government, contrary to the Constitution of 1824. On 12 June, he dissolved congress and announced his intention to adopt a new legal basis for governing Mexico, known as Siete Leyes or Seven Laws. A new congress adopted the Seven Laws on 24 October 1835 and President Santa Anna made it formal on 15 December. At the time that Lindheimer was in Veracruz, the Constitution of 1824 was legally in effect, but no one in government was enforcing it. These policies of Santa Anna led to rebellion in several states and ultimately to the independence of Texas. 42. Quicksilver is the chemical element mercury. Historically, mercury was used extensively in gold mining to help the gold sink through the flowing water-gravel mixture. Thin gold particles form a mercury-gold amalgam and therefore increase recovery rates of gold. Mercury was also used in silver mining. 43. Lindheimer Germanized the English noun as Grünhörner (plural).

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Travelers on the National Road from Veracruz to Mexico City. Lindhemier mentioned several things shown in this painting—a person in a litter with attendants; a string of mules carrying freight; natives selling fruit; a post rider on a horse; ships moored around the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa in the left background; smaller boats loading passengers and cargo on the beach; and Veracruz in the right background. Oil on canvas painting by Daniel Egerton, 1830. Photo by Bonhams Auction House. Used by permission.

On a beautiful autumn morning we left Veracruz with the mule caravan. It was a long train with almost always only two or three mules walking next to each other. Forward, back, and to the sides were muleteers who, whistling and shouting, drove the animals and kept them from running sideways. The muleteers themselves were still a new sight to us in their short leather jackets and their extremely wide leather overpants.44 Anyone who carried a rifle or saber with him had the weapon fixed to the saddle while at the same time he had it under his thigh, holding it. Old worn-out muskets were kept in leather sheaths as if they were precious weapons. Above all, the lances of these riders gave them an ancient knightly appearance. The shaft of their lances was a kind of 44. These would be leather chaps.

Profile of elevation and vegetation along a line extending northeastward from Puebla to Nautla on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, passing north of Xalapa (above), and along another line extending eastward from Puebla to Veracruz on the Gulf Coast (below). Diagrams adapted by Kathy Chism after Lauer (1973), University of Colorado.

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Royal palm, Roystonea regia; Spanish cojole real; German Königspalme. Photographer unknown. (PD-US)

bamboo cane, not very long, but the tip was longer, which regularly consisted of a narrow double-edged sword blade. When we had passed the low city wall of Veracruz our path led slowly at first along the seacoast and then toward the west inland. On the land side of the city wall there was so much sand drifted in some places that one could easily have entered the city from the landward side. I and my

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two traveling companions walked behind the caravan. A good stretch of the way led through a barren, sandy area that was devoid of all vegetation and in which we saw no other living being except our caravan, not even a fly. All nature seemed to be dead here and at a standstill; even the dead did not experience a change one could call decay. Dead mules lying by the way had dried up into formal mummies. However, as the path gradually ascended, cactus and mimosa bushes appeared, later palm trees (the tall cojole real ),45 and the conspicuous papaya (Carica papaya) at twenty feet high without branches, with a leaf crown of long-stemmed, umbrella-shaped, serrated leaves among and around which hang melon-like fruits on the trunk. Tropical Mexico is known to be divided into three distinct zones that have different climates depending on their elevation above sea level. The lowest and warmest zone goes up to 3,000 feet above sea level and is called tierra caliente. The temperate zone goes from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level and is called tierra templada. The land above 5,000 feet high is called tierra fría.46 On our way through the tierra caliente at that time we did not encounter any major agricultural manor (hacienda). A large stone building, which was decaying and within which my companions saw a huge

45. This would be Roystonea regia, the royal palm. Lindheimer later specifically called it Königspalme. 46. Lauer (1973) also used the terms tierra caliente, tierra templada, and tierra fría but defined them by their plant associations. Lauer’s tierra caliente includes tropical rainforest, tropical semihumid deciduous forest, tropical semiarid deciduous forest, and tropical thorn forest that extends from sea level to 800 meters (about 2,600 feet) in elevation, slightly lower than Lindheimer’s boundary. Lauer’s tierra templada includes only a lower montane forest of oak and sweetgum mixed with tropical forest that grows in a belt between 800 and 1,800 meters (about 2,600 to 5,900 feet) in elevation, in places extending to 2,000 meters (about 6,500 feet), a broader zone than that defined by Lindheimer. Lauer’s tierra fría includes coniferous cloud forest, in places mixed with tropical upper montane forest, coniferous montane forest with oak, pine, and fir, semihumid pine and oak forest, semiarid mixed oak forest, and dry oak-pine forest that extends up to 3,200 meters (about 10,500 feet) in elevation. Above that, Lauer recognizes a tierra helada (frozen land) consisting of an upper montane pine forest dominated by a single species, Hartweg’s pine (Pinus hartwegii), extending to the limits of tree line at 4,000 meters (about 13,100 feet) in elevation, above which are alpine meadows and ice caps. Diagrams of Lauer’s vegetation belts along two cross sections through the Sierra Madre Oriental are included in the text.

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lizard species, we considered to be a monastery ruin. Afterward, we learned that this building was the remains of a failed venture of a rich Mexican man who had tried to grow coffee on a large scale at this place, where it flourishes excellently and does not cost as much as that from the tierra templada farther inland from the coast. The unhealthy climate of the tierra caliente was the reason this coffee farmer could not get any workers. This climate of the tierra caliente is said to be just as unhealthy for Mexicans from the upper country as for newly arrived Europeans; even the horses from above, los arribeños,47 cannot tolerate the lower climate. All day laborers come from the upper country. In the tierra caliente, where in many places four to five harvests each year could be made, where so much thrives without any effort, and where man needs so little food, clothing, and dwelling, few of the country folk actually work. The busiest are still the good housewives who make tortillas, which may take up a large part of the day especially for five to six people. (Tortillas are the common bread of the Mexicans. Corn kernels soaked in water are ground to a pulp on a flat stone and the pulp is then baked on an earthen plate over a coal fire to thin pancake-like slices.) In addition, these women spin without a spinning wheel and weave without a loom. Immediately after our entry into the vegetated part of the tierra caliente we had striking evidence of the simplicity of life in this Eden of the New World. The first large living creature we encountered was a young man of about twenty years, totally naked, who came up from a forest road and carried a bundle of rice on his head. He seemed, however, to be somewhat embarrassed that we surprised him so unexpectedly in his domestic negligee.48 Later, we saw how to procure larger pieces of wood in the tierra caliente for the kitchen. One looks for a suitable piece, at most a moderate trunk of a fallen tree on which there are few branches. Then a behuco (a tough liana) 49 is attached to this piece of wood and this is simply tied 47. The Spanish name means simply “those from higher land,” los de arriba. 48. Lindheimer used the phrase häuslichen Negligé, which is literally translated as that in the text. This could also justifiably be translated as “birthday suit.” 49. Lindheimer actually used the word wehuco, but no such word is known to exist. However, Lindheimer was phonetically transcribing Spanish words that were new to him in the way a German would transcribe them, so the “w” would be pronounced the

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to the saddle, or just to the tail of the horse, and ridden home with it. No ax is laid on this kitchen wood. One pushes it into the hut from one end and makes the cooking fire at the other end. As the trunk burns shorter, it is pushed from the outside. Water is brought in a more comfortable way by hanging a cántara 50 on each side of the horse’s saddle and riding deep into the water until the vessels fill themselves. One makes fences for fields by driving posts into the ground at a distance of about ten feet and binding crossbars to them with behuco, the latter being found of any thickness and length in every dense forest as flexible and tenacious as ropes. For garden fences one uses a cactus species that is similar to the hexagonus and grows straight with prickly stems eight to ten feet high.51 These fences are very regular and graceful. Not all stems are exactly the same length, but are in line. Therefore the people call this cactus species very fittingly organa or organ pipes. The easiest way for poor people to cover their huts is with the feathery leaves of palms, whose twenty-foot midrib is split lengthwise. Each half of the midrib with the pinnate leaflets hanging from it is placed in position on the roof and is tied to the roof battens with behuco. The whole framework of the hut is just as simply made of tied up poles. Instead of the walls they use rows of upright cornstalks that are also tied with behuco. Tables and chairs are not in use by this class, nor are plates, spoons, or forks.

way a German pronounces words beginning with “w” as in Wilhelm and Wasser, that is, like an English “v,” and because “b” and “v” are closely similar in Spanish pronunciation, Lindheimer’s wehuco becomes Spanish behuco. The Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, in its online Diccionario de americanismos, identifies behuco as a species of Cissus, or treebine. 50. A cántara or cántaro is a jug or flagon. Presumably, Lindheimer meant something bigger than what one could lift with a single hand at the Oktoberfest table. 51. Lindheimer was referring to Cereus hexagonus, the queen-of-the-night, but this well-known species is native to Caribbean islands and northern South America. Since Lindheimer described this plant as “similar to the hexagonus,” the likely relative that is native to much of Mexico, Central America, Caribbean islands, Texas, and Florida is Acanthocereus tetragonus, the barbed-wire cactus, used very commonly throughout Mexico for living fences.

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A small field of maize; a small platanar 52 (banana, Musa paradisiaca) that, once planted, costs almost no labor and endures throughout the year, yields fruit year round, and where each plant delivers one hundred pounds of food per year; some chili colorado (cayenne pepper); when the pepper gets high, some brown bush beans, frijoles; and some tobacco, that’s pretty much all a family of these frugal people needs to live on. Why work? Of course, if you have money, you can have the great pleasure of playing hazard 53 and be able to buy all kinds of nice things. But if you have to work hard for these pleasures, then they are too expensive. That’s what the poor native of Mexico thinks, and it is undeniable that just what civilized man must regard as a kind of torpid indolence when it takes place in otherwise honest, benevolent, and contented people, as I have sometimes met among the Mexican Indians, makes these people all the more lovable, especially in such a lush natural setting where poverty is never too poor and the duty to his family does not compel man to work.54 Our mule caravan traveled all day without stopping. The road we followed was the main road from Veracruz to Mexico City; 55 it was so unused at the time that we met hardly any people the whole day. Of animals we saw nothing special. The blackbird,56 so common here in Texas, as well as the red-shouldered blackbird,57 the cardinal,58 the little 52. Lindheimer used the Spanish word for banana plantation. Elsewhere he used the German Plantage or Pflanzung. 53. Hazard was a dice game with very complicated rules. It was popular from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In nineteenth-century North America, the game of craps with simpler rules developed from hazard. 54. Beginning with the next paragraph, the third installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 16 October 1857, vol. 5(47), pg. 1. 55. In the nineteenth century, the main road from Veracruz to Mexico City (la Carretera Nacional) followed modern Highway 140 from Veracruz to Jalapa, passed north of Cofre de Perote (mentioned by Lindheimer in a later paragraph) to Puebla, and then went on to Mexico City. The modern main road now follows Highway 150 from Veracruz to Córdoba, then goes to the town of Orizaba, passes south of Pico de Orizaba to Puebla, and then goes on to Mexico City. 56. This could be a crow or a grackle. Lindheimer Germanized the English word Blackbird. 57. This is more properly the red-winged blackbird in English, Agelaius phoeniceus. Lindheimer called it rotschulterig Blackbird, literally “red-shouldered,” ostensibly a better descriptor than “red-winged.”

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green colibri,59 the little hawk,60 which are common here in Texas, were common there as well. Striking was a small pigeon species (Columba passerina) 61 that was very common along the way. Of the many beautiful birds that live in tropical Mexico, we later got to see many. The reason why we saw so few animals in the first days was that in those midday hours the whole fauna had taken refuge in the densest shadows of the forests. In the whole of nature there is a calm and solemn silence in which one hears only the lisping of the wind in the high treetops (as Theocritus 62 described so simply and beautifully in his idylls). But if we did not see much of the wildlife on our short journey, except for a few birds and here and there a shy rabbit (canecho, little rabbit) 63 or one of the long-eared mula rabbits (liebre of the Mexicans),64 then the flora of the tropics unfolded more beautifully before our eyes. The most conspicuous forms were the cojole real (royal palm) mentioned earlier, which rises to over one hundred feet high, with its crown of long daintily feathered leaves contrasting sharply in the dark blue sky, the thick-stemmed yuccas, on the shady banks of the stream in thickets the towering Cecropia peltata [trumpet tree] with a slender, truncated trunk and a crown of long-stemmed, round, umbrella-shaped leaves, and, above all, the giant fern that sprouts a tall, slender stem on whose summit the long fernlike leaves form a trembling foliage.65 As is well known, the sprouts of the young giant fern come out of the ground in

58. This is the northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis. 59. What used to be called the green violetear (a type of hummingbird) is today split between the Mexican violetear (Colibri thalassinus) and the lesser violetear (Colibri cyanotus). Only the first species occurs in Texas. 60. This is probably the sharp-shinned hawk, Accipiter striatus, the smallest hawk in North America. 61. This is the common ground dove. 62. Theocritus was a Greek poet of the third century BCE. 63. Here, Lindheimer wrote “ein schüchternes Rabbit (canecho, Kaninchen).” This was probably one of several cottontails (Sylvilagus) native to Mexico. 64. This could be any of several species of jackrabbits that live in Mexico. 65. This is quite possibly Cyathea mexicana, a tree fern that grows in Mexico from Puebla and Veracruz southward and reaches a height of fifteen meters. It has circinate vernation; that is, its fronds emerge as giant flattened, curled fiddleheads, described by Lindheimer in the next two sentences.

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a flat disk, similar to ammonoids 66 or the Planorbis. 67 This is how the whitish-green sprouts of the giant fern spring up with the difference that they are as big as plow wheels. Among the plants we know from gardens and hothouses we saw Zinnia, Dahlia, and in the most beautiful splendor Datura arborea (the tree datura); with its six-inch-long drooping white calyx, it spread such a strong odor that it was almost narcotic to stay close to the plant for a long time. To the right, on the horizon of our path, we were accompanied by the changing view of the jagged crest of the Cofre de Perote,68 whose summits are reminiscent of the Alpine horns.69 We passed a few cane huts and a few villages. All I could buy of food in passing was some white onions and a stick of sugarcane that was over two inches thick and had eighteen to twenty sweet links. In the evening we arrived quite hungry at our campsite. I and one of the fellow passengers had shot many small doves that we plucked and gutted while the mules were unpacked. We spent the night near a small village whose name I forgot.70 All the support saddles of the mules were now placed side by side in a long row on the ground while the mules were allowed to run free. A fire was soon lit and a boy of about fourteen years made the cook. The food of the muleteers consisted of dried meat that was cut into long straps (tasajo) 71 and of soaked broad beans 72 (habas).73 For this a sauce of grated Spanish pepper (chili) was

66. Ammonoids are extinct saltwater mollusks with flattened curled shells, also called ammonites. 67. This is a genus of modern, air-breathing freshwater snails with flattened curled shells. 68. Cofre de Perote is Mexico’s eighth highest peak at 4,282 meters (14,049 feet). 69. Numerous peaks in the Alps include “horn” in their name, such as the Matterhorn and Weisshorn. Horn simply means a pyramid-shaped mountain peak in German. 70. The small village Lindheimer mentioned could be the modern community of Puente Jula, Tierra Colorada, Boquerón, or Tolome. 71. Lindheimer consistently spelled this word phonetically as dasago. In Spanish, “d” and “t” are very similar in pronunciation. Lindheimer also consistently transcribed the Spanish sound for the letter “j” as “g,” as in frigole for “bean,” or frijole. Thus, Lindheimer’s dasago becomes tasajo, the recognizable Spanish word for dried meat or jerky. 72. Lindheimer used Saubohnen, which in English could be either broad beans or fava beans. 73. Here, Lindheimer used avas.

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eaten. Since the muleteers wanted to do us a special honor with the juices,74 the cook first had to peel the large beans destined for us, which unfortunately happened in such an unappetizing but customary way that we ate from the unpeeled. To peel the beans, the boy took them in his mouth, bit down on the outer shell, and spit the beans into their intended cooking pot. At dinner I reckoned the beautiful red pepper sauce to be a compote of a pleasant-tasting fruit and therefore proceeded to apply it profusely to a fried piece of meat. The Mexicans could not refrain from their usual exclamation of amazement (“caramba!”). Of course, all too soon I realized my mistake. Wrapped in my coat, the rifle beside me, I lay down pretty early under a leafy tree. The dense foliage of the tree did not protect me, as I had intended, against the heavy nighttime dew. The tree was a mimosa species that folded its feathered leaves so close together in the night that I could see through to all the stars and I was well moistened in the morning. While breakfast was prepared the next morning, several of the muleteers rode out and drove the animals back to the camp. Incidentally, a large number of them were so unruly that they had to be captured with the lasso, which was easy for our skilled lads. The pack train started forward again, but for the pedestrian the way was heartily difficult in places. On routes covered by such mule trains, the terrain in wet weather becomes completely bumpy, or rather wavy, as each succeeding mule steps into the footsteps of the one ahead of it. It was currently dry weather, but the unpleasant unevenness of the path where it led through lower places remained. Eventually, however, the road soon rose again to hard even places. The first notable village we came through was located twelve leagues (about twelve travel hours) north-northwest of Veracruz, the village of Paso de Ovejas.75 Almost all the dwellings there are built in the manner we previously described, except that the walls of the huts sometimes consist of upright wooden poles, but more often of cane (Arundinaria gigantea 76 [giant cane]

74. Lindheimer meant the bean juices or pot liquor. 75. Paso de Ovejas (which Lindheimer transcribed as Ovegas) is about fifty kilometers northwest of Veracruz on the road to Jalapa, not on the modern road through Córdoba to Mexico City. 76. Lindheimer used the obsolete synonym Miegia macrosperma.

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Puente Nacional or Puente del Rey over the Río de la Antigua in Veracruz. Engraver unknown; from Brantz Mayer, Mexico: Aztec, Spanish and Republican (Hartford, CT: S. Drake, 1852). (PD-US)

that is also found in Texas). Paso de Ovejas is located on a small river, over which spans a beautiful Spanish stone bridge. About two hours farther along the way we encountered a handsome place, Puente Nacional,77 which lies on both banks of the Río de Antigua. The place is rightly famous for its romantic location. A magnificent massive bridge of several arches, built in a splendid style of ancient Roman buildings, spans the river that roars wildly over immense boulders and between steep cliffs. The shores are delightfully beautiful and glorious, the lush green and the rich floral splendor of tropical plants that luxuriantly rise 77. Puente Nacional is about twelve kilometers northwest of Paso de Ovejas, still on the road to Jalapa, not on the modern road through Córdoba to Mexico City. When the bridge was first built in 1806, it was part of the National Road from Veracruz to Mexico City.

Historic route between Mexico City and Veracruz. The enlarged inset shows places mentioned by Lindheimer on his journey, including the point where the way to the German colony diverged from the main road. The dashed oval shows the probable location of the German colony, considerably closer to Xalapa than to Córdoba. Map by Kathy Chism, adapted from several sources.

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from cracks and niches include bindweeds,78 orchid trees,79 banisterias,80 et cetera. The whole atmosphere there is pregnant with spicy plant fragrance, especially vanilla or quite similar-smelling flowers. Puente means bridge and this Puente Nacional has always been an important military point that also played a role in the last Mexican war. Our next camp was again at a small village.81 Here the way to the German settlement diverted from the main road 82 and here we were recommended by a letter to a Mexican, where we stayed overnight and who gave us a guide to the German colony the next morning. Both at dinner and at breakfast we were greeted with well-prepared tasajo, roasted chickens, and the national food of frijoles (brown beans). The frijoles are best prepared in the state of Veracruz, in that you do not pour the rich fat into the beans, but pour the boiled beans into the red-hot fat, which makes them much easier to combine with each other. But coffee and chocolate are much thinner in their home country than we Germans are used to drinking. The next morning, three hikers, as usual, set off on foot while our guide was mounted. The land became more and more ascending until we came to a vast barren plateau where trees, water, and human habitation were seldom seen. Sometimes we encountered small groups of trees that had a strange appearance. Vines and lianas were often stretched from the ground to the tops of the trees like the ropes on the mast of a ship, while in the shelter of these trees cactus columns had grown into their crowns (probably because the wind could not overturn them). One of the strangest appearances on these barren, stony savannas was the boundless straight lines of moderately large stones weighing perhaps ten to twenty pounds laid out in different directions 78. Bindweeds are vines belonging to the genus Convolvulus in the bindweed family. 79. Orchid trees constitute the genus Bauhinia in the legume family. 80. Banisterias are shrubs and vines in the genus Banisteriopsis in the malpighia family. 81. This was probably Rinconada, a town ten kilometers west-northwest of Puente Nacional. 82. The road to the mining district (the destination of the caravan carrying the quicksilver) would likely have continued northwestward along the National Road. At this point, Lindheimer, his two companions, and guide would have traveled more or less due westward, climbing in elevation, and would probably not have recrossed the Río de la Antigua since its “steep cliffs” west of Puente Nacional would have become more and more difficult to negotiate.

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as regularly as if they were the layout of a great city. I could not find out what these stones set by human hands meant. In any case, these stone lines are older than the conquest by Cortés and come from Native American Indians. Could it be astronomical figures? Finally, on the evening of a laborious march, we arrived at a solitary hut where we were welcomed and stayed overnight. There was nothing to eat. The next morning we started our march rather slowly; the guide on horseback ahead. About midday we stopped for a rest, while our guide fed his horse with some corn that he poured onto a cloth he had laid on the ground for this purpose. But we and our guide did not have anything to eat or drink with us. When we then moved on in the midday sun with a dried-up palate, we tried to suction up what little there was at this time of seasonal rain. We also shot some birds whose blood we drank. Finally we saw in the distance the bright stone wall of a barranca,83 which one could have compared to the outer wall of a monastery. We asked our guide by signs if there was anything to drink there. The guide understood our question quite well and gave us the answer: “Nada!” We thought that Nada was some kind of national drink, like pulque 84 and tepache,85 which we all had tasted before, and we were very pleased to quench our thirst with Nada. At that time we did not understand enough Spanish to know that Nada means “nothing” in German. However, when we soon found out the true meaning of this “Nada,” we consoled ourselves with the fact that man in life often eagerly longs for a Nada, because he does not yet know what it means. It was not long past noon when our guide said he wanted to see if he could find water in a nearby canyon. He therefore rode off the path and into the gorge that did not seem very deep. We waited a long time, but the guide did not come back. For some time we had noticed that he did not know the way ahead and it was clear to us now that he had just made off. There was nothing for us to do but to go forward. 83. A barranca is a deep gully or arroyo with steep sides (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 84. Pulque is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. 85. Tepache is a fermented beverage made from the peel and rind of pineapples and sweetened with either piloncillo or brown sugar, seasoned with powdered cinnamon, and served cold.

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Meanwhile hunger and thirst had increased so much that we decided to kill one of our dogs in case of emergency. It did not happen since the sun was already low; we knew how short dusk is in the tropics and it would not have allowed us time to explore for fuel in the wood-poor area before dark. Even before the night came I was so exhausted that I did not want to go any farther and lay down. My traveling companions went on a substantial distance. The ground on which I lay was bare rock, but the tiredness made me rest on it very well. But in this season in the tropical area below 19 degrees north latitude, the nights are relatively cool, which caused my rock to cool down considerably until morning so that it drained away so much heat from the side of my body I was lying on that I was almost stiff at sunrise. When I was on my way again, I soon had the joy of seeing several people approaching me. They were, as I found out later, Chimas Indians.86 They carried large baskets of tropical fruit on their backs. I could not speak a single word to the good people because they did not even speak Spanish. Above all else, I bought as many of their beautiful oranges, sapotes,87 and granaditas 88 as I could comfortably carry and then asked them for signs of my comrades. They made it very clear to me that they met them and that they were a good way ahead. To assure me that the persons were my comrades, they showed me that they were two and that one of them had very thick strong arms. Freshly fortified by the enjoyment of these excellent tropical fruits that at the same time quenched thirst and starvation in the most pleasant way, I soon caught up with my traveling companions who likewise had provided themselves with a good stock of edible fruit from the Indian fruit merchants. Finally, in the afternoon we saw a hut in the distance, to which we immediately proceeded. It was a lonely hut of a vaquero, a cowherd. In fact, in this area of Mexico, it is the custom or the law (?) 89 that everyone is obliged to ensure that their livestock does 86. I cannot identify an indigenous Mexican people so named. 87. Sapote can refer to several unrelated fruits. The most likely one in the area where Lindheimer was traveling is zapote prieto or black sapote, Diospyros nigra, a relative of the persimmon. 88. This is most likely the sweet granadilla, Passiflora ligularis, a type of passionflower fruit. 89. Lindheimer himself included the (?), meaning he did not know whether it was

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no harm, while not being obliged to protect their field by strong fences against the livestock. Whoever owns a large herd of cattle, horses, and so on must take care of them and this happens in those places most readily by demarcating land. This frequently occurs by building stone dams or dry walls completely between two ravines and then grazing cattle within these enclosures. However, this cannot be done without the supervision of a herdsman who has to stay permanently on the spot, mainly to protect the herd against predator attacks, namely the jaguar (Felis onca, which the Mexicans call tigre) and the cougar (Felis concolor, which the Mexicans call león and the Americans panther). When a cougar settles near a herd, it usually begins by attacking mules, then horses, and only last by attacking cattle. When we arrived at the house of the vaquero, we were received very hospitably and the wife could not regret enough that in two days we had actually eaten nothing right. Tame ducks were swimming on a pond by the house and the woman told us to shoot some of them, which we did not have to be told twice. After we had restored ourselves well with food and drink, we set out that same evening on the short distance to Mirador,90 the center of the German colony.91 The German colony of which we speak is located in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, about three thousand feet above sea level in the tierra templada, a healthy climate whose high temperatures do not exceed those of Texas and whose lowest temperature does not drop lower than forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. All the tropical plants thrive here, while one is not exposed to the diseases of the tierra caliente. In the immediate vicinity you have the richest vegetation, rocks, streams, forests, savannas, and extremely fertile land and also at the same time, simply custom or a legal requirement. For the benefit of the person or persons requesting his report, Lindheimer was here contrasting Mexican custom or law with that of Texas where, because of laws protecting the use of open range, farmers are expected to protect their crops from their neighbors’ livestock. 90. The German colony probably took its name from, or gave its name to, the present-day town called Miradores del Mar, about thirty kilometers northwest of Rinconada, where Lindheimer and his companions acquired their guide, and about twenty kilometers southeast of Jalapa. In total, Lindheimer had traveled about ninety-five kilometers northwest from Veracruz. 91. Beginning with the next paragraph, the fourth installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 23 October 1857, vol. 5(48), pg. 1.

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because of the constantly rising land from the coast, the most beautiful views. The name of the Hacienda Mirador in which we found ourselves means a place from which you can see far (like the French Belvedere). You can see across the various levels of the tierra caliente to Veracruz on the coast so clearly that you can see the white sails of the ships entering the harbor, whose names are given in the newspapers eight days later. To the north you can see the jagged crest of the Cofre de Perote that runs out into a promontory into the sea. To the west you can see the high mountains of the country and in the foreground the more than 17,000-foot-high Orizaba, whose base is girded with dark forest, higher up by bright green savannas, still higher up rocky terrain with many protruding edges and ravines into the descending glaciers. The upper part of the mountain is covered with eternal snow and on the summit in the pure air of Mexico you can see the open crater of the old volcano so clearly that on the back wall of this crater you can differentiate exact fissures in the rock with your naked eye at ten leagues distance. To the south the view is a bit more limited, but over beautiful forested areas on the horizon you can see the crowns of tall royal palms that tower above everything. But “man does not live by bread alone,” much less on beautiful views and natural phenomena. After the newcomer has satisfied all the senses in rich tropical nature and recovered from the first overwhelming impressions, the first question is, how can one exist in such a beautiful country, what means of subsistence does it offer us first of all, how does the German colony gain a living? and so on. If we first look at the whole German population of this colony we find that it is very small (in the fall of 1834). There are two German sugar plantations that are worked by Mexican day laborers. The one plantation, Mirador, belongs to a certain Mr. Stein, who was formerly employed by a German mining company, and is managed by his brother, Karl Stein. The buildings of this plantation consist of a rather spacious one-story dwelling house of baked bricks, a small building that serves as a tienda (shop) that has little to buy, a blacksmith’s workshop where a German blacksmith works, a trapiche (sugar mill), palenque 92

92. Lindheimer spelled the name palenke.

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Cut sugarcane. Photo by Rufino Uribe. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

(brandy distillery), a sugar refinery, and a few other buildings necessary for this business, and also a dozen huts serving as permanent housing for Mexican workers. The second plantation, Zacuapán,93 is only a few miles away from the first and belongs to Messrs. Sartorius 94 and Lavater. The first was formerly also employed by the mines and the last was formerly a merchant and Swiss consul in Mexico City. The furnishings on this plantation are about the same as those of the first. 93. Zacuapán seems to have been eight to ten kilometers southwest of the modern town of Miradores near Tuzamapán; however, other German botanical visitors to Zacuapán (who specifically mentioned either Sartorius or Lavater) have placed it elsewhere. The botanist Karl Theodor Hartweg visited Zacuapán in December 1836 by riding two days on horseback from Veracruz through a region without regular roads and described it as being on the eastern flank of Orizaba at an apparent location about 50 kilometers south of modern Miradores. When Hartweg departed Zacuapán, he said he arrived in Jalapa the next day, apparently covering 70 kilometers in a single ride. This would require fourteen hours at the pace of a normal riding horse if Zacuapán were 70 kilometers from Jalapa. The botanist Karl Bartolomäus Heller visited Zacuapán in November 1845 and described it as being southeast of Orizaba, about 120 kilometers from Veracruz (he de

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These two plantations or haciendas make up the main base of settlement. They own the whole land where they intend to create a German colony and they are the only ones who actually make a living by selling sugar and chinguirito (sugar brandy) 95 while the other settlers, the few craftsmen excepted, live off the line so to speak.96 It is fair to say that, in our report, we will first examine this most important business in the colony for a closer look. Two types of sugarcane are planted in Mexico. On the eastern side of the country, where the German colony is located, the Tahitian 97 cane does not require artificial irrigation, whereas the East Indian cane planted on the west coast becomes thicker and longer than the Tahitian, with one-third more yield under irrigation; also one can make three to five harvests of the Australian cane from one sowing, or rather planting, while one can make only one to two harvests of the East Indian. scribed seeing the city’s walls from Zacuapán) and at an apparent location about 75 kilometers south of modern Miradores. Heller also said Zacuapán was only an hour’s ride east of Mirador (perhaps 5 kilometers) and 500 feet lower in elevation. Yet only two hours’ ride from Zacuapán (10 kilometers), Heller was in Totutla, a town 80 kilometers southwest of modern Miradores at 4,500 feet elevation. I can only conclude that nineteenth-century German botanists (including Lindheimer) had a terrible sense of direction, distance, and time. 94. Carl Christian Sartorius (1796–1872) was a German theologian, educator, and writer, one of the founders of the German colony at Mirador, and author of several works (one cited in a later note and in the bibliography) on Mexico discussing its plant products. 95. Lindheimer spelled the name chingirito. Chinguirito has also been described as “inferior rum” or as “aguardiente de caña, de calidad inferior” (Real Academia Española). Despite the apparent vulgar root of the word, the name of the drink is not considered vulgar. Evidently, the -guir- stem takes it out of the vulgar into the simply colloquial. Words formed with a -gar- stem are a crude reference to sexual intercourse. 96. Lindheimer used a very outdated phrase, aus der Schnur zehren, literally, “to live off the line.” It comes from an old custom (even in the southern United States) of perforating saved paper money and hanging it all on a string. If things go badly, one must pull money off the line and hence, live off one’s savings. 97. Lindheimer called this Rohr von Otahaiti and alternated between calling it this and australisches Rohr (Australian cane). Otahaiti, Otaheiti, and Otaheite are obsolete nineteenth-century names for Tahiti. The East Indian species is Saccharum barberi and probably originated in northern India; what Lindheimer called Tahitian or Australian cane is Saccharum officinarum, which probably originated in New Guinea. A third species, Saccharum edule, sometimes called Fiji cane, originated in southeastern Asia and is also cultivated but has minor significance commercially.

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The Australian cane at the first harvest delivers 48–50 hundredweight of sugar per American acre and just as much syrup, from which six to seven ohms 98 of rum (chinguirito) of 72 percent alcohol by volume is distilled.99 One hundred pounds of white sugar in the country cost about ten to sixteen dollars. Expenses are about six dollars. It is also expected that the arroba100 (25 pounds) of sugar will yield one dollar in profit. The barrel of chinguirito (an anchor keg 101 of 175 pounds) costs about twenty-five dollars. In addition so much syrup is usually sold to the surrounding Indians that the proceeds often cover the whole weekly expenditures of a hacienda. In Mexico, Tahitian cane takes fourteen to eighteen months to mature. This seems to be the reason why this cane cannot be grown in the United States of North America.102 All work is done by hired workers on the sugar plantations. The expenses are large, considering that on such a hacienda often more than a hundred workers have to be employed. The cost per person comes to four reales (fifty cents) a day, but on Saturday all the money paid out to the workers will be recovered by the owner in the store for goods that are sold with 100 percent profit. Almost all of the sugar produced in Mexico is consumed in the country. If one asks why one does not operate this advantageous business to such an extent that one also produces for export, then the simple answer must be given: first, because the transport to the coast by mule is too expensive; and then because it takes about $10,000 to start 98. Here, an “ohm” (with lots of spelling variations) was a unit of measurement usually for wine (but not limited to that), formerly used in central and northern Europe; depending on the country, it amounted to between 134 and 174.75 liters. Evidently, it derives from the Latin name for a bucket. Thus 6 to 7 ohms = 212 to 323 gallons. 99. This equals 144 proof. The standard for rum is 80 proof, or 40 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). Rum with higher ABV is graded as an overproof rum. 100. An arroba is a unit of measurement in Spain, Portugal, and their former colonies. A Spanish arroba is equal to 25 pounds (11.5 kilograms). A Portuguese arroba is heavier. 101. This is a literal translation of Lindheimer’s Ankerfässchen. It is not a standard unit of measurement. 102. Since Lindheimer’s time, sugarcane has been grown commercially in Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Texas. Today in Texas, sugarcane is grown only in the Rio Grande Valley. Historically, it was grown in East Texas, as evidenced by the annual Heritage Syrup Festival in Henderson.

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such a business; and because capitalists prefer to speculate in mines and trade rather than plantations. The Mexican Indians often have small sugar plantations for which they need no foreign workers. In the simplest way they squeeze the juice from the cane through two horizontal wooden rollers of very moderate thickness by turning one of the rollers with a hand, much like a grindstone. In the same simple way they boil the juice that they then they pour into wooden molds, where they form the familiar panelas 103 when they dry. This business is still quite profitable for the poor Indian. I would not like to advise the poorer German farmers, as Sartorius did, to grow sugarcane for sale to sugar manufacturers. The sugarcane cannot be stopped once it reaches the age at which the sugar juice has developed the strongest. If left in the field for a longer time, it starts to bloom and becomes useless. In this way the small sugar grower would be forced each time to sell his ripe sugarcane at any price, and then, especially if more sugarcane in the neighborhood were ripe at the same time than the factory could comfortably handle, he would be entirely at the mercy of the manufacturer.104 When I claimed in the previous section of my report that in the German Mexican colony so described two sugar plantations were the mainstay of the whole enterprise, because they were the only businesses that earned anything externally, it was hoped that in the near future, even for the less affluent farmers, lucrative employment would be put forward and these hopes related above all to coffee growing. Coffee has not been grown for very long on larger plantations (only since 1818) and this only in some areas, for example, just near the German settlement in the area of Orizaba and Córdoba. Here the small round mocha bean 105 is grown, but also the ordinary variety is cultivated here, which has a big pearly bean and is so excellent that it far surpasses all other American varieties. The creation of a coffee plantation does not involve any significant costs. One usually chooses forest-covered hills whose trees and bushes 103. What Lindheimer called Panela is today called piloncillo in Spanish (in Mexico today, panela is a type of cheese). In modern German, piloncillo is called Zuckerhut. 104. Beginning with the next paragraph, the fifth installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 30 October 1857, vol. 5(49), pg. 1. 105. Mocha is a type of arabica coffee originally from Yemen.

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Coffee berries. Photo by Lienyuan Lee. (CC BY 3.0)

are cut down and piled up in heaps. After these heaps are dried only somewhat in the sun so much that foliage and branches are parched, then you set fire to it in the hot midday hour when all the wood is warmed by the sun. The heaps burn away mostly to a few logs and afterward you roll them up again and burn as much as possible. Young seedlings of coffee trees are obtained by planting a modest bed thick with coffee seeds in a shady forest. On old, long-abandoned ranchos, whose fields are already overgrown with thick scrub, you will often find in the vicinity of leftover coffee trees a lot of young coffee plants that have sown themselves. Of these, about 1,200 to 1,400 trees are planted on the field, which is not first plowed but only needs to be cleaned with a hoe. It is estimated that a family can easily cultivate a plantation of 10,000 trees. Each tree bears one to one and a half pounds of coffee and brings two crops a year, namely one for St. John’s Day 106 and one for Christmas. 106. The Nativity of John the Baptist is 24 June. St. John’s Day and Christmas Eve are six months apart.

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The hardest thing about starting a coffee plantation is that the trees do not start producing until the third or fourth year. Coffee growers must therefore be prepared to procure the means for their livelihood in other ways during the first three years. This will not be very difficult for frugal people, such as German farmers, since field farming is much easier and more profitable here than in Germany or North America. Besides all the German and North American field crops, a large number of tropical plants flourish in eastern Mexico that are scarcely known by name in other countries, and the expenses for a frugal family for some kitchen utensils and clothes are very low. The farmer builds his own house in a much cheaper way like the North American farmer. For the four corner posts you take a firm wood that does not easily rot, usually a tree called cacao (which is not cacao and probably has this name only because of its dark brown color). For more durable houses that are built with a little more care, one mills these corner posts square, which are usually nine inches to a foot thick. The four corner posts are now placed three feet deep in the ground where possible and at the top end, which has an incision or even a natural fork, four strong crossbeams are tied around. To these crossbeams the studs are now put on that have a forked end for this purpose, and many thin horizontal poles are attached to them six inches from each other. Not a single nail is needed at all for the whole house. Everything is tied up with tough, pliable creepers, called behuco. Above it all, the roof is covered with grass bundles. For the rain to drain well, a grass roof must rise at an angle of more than forty-five degrees. The wall of the house can now be made in different ways. The simplest way is to tie up vertical, arm-thick stakes to a horizontal bar connected to the corner pillars halfway up, or to make a kind of rough braid with sticks while throwing straw-adobe at it from the inside and outside at the same time. There is often a lot to laugh about in this occupation, which is usually carried out by Indians on a daily basis, because since the throwing of clay from both sides must happen with great force in the same place, it often happens that one of the workers on the opposite side will have his mouth, nose, or eyes sealed by clay passing through. Most of these houses do not have doors. When the dark-leaved evergreen coffee trees bear their beautiful red fruits, quite similar to a cherry and edible, they are picked at the time

Tobacco plant in bloom. Photo by Jom / Joachim Müllerchen. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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of their maturity and piled into heaps and when the flesh of the fruit begins to rot then the beans, which are the seeds, become cleaned of this flesh in different ways. Each cherry contains two beans, each with its flat side against the other and each surrounded by a parchment-like skin. When these beans are properly dried, they are cleaned of this skin in a very artless way in Mexico, that is by placing them in a conical mortar chiseled into a wooden block and poking them with a pointy butt until all the shells have separated from the coffee beans; then you only need to winnow out the chaff from it. The coffee so cleaned now costs on average a real (twelve and a half cents) per pound on the spot. To bring it to market on the coast, the pound of this coffee would come to twenty-seven cents and this is mainly due to the three-year wait for the first crop, which is the reason that no coffee is exported from Mexico. In the jungle near the German colony you could still see the treelined road that led to the coast that the Mexicans had built before the discovery of America. In our time railways were talked about, but the Mexicans were very much against it because they believed that the Yankees could then journey with a hostile army from Veracruz to Mexico City in a day. Now, of course, other times seem to be dawning in Mexico. The Tehuantepec road will be opened; 107 in Grazacoalcos 108 strangers have settled and the immigration there increases daily. The railroad from Mexico to Guadalupe 109 is doing well and the subscriptions for its continuation to Puebla and Veracruz amount to several millions. Mr. Mendeo, the builder of the Veracruz and San Juan Railway, has begun the project of linking Veracruz and Orizaba,110 and the published report promises 14 percent for shareholders. This train would have to pass through, or close to, the German colony, and thus, if the colony is still in existence, it would ensure its prosperity.111

107. Lindheimer was writing this portion from the viewpoint of the 1850s, not the 1830s. 108. This was probably the port of Coatzacoalcos in southern Veracruz state. 109. The Villa de Guadalupe, site of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was formerly a separate town north of Mexico City but today is incorporated as a neighborhood of Mexico City. 110. Lindheimer was referring to the town of Orizaba south of Pico de Orizaba. The railway from Veracruz to Mexico City, passing through Córdoba and Orizaba but bypassing Puebla except as a spur line, was opened 1 January 1873.

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A second good branch of activity on which the German colonists speculated at that time was tobacco culture. In Mexico, a lot of tobacco is smoked, but tobacco has been a monopoly of the government since Spanish times. In Spanish times, there were specially hired people in the country who destroyed all unauthorized tobacco plants, but even at the time I was still in Mexico and much later, in 1850, tobacco growing was allowed only in the area of Orizaba and Córdoba so that the government could better control their monopoly. The entire crop of tobacco had to be delivered to the government each time, which was then the sole tobacco seller in the country. Of course, without government permission, tobacco was grown in many places, especially in the German settlement. In Mexico, several types of very good tobacco are produced. The treatment is more like that common in Germany than that of the North Americans. Three harvests are made of tobacco in Mexico by picking the leaves at different times. These harvests vary in quality depending on the season. The last and fourth crops are left to the poor workers. When the tobacco is picked, the individual bundles of leaves (manojos) are placed on the side of the field on the ground. By the time they are brought in, they are already pretty withered by the sun. To dry the tobacco, a central house must be built, of course just as light as the previously described house of the ranchero. With a foot-long smooth iron needle the individual tobacco leaves are strung through the thick end of the stem on long bast strips and hung in the drying house. If fog or rainy weather occurs during drying, a small fire is lit in the tobacco house. If the tobacco is to be marketed in Mexico, it has to sweat once or twice after drying. It is bound for this purpose once more in small bundles, but the leaves are laid smoothly and regularly on each other and the bundles are tied up by the petioles. These bundles are then sprayed with water from the mouth just as the tailor sprays the cloth and placed in a round column, the stems to the outside, where

111. As indicated in note 22, Córdoba and Orizaba are about 140 kilometers south of modern Miradores. In other words, a railroad from Veracruz northwest to Miradores, then south to Córdoba would be 230 kilometers long, whereas the railroad actually built from Veracruz southwest to Córdoba is 110 kilometers long.

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they then remain until a hand inserted between the tobacco leaves can perceive an elevated temperature. They are then spread apart again and dried. Sometimes this fermentation process is done twice with the tobacco before it is put on the market.112 Apart from the sugarcane, coffee, and tobacco, no commercial plants or colonial products were currently being produced in the German colony, unless one includes an initial planting of castor oil by Dr. Eichhorn.113 The local Ricinus [castor oil plant] has the advantage over that of the United States of North America because in the tropical climate it is a perennial plant that does not have to be sown every year. But even if the doctor has collected the castor beans through his expensive day’s wages, if he owns an oil mill, and if he has extracted oil, what does he want to do with the oil? The doctor said, then you could sell the oil to a big Mexican city that could use it for street lighting. However, I doubt very much that even if the doctor could make his oil very cheaply, any Mexican city would be moved to illuminate its streets with it. If anyone should ask which other colonial products and commercial plants could still be grown on the border of the tierra caliente and tierra templada in Mexico, one can answer boldly: All! except those that are peculiar to the cold climates, but those can be grown in the tierra fría. Of the many plants that one needs directly for nourishment, very few were also grown in the German colony even though one could list the plants that grow naturally here by the hundreds. Most of all maize was cultivated, more rarely the Mexican bean, even more rarely the excellent manioc and chayote.114 In addition, some plantations had small banana fields and beds of pineapple plants, a few orange trees, lime trees, and shrublike lemons.

112. Beginning with the next paragraph, the sixth installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 6 November 1857, vol. 5(50), pg. 1. 113. Dr. Eichhorn was a member of the German colony in Mexico. Toward the end of this essay, Lindheimer said that Dr. Eichhorn was a physician who had previously practiced in the East Indies, New Orleans, and Tampico before settling in the colony at Zacuapán. 114. Chayote is Sechium edule, a relative of squashes and cucumbers.

Sixteenth-century depiction of native Mexican culture of maize— planting, tending, and harvesting. Photo by Gary Francisco Keller; from the Florentine Codex, artwork created under supervision of Bernardino de Sahagún between 1540 and 1585. Text is in Nahuatl written in the Latin alphabet. (CC BY 3.0)

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If I now undertake to explain to my readers how to grow maize, as I saw it in Mexico, I beg you not to blame me for boring reports and to consider that I write this report at the request of a party that intends to emigrate from Texas to Mexico. By the way, the attentive reader of my report will have found that I report the facts not by hearsay or by book, but by my personal experience and intuition. Maize, this ancient cultivated plant of the Mexicans, is still planted by the Indians in a truly Adamite way, without any field tools, and since these Indians were also the only day laborers and field workers in the German colonies, naturally the German farmers planted their maize in the Indian manner. This happens in the following way. Half of the workers use long pointed poles, the other half divide up the seeds. The workers with the poles then walk side by side through the field. Every two steps the worker pushes a hole in the ground with his stake into which the sower following behind him places three to four corn grains and steps on the hole with his foot. Later, the maize must be cleaned again with the hoe. However, one must not think that the raw land intended for maize is plowed beforehand. It is only cleaned of scrub and weeds. Since maize needs only four months to mature in this area, it can be planted twice a year. Of maize, just as here in Texas, the leaves and tops, las hojas and la punta, are used for cattle feed bound in bundles, manojos (which can be surrounded with two hands), of which a certain number account for the daily labor, tarea, of an Indian field worker. In the shelling of maize, the Indians have a great skill despite their small hands. Using a pointed piece of wood they eject a row of kernels from each corncob, and then quickly free the cobs of all grains by rubbing the cobs using a tied-up bundle of corn stalks in each hand. The Mexican frijoles are a kind of brown bush bean that have an excellent taste. However, the brown and bitter broth that is produced on the first boiling must be poured off before the complete preparation of the food. The frijoles and the banana are the staple food of the country people besides corn.

Banana tree with new saplings near its base. Artist unknown; from Louis van Houtte, 1862, Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe 15(2): 25a. (PD-1923)

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Much has been said in the newspapers about the cultivation of the banana in recent years so that it seems almost unnecessary to mention anything more, provided that everything said was right. What Greeley,115 Douai,116 Büchner,117 etc. said in their time from their abolitionist viewpoint about the banana contradicts what Humboldt,118 Mühlenpfordt,119 Sartorius,120 and the official reports of the Mexican congress have published about it.121 Anyone who has seen a European greenhouse has certainly already seen the banana, with its arm-thick stem that actually consists only of superimposed leaf sheaths and its crown of six- to eight-foot-long leaves. Imagine a dense forest of such bananas whose stems are six to eight inches thick and twelve to fifteen feet high, ending in a canopy of leaves eight to twelve feet long that are constantly trembling and rustling in the breeze and one has a Mexican platanar. Three types of bananas are planted in Mexico (Musa paradisiaca,122 Musa regia, 123 and Musa sapientum 124). Sartorius says of the banana: “It is one of the most glorious gifts the deity bestowed on man.” Once planted it is the most beautiful of the perennials for a lifetime, for although each stalk bears only one fruiting branch and then dies, it produces so many sprouts that at least four per year produce a stalk, which altogether give two hundredweight of nutriment. The almost ripe fruit contains more flour than sugar and serves as a vegetable; the ripe fruit is eaten raw, fried, cooked, and also dried; it serves as feed for domestic 115. Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was a US journalist (owner and editor of the NewYork Tribune) and noted abolitionist. 116. Adolph Douai (1819–1888) was a German Texan teacher, Marxist, revolutionary, and abolitionist newspaper editor (San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung) who created the first kindergarten in the United States. 117. Christian Heinrich Büchner (1804–1855) was editor of the Galveston-Zeitung from January 1847 until his death in 1855. He was originally from Witzenhausen in Hanover (modern Hesse). He arrived in Galveston in 1845 with his four children. 118. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a German geographer, naturalist, explorer, and prolific author with several works on New Spain and Mexico discussing the plant products of those regions. 119. Eduard Mühlenpfordt (1801–1853) was a German author of a work on Mexico discussing its plant products. 120. Carl Christian Sartorius is described in note 94. 121. Lindheimer wrote this essay in 1857, so what he was alluding to here was the association (by some abolitionist writers at that time) of bananas with the slave trade and

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animals, for distillery and vinegar production. The yield starts twelve to fifteen months after the first planting. The fiber of the trunk serves as a binding material and for mesh weave and the twelve-foot-long and two-foot-wide leaf is the tablecloth of the Indian. It is really remarkable how many ways the banana is used as food. In the tierra caliente it makes corn almost unnecessary. Among all the kinds of banana, the plantain (M. paradisiaca) is probably the most useful. Before the fruit is fully ripe and it has not yet converted its starch into sugar, cut the peeled fruit into thin slices, dry it in the sun, and then grind it on a grinding stone to make bread flour. If you cut the ripe fruit into slices and bake them in fat until they get a light brown color, it tastes just like baked apples. If you want to make apple pulp, boil the fruit into porridge and add a few drops of vinegar to replace the fruit acid that is lacking in many tropical fruits. But also enjoyed raw, the fruit tastes very pleasant and can be used more than other fruits as a daily and nutritious food. The cultivation of the banana takes little effort. One plants the shoots and keeps the land clean from weeds until the plants have reached a certain height, whereupon the weeds suffocate under the shade of the broad leaves. In some areas, banana plantations are irrigated. At Mirador they were planted in deeper valleys in fertile black topsoil. The plants are planted six to nine feet apart. On an area of nine hundred square feet one expects about thirty-six banana plants. After ten to eleven months the fruit comes to maturity, but not all

the assertion (by those same abolitionist writers) that buying bananas supported slavery (much like the modern campaign against “blood diamonds”). Bananas, as Lindheimer discussed a few paragraphs later, can nourish many times more people than other foods. Bananas had been introduced to Africa from the East Indies by Arab traders before the tenth century, had spread throughout that continent, were well known to Africans, and were cheap. Spanish and Portuguese slave traders fed their human cargo mostly with cheap bananas acquired before they left Africa. The practice was the most cost-effective means for them to maintain and support their slave trade. Similarly, English and American slave traders fed their human cargo with peanuts, a New World cultivar, which were cheap, but unknown to Africans except as being similar to their Bambara groundnut. 122. This is now considered a hybrid, Musa × paradisiaca. All modern table bananas and plantains are triploid cultivars of this species. 123. No such binomial scientific name is known. 124. Musa × sapientum is now considered the same as Musa × paradisiaca.

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the fruits at the same time, rather sequentially throughout the year, which is very convenient for the maintenance of a family. The fruit in a fifty- to sixty-pound cluster of individual cucumber-like fruits would be very hard to take down from their location ten to twenty feet high unless the stem was made of such a soft material that it was as easily cut through with a knife as bacon, where it then falls with the trunk to the ground and is retrieved. The stem would have borne no more fruit. But from the same rootstock a number of new shoots have already formed before the fruit has ripened, of which the strongest are left standing, each of which bears a fruit in three to four months that is then taken off again by dropping the trunk like the first. One takes the fruits off before they are fully ripe and hangs them up at home under a roof, where they turn yellow in a few days and finally their coat turns completely black. Each single fruit of the large variety (macho) is a three-sided, curved, cucumber-like fruit of eight to ten inches in length. The whole fruiting cluster often contains 180 pieces of fruit. I owned a small banana plantation of half an acre that I had bought for twenty dollars. If I wanted to get fruit from it, I took two clusters each time that I tied together by their stems, put over the saddle, and had my horse trot home. Two such clusters weighed 120 to 170 pounds. Humboldt calculates that half a hectare, not quite two morgens,125 of land planted with bananas will suffice for the food of fifty people, while the same area planted with wheat in northern Europe will provide bread for only about two people in ordinary years. Cultivated with potatoes, it would be able to feed about six. The very significant amount of food that the banana supplies also causes one to be amazed at the small extent of the fields cultivated with it, which in the hot lands is surrounded by strong Native American families living in the vicinity. A kind of banana originating from Africa with short, more roundish cylindrical fruits and with sweet, soft meat is eaten almost completely raw. It does not get much over three inches long and is one of the most delicious of tropical fruits. This species (M. sapientum?), a favorite of Negroes, was early planted by the Spaniards from Africa in the West

125. The Old Prussian morgen was a unit of land measurement equal to between one-half and two-thirds of an acre or between about 0.2 and 0.27 hectares.

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Indies and Mexico. In the countryside this species is called Cambori and Domenico. In the hot valleys of the western slopes a fourth species is grown, Musa troglodytarum,126 which I have not seen. Even the scientific names, M. paradisiaca, sapientum, and troglodytarum, as the main characteristic of this genus of plants, designate that they relieve man of labor and food concerns, and the banana really does that more than the much-vaunted breadfruit tree. For a while my banana plantation was the main food for me and my dogs, and while I was living by the road I sold quite a few for a medio (half a real) for twelve pieces of bananas, while you could buy fifty oranges for a medio. At the time of the Mexican Republic of 1824, when it was desired to introduce all sorts of improvements in the country (among other things camels had been introduced by the government that subsequently disappeared altogether), the Mexican Congress fell into the strange idea of exterminating all the banana plantations in the country because through the cultivation of the bananas people no longer needed to work and were led to indolence. In my opinion, the reason for man’s indolence lies more in his innate character than in external circumstances. The Germans and the North Americans will not become indolent even in a tropical climate and under the paradisiacal bananas because their restless spirit and their ambitious selfishness vouch for them. Of other plants for immediate domestic and kitchen use, I have seen a small plantation, hardly worth mentioning, of cassava or manioc (Jatropha manihot). Its roots reach a great length and thickness, sometimes as thick as a man’s leg. Cooked, or roasted in ashes, it is very similar to sweet potatoes, but of a much firmer substance.127 Grated raw and squeezed, the cassava root yields 75 percent starch flour. All starch in Mexico is produced from the cassava root, where it is the common custom to wear starched white shirts, even by the lowest class of Indians. The use of manioc flour for bread in Brazil is

126. This is now considered a distinct hybrid, Musa × troglodytarum, the Fe’i banana of South Pacific islands. 127. Beginning with the next paragraph, the seventh installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 13 November 1857, vol. 5(51), pg. 1.

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Chayote, Sechium edule. Photo by Praveenp. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

well known. The cultivation of the manioc happens as in the potatoes by laying root tubers, but only in seven to nine months does the plant bring ripe tubers and only in fifteen to twenty-two months do these reach a weight of six to twelve pounds. Last but not least, I must not forget an excellent annual kitchen vegetable, the chayote (Sechium edule), since this plant would also be excellent for some parts of the southern states of North America. The fist-sized fruit of the chayote has almost the taste of a tender kohlrabi and at the same time it also produces many edible tubers in the soil. The planting of the chayote is the easiest in the world. One places a ripe fruit by a fence or a house, whereupon the roots send out vines to cover the fence or the roof of the house, and their tendrils can carry a hundredfold its weight. Now that I have acquainted my readers, I hope, with the farming of the German colony in the state of Veracruz, I have to take them out

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for a change into the beautiful tropical nature of the tierra templada in the vicinity of the settlement, which will be known to some of my readers as that of the world-famous Jalapa.128 Mühlenpfordt says of its location: “In the vicinity of Jalapa nature is lush to the highest degree and the hot and temperate zones unite in a wonderfully peculiar way. Surrounded by mountains and hills, the area is sheltered from north and north-westerly winds that are detrimental to the vegetation farther down and up in elevation. Its height is the same in which the clouds approaching from the Mexican Gulf touch the Cordilleras and this gives the always somewhat humid air a balsamic saturation and the plants an eternally lovely freshness.”129 According to natural law, the 3,000-foot elevation above sea level is nearly 10 degrees latitudinal difference in climate. We find in tropical Mexico all the climates together on the same latitude, and thus the German colony, which is near Huatusco,130 Córdoba, and Jalapa at about the 19th degree of the northern tropical area and about 3,000 feet above sea level, has a fairly moderate climate of about 72.5 degrees Fahrenheit medium heat, while the highest heat levels I experienced there in about one and a half years were about 104 degrees Fahrenheit and the lowest 48 degrees Fahrenheit. In general, the temperature change in that region within twenty-four hours is usually only 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit and the difference between the longest and the shortest day is only two hours there. During the day a refreshing sea breeze blows regularly in the area during the summer and during the night there is a land breeze. During the winter, north winds drive the thunderstorms out to sea, which are then precipitated by the trade winds as fog and drizzle on the eastern Cordilleras. From May to November the rainy season prevails so that those areas have no lack of moisture throughout the year and plant growth thrives, grows green, flowers, and bears fruits, which is also why in this area some plant species that are annual in a northern latitude remain alive as a perennial plant for many years.

128. Jalapa or Xalapa-Enríquez is today the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz. It lies only fourteen miles northwest of modern Miradores del Mar. 129. Eduard August Emil Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico (Hanover, Germany: C. F. Kius, 1844). 130. Huatusco is about midway between Córdoba and Jalapa.

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In the area of the German colony the rainy season started in May and stopped in November. In the German colony it was a sure sign that in one or two days the rainy season would begin as soon as we could see the town of Córdoba behind the mountain lifted by mirage. At the beginning and toward the end of the rainy season the rains came a little bit irregularly, but in the middle and often for months the rains came regularly on the hour. At four o’clock in the afternoon a thunderclap was heard, as if a signal shot, and then soon the rain dripped over the forest and lasted intermittently until after midnight. In the morning and the day it was the most beautiful bright weather. The whole plant world grew rapidly. Of the beautiful natural phenomena that I have experienced in each area, I will only mention: In the light and clean air, smoke from fire often did not rise up, but lay down in a low layer close to the ground. I had built my hut on the top of a cone-shaped mountain, where it was quite strange when the smoke from my cooking fire, instead of going up in the air, often rushed like a stream down the side of the hill.131 At the same time, a peculiar phenomenon was that the fog, driven by the north wind, lay in such a beautiful horizontal level in the valleys that it looked like a gray sea, extending on all sides, out of which the mountain peaks jutted like a row of islands. When the savannas were burnt on the slopes of Orizaba, one might have sometimes thought that the old volcano had started working again, because during the day thick clouds of smoke from the ravines of the mountain could be seen and at night long rows of sharp flames. Before the rainy season the cut-down and dried hedges and smaller trees were burned in the cleared land. The fire spread like a raging storm and the larger trees that the Mexicans could not cut down with their paltry tencole 132 were moved back and forth, as if by a windstorm, at the pleasure of the moving heat, until at last their leaves and branches 131. The phenomenon Lindheimer described is due to air inversion, when the normal decreasing temperature gradient of the atmosphere with height is reversed such that air near the ground is colder than the overlying warmer air. 132. A tencole is a short-handled, often crescent-shaped knife with the cutting edge on the inside curve, shaped somewhat like a question mark. It was used for clearing sugarcane fields in somewhat the same manner as a scythe cuts wheat, but designed for

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also caught fire. Everything was crackling, snapping, and popping. The whole sky was covered with smoke and the tropical sun was shining like a dark red disk. On the next day, when the fire was over and the sun again shone bright and warm, the snow-white hills of ash made a singular contrast to the summer weather. In the dark blue sky, the stars shine and flicker as brightly in the night as in a clear German winter night and when the full moon shines, it spreads a light as clear as a Nordic day. What makes the tropical full moon night even more deceptively similar to a German day is the longer shadows that you will never see so well in the vertical tropical sun. In the morning, when the sun rises over the narrow long waves of the sea, the snowy summit of Orizaba glows just as beautifully as fresh snow on the Swiss Alps. Sometimes, when the sun has just set, the whole western sky divides into three fields tapering to the point of setting, of which one is red, the second blue, and the third bright yellow, while in the blue field the evening star shines brightly. When the sun goes down and the play of colors in the western sky comes to an end, sometimes in the eastern sky, like a dawn, there appears a red reflection of the redness already disappearing behind the mountains. After a brief twilight, the night follows quickly. At the sight of such marvelous celestial seas, there is truly no need for any special sentimental character. But if a man is alone and limited only by his memory, he may break out into the words of the pious Parsi: 133 When ofttimes we have seen our sovereign ride, His raiment golden, gold on every side, Himself and his great lords with jewels bedight, Sown thick as hailstones, have you at such sight

the tougher sugarcane stems. It probably cut only one stem at a time. Elsewhere, Lindheimer described harvesting sugarcane with a machete. Modern cane knives, also called tencoles, are heavier and more substantial than those of Lindheimer’s day. 133. What follows is a four-stanza quote from a poem by Goethe, from the eleventh book (Parsi Nameh) of his work West-östlicher Divan, published in 1819. It is slightly altered or perhaps misremembered by Lindheimer. It is also only the second, third, fourth, and sixth stanzas of a work of nineteen stanzas. The English translation used in the text is that of Edward Dowden in West-eastern Divan (London: J. M. Dent, 1914) from Goethe’s original.

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Never within your breast felt envy rise? Or did a nobler Presence feast your eyes, When on the wings of morn you saw ascend, Above the countless peaks of Darnavend 134 The sun’s bowed rim? What man, if this were shown, Could stay from gazing? I have known, have known A thousand times 135 living so many a day, My soul, with the sun’s coming, borne away. And when the fiery disk was full outlined, I stood as if in darkness, stricken blind, I smote my breast, and all my life a-glow, Cast me to earth with forehead bended low.136

When I said that in the tropical climate of Mexico all the climates are on the same latitude, I would like to add that sometimes they are so close to each other that you can wander through all the different climates in a few hours. Mexico has high, snow-capped mountains with a very cold climate. At the foot of these mountains there is a temperate climate in the tierra templada, and when there is a 2,000-foot-deep barranca nearby, it has a hot climate at the bottom. A similar barranca is that of Santa María at some distance from Mirador. At the bottom of this barranca flows a stream and there are banana fields and a church surrounded by tall palm trees. Closer to Mirador is another beautiful canyon that is only 800 feet deep. These barrancas are common in the local area and elsewhere in Mexico; they are canyons of often narrowing and expanding bottoms with vertical side walls. At the bottom a small brook usually flows and they have the appearance of being cracks and fissures caused by volcanic vibrations in the rock floor because the opposite edges and angles of both sides of the barranca often corre134. Darnawend, or Darnavend, according to the Goethe Wörterbuch website, is supposed to be the highest and holiest mountain in the Parthian sun cult Mithraism. 135. Lindheimer used Tausendmal, which makes more sense than Goethe’s published “Tausend Mahl” (thousand meal), and that is how Edward Dowden translated it. 136. Beginning with the next paragraph, the eighth installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 27 November 1857, vol. 6(1), pg. 1.

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spond clearly with each other. Entrances and passages through these barrancas are always only a few narrow, steep paths that are only accessible to people and mules. During the rainy season, most of these barrancas are impassable because at the bottom the small brook swells to a wild forest stream that thunders among boulders and tree trunks. Sometimes during the rainy season, in the revolutionary wars, the belligerent hostile parties on the opposite sides of a barranca could face each other for months without the other side being sorry. Mr. Eduard Friederich137 had a rancho on which his house stood near a narrow barranca across which no path led. Opposite him, on the other side, lived a Mexican family that we could see so clearly each day that we could distinguish their facial features. However, we never visited these people. It would take a whole day to ride around the barranca. Our group of five once made a trip to the 800-foot-deep barranca mentioned before, lying close to Mirador. The path that led to it was steep, but fairly comfortable. Halfway down, a kind of shelter was formed by a broad overhanging rock under which we found the traces of many people who once sought protection here during a revolution, where, as usual, improvised robber bands under the guise of insurgents had made the land unsafe. It was winter when we descended into the barranca, but down below the butterflies, snakes, monkeys, and parrots were as frequent and spirited as they were above in the summer. We also saw a banana plantation of an Indian below. The most beautiful thing in the barranca that one of our party wanted to show us was a fantastic waterfall that you only got to see if you swung around a sharp edge of the rock wall. After we had saturated ourselves at the sight of the beautiful torrent, of course we had to climb around the same rock corner again. Since I was considered the best climber, I stayed behind until the end. Since every creeper and every root had already been torn down by my predecessors, it was a barren impossibility for me to climb around the rock parapet. Mr. Otto Friederich, who at that time possessed an extraordinary strength in his arms, came as close as possible to the ledge and stretched out his arm toward my side. With one foot I

137. The Friederich brothers, Eduard and Otto, were Lindheimer’s traveling companions from Illinois to New Orleans and on to Mexico.

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stood on his hand and happily swung around the fateful corner, where deep below me the brook thunderously flowed into foam and dust. As I have noted from the beginning in my report on the German colony in tropical Mexico, I have been asked by a number of my dear readers for this report to be published. My effort was to give my readers an interest in this part of Mexico, to give vivid and personal explanations that are not found in detail in books. However, whoever wishes to have only an entertaining reading in my report, for him this may often seem too much of the petty and the insignificant. But just when one looks at a country not only from the bird’s-eye view of the statistician, but from the closeness of daily life on the spot, one gets a vivid and detailed picture of it. It was my endeavor to give such a picture, because in this way I hoped to best satisfy the demands of the gentlemen who asked me for this report. Only two installments of my report, I think will follow: Today something about the life of the natives and the native animal world and the next time about the internal conditions of the German colony. A detailed essay on the natives of Mexico can be found in Mühlenpfordt’s “Mexico,” 138 which is very worth reading. It is astonishing that in Mexico there are many different tribes and even different indigenous peoples who speak not only different dialects but very different languages. Only a few inhabitants of Mexico, only those living near cities, speak Spanish. Those who do speak Spanish speak the language very purely, although they speak very incorrectly. They confuse related terms almost constantly, such as mercar and comprar, sell and buy. The Indian sounds very strange with its many declamations and with the so often repetitive tl that almost disappears into every word. The differences among these guttural sounds are often so subtle that it takes years of observation for a stranger to distinguish them by ear, let alone to pronounce them. Of course, the Christian missionaries were forced to learn these aboriginal languages for their purposes of conversion, but the pronunciation was always very difficult for them. So an Indian once told me, when a Spanish clergyman who preached in Native American wanted to put the congregation in the strongest emotion by mentioning the “holy blood of Jesus Christ,” all laughed because he used the 138. Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico.

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Indian guttural sound of the word blood as if he spoke of the sacred “bean” of Christ. One strange peculiarity I have noticed in the Aztec language is that they count using a quinary (base-five) system rather than a decimal (base-ten) system. As for the family life of the Mexican Indians in the vicinity of the German settlement, many live in common-law marriage because spiritual copulation is usually too expensive for the poor man. In general, spouses live very peacefully. The children go naked until the seventh year. Adult Mexicans are more resistant to cold weather than we Europeans and definitely have a thicker and less sensitive skin than us. In general, as I have come to know these Indians, they are polite, kind, and benevolent people, but have a very special tendency to always rather tell the untruth as the truth. They have a lot of mechanical skill and are very accurate in their work. They are not very strong, but they can nevertheless carry heavy loads over long distances. If you want to get a letter sent to some distance, you should probably do it by packing the letter with a heavy stone, for then they consider the matter more important and secure the letter better than they would do otherwise only for a worthless piece of paper. Except that sometimes, but rarely, in the colony, an Indian was drunk on chinguirito (brandy from syrup and sugar), these Indians live so moderately in eating and drinking that one hardly understands that humans need so little food. Meanwhile, at almost every meal the Mexican enjoys Spanish pepper, chili colorado (Capsicum annuum). When cholera had invaded this area a few years ago, many died. Indians were quickly gone and no medicine seemed to help them. The German doctors blamed the overindulgence of Spanish pepper for this phenomenon. Also, the frequent enjoyment of this pepper seems to have an influence on the color of the skin. The usual food of the local Indian consists in the well-known tortillas, brown beans (frijoles), and a broth of corn, atole,139 more rarely in meat that is usually cut into thin straps and dried in the sun (tasajo). The Mexican Indians are often very good hunters and usually do the hunting in the original old way, armed with dogs and with a hunting 139. Atole is corn meal that is cooked and eaten as a mush, much like modern grits or polenta.

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Solingen blades were often personalized. The back side of this blade says “Meves Berns” and the front side says “me fecit Solingen” (“Meves Berns of Solingen made me”). Meves Berns (blade) and Gottfried Leigeb (hilt). Photo by Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

knife. The dogs corner the animals and the hunter intercepts them with his knife. There once were deer here,140 but few, even a beautiful small gazelle species,141 chestnut brown, as big as a common chicken dog 142 with little black horns (gamito to Mexicans 143). Also, raccoon and opossum are common here. Mexicans call the raccoon tejón (badger) and the opossum tlacuache. Also the jaguar (Felis onca) and the cougar (Felis concolor),144 the American tiger and panther, el tigre and león of the Mexicans, are hunted by brave hunters without firearms. When the animal is cornered at the end of a ravine, the hunter holds out a leafy branch or serape145 with his left hand and kills him with his machete.

140. There are several Mexican subspecies of the white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus. 141. Gazelles are restricted to Africa and Asia. What Lindheimer was undoubtedly describing was the pronghorn, Antilocapra americana, of which the Mexican subspecies is now nearly extinct. 142. Lindheimer used the word Hühnerhund, which indicates a gundog specialized for hunting birds, such as retrievers, setters, and pointers. 143. The Spanish name literally means “little deer.” 144. In this passage, Lindheimer had the scientific names, Mexican names, and American names reversed relative to the German names. (In an earlier passage, after the travelers had been abandoned by their guide, Lindheimer used all the names correctly. This may have been a typesetting error.) They are corrected in this translation. The jaguar is now classified as Panthera onca and the cougar as Puma concolor. 145. Of course, a serape or sarape is not a leafy branch, but rather a long blanket-like shawl worn like a cloak and often brightly colored and fringed.

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The machete is a two-edged blade three feet long,146 that carries the inscription on one side: “No me saques sin razón” and on the other “no me envaines sin honor” (Do not draw me without cause and do not sheath me without honor). Despite the Spanish of the inscriptions, these are but good old Solingen 147 acquaintances. Sometimes the predator retreats into a cave. Then the entrance of the cave is filled with dry wood and brush and closed by rolling in boulders. The brushwood is lit and the animal suffocated by the smoke. Once I attended a tiger hunt where they smoked the animal trapped in his cave for three days. On the second day, the animal roared so hard at times that it overcame even the thunder of a heavy storm. Only very carefully did the Mexicans venture into the cave on the third day. The animal was dead and its beautiful coat completely intact from the fire. The body without the tail measured six feet. When I skinned the pelt, I found a musket ball between the fur and the flesh on its right side that had hit the animal on the left side and had thus run through half the body. A Frenchman, a neighbor of mine, shot a cougar pursuing a monkey on a tree. Both the aforementioned jaguar and cougar were full of fleas and ticks. Oddly enough, the Mexicans eat the meat of the cougar, but not that of the jaguar. Good edible game animals are tapirs,148 armadillos,149 and monkeys.150 Tapirs were completely eradicated in the area of Mirador; because of their tameness they were so easy to hunt. Armadillos are very tasty, but the tastiest meat I’ve ever had is monkey meat. If human flesh is as tasty as it is supposed to be, then the Comanches, Lipans, and 146. Lindheimer was clearly wrong here. A machete has only one cutting edge, like a hunting knife he mentioned earlier. In addition, most machetes are twelve to eighteen inches long. 147. Lindheimer’s reference was to Solingen in Nordrhein-Westfalen near Düsseldorf. Solingen is officially known as die Klingenstadt, the City of Blades. It has been renowned since the Middle Ages for the manufacture of fine swords, knives, scissors, razors, and other cutlery. Solingen blades were often personalized with inscriptions on the blade in the first person, as if the blade could speak. 148. This was probably Baird’s tapir, Tapirus bairdii, at the northern extreme of its natural range. 149. This would be the nine-banded armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus. 150. This was perhaps the Mexican howler monkey, Alouatta palliata mexicana.

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Trakoways 151 cannot be blamed for those cannibalistic cravings. Once, when I entered an Indian hut, they had a peeled male monkey on a spit that looked just like a two-year-old boy. It cost me some willpower to eat the offered meat, but I really did not regret it, so sumptuous was this meat. Key points in the lives of these Mexican Indians are their social pleasures. I have not seen much more of it than their so-called fandangos; but these are so happy, cheerful, and at the same time so decent and frugal dance pleasures as I have never seen anywhere else. If one wants to hold a fandango in the local area, one lets the neighborhood know, provides for a pair of guitar players with their guitars and their singing of dance music, and lets some skyrockets rise in the evening, whereupon men and women dancers gather at the hospitable ranch. Nothing is eaten at such fandangos and very little drunk, at best some almond milk that is made of the seeds (pepitas) of a large gourd, costs nothing, and tastes very refreshing and pleasant. Very many dances are always performed at such a fandango. These usually consist of the men in one row facing their partners in the other row, but there are also dances produced by only a single man and a single woman. One of these dances is a kind of weapon dance, where the dancer skillfully moves between the tips of the double-edged blades of his comrades standing around him and even with his own sword makes all kinds of dangerous twists and turns. A fun-filled dance for a girl is that, gradually, dancing constantly, all the hats of the surrounding men sit on her head and then she finally dances with a turret of hats on her head in the most evocative graceful manner, whereupon general applause, but always to the beat of the music, and the dancer then is entitled to small gifts that she collects from those gathered into a hat. Common dances are the bolero,152 carpintero,153 la paloma.154 A quite peculiar dance is el huerfanito, the orphan child. The men in one row face the women in another row. The men all kneel to a given sign

151. These were probably the Tonkawas. 152. The bolero originated in Spain, but today there are numerous regional and national variations. It is generally slower, 3/4 time (but the Cuban bolero is 4/4 time), without the foot tapping of the carpintero or paloma. It may involve couples or lines of men dancing simultaneously with lines of women.

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Traditional dancers of Veracruz in their nineteenth-century dress at a recent exhibition. Photo by Talento Tec. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

of the music. The women introduce the orphans and dance around the kneeling men, making clear caresses to the “poor orphan,” all corresponding to the words of the song of the guitarist. Quickly, at a given sign of the music, the men jump up and dance for a while opposite the women until they drop to their knees at a given signal and are then lovingly served again by the women. In another dance, each man dances alone with his partner. The woman sings an improvised verse to the beat of the music and the man then replies singing with the tempo of the music. When the improvised verse pleases the audience, they clap and laugh, but only in time with

153. The carpintero involves rhythmic tapping of the feet with the beat of the music (usually fast), creating the sound of a carpenter or a woodpecker. Men dance first on one side for a few bars, then the women on the other side, alternating through the song. 154. El palomo y la paloma emulates an amorous couple of courting lovebirds moving in circles with lots of foot tapping to the beat of the music. The woman, her arms outstretched left and right, holds the hem of her skirt in each hand. At times the man drops to one knee and the woman moves her skirt back and forth as if fluttering in joy while circling the man. At the end of the dance, he drops to one knee and she wraps her wings around her insistent mate.

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Cane knife or tencole from the 1800s. Roberto Fortuna, National Museum, Denmark. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

the music. For half an entire night I have seen these Indians have a wonderful time in the most respectful and polite manner, by the light of some tallow candles and with cigarettes in their mouth, and without food or drink. Domestic animals: Horses were kept in the German colony only as riding horses that one would tether by a rope to a bush where grass was present in the proximity and occasionally feed with corn. I did not hear of a horse theft while I was in the colony. The sugar plantations of Stein and Sartorius, as well as the coffee plantations of Gründler, had a significant number of mules that they used to transport their products. Over these mules an overseer was set (a mayor domo). The mules ran around freely in the area. There were no cows except in the vaquería I described earlier and that was managed by a specially employed herdsman. Milk and butter

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were not available. Draft oxen did not exist. There was no plow on any of the plantations of the colony and yet at the time of planting the sugar plantations could have saved twenty dollars a day plowing the furrows for planting the cane instead of letting the Indian workers plant them with the tencole that, as mentioned earlier, is nothing more than a two-foot-long heavy forest knife with a hoe at its tip. I only saw pigs tied to ropes at the homes of Indians. Goats sometimes came to tens of thousands, with half a dozen or more herdsmen and dogs leading a nomadic way of life. They were in the tierra fría in the summer and in the tierra templada and caliente in the winter. All the surrounding hills were covered with these bleating herds and in three days savannas and all bushes were as bare as if grasshoppers had been in the country. Predators followed these great herds and some goats were lost despite the watchfulness of the herdsmen. Some were also sold by the herdsmen por dos reales per head. When I inquired about the use of these large herds of goats, I learned that they belonged to candlemakers in Mexico to supply tallow. In the life of animals living in the natural state, many things are very curious. There are different types of monkeys. Some live in troops and roam. They know exactly at what time and at which place certain fruits are ripe. They much prefer the pods of the vanilla, as well as beetles. Both excite its sex drive. Tales of monkeys kidnapping women were also told in Mexico, but believed by no one, because the Mexican monkeys are not big and strong enough. At night, monkey troops often howl like dogs. Mr. Otto Friederich once wounded a monkey with a shotgun without killing him. The animal made a terrible scream and in the high tops of the trees a whole monkey troop gathered like a windstorm. Mr. Friederich stayed very calm. The monkeys did not come down to him, but threw scrawny branches at him, and when they ran out of them they threw their excrement at Mr. Friederich and urinated on him. A species of small wild pig (pecarí) 155 lives in large herds and becomes dangerous to humans. Sometimes a hunter has had to flee from them up a tree. I have often seen traces of many hundreds of these animals together. 155. This is the collared peccary or javelina, Pecari tajacu.

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Several species of parrots live in flocks, such as the so-called cotorra.156 Whole flights of these come in the morning from the tierra caliente up into the tierra templada for feeding and fly back in the evening to their night quarters in the tierra caliente. It is remarkable how these birds always fly in pairs next to each other. Single bachelors fly behind the main flock. A strikingly beautiful parrot of a rather large kind is a burning red color.157 Hummingbird species are very diverse and common. It is interesting to observe these little animals, how the little males swarm the little females, quietly sitting in a row on a branch, from all sides, back and forth, flying over and under the branches in an arc around the female. The big red, stubby ants in southern Mexico are probably the same as the Texas ones, only a little bit larger, and are very dangerous to the corn houses when they are full as they often carry off a significant part of it during the night. Each ant carries one corn kernel at a time. That is why in Mexico this ant species is called arrieros (carters).158 An ant of quite a peculiar kind is the army ant, a rather small black ant. They seem to be moving almost constantly. They run fast, often only in a finger-wide strip. When they come into a house, they search the whole house and clean it of all vermin, fleas, bedbugs, scorpions, etc. The army ant is a very peaceful animal if left undisturbed. A raid of army ants often takes three to four days and nights. Once the army ants came into my hut, proceeded up the table leg over my table and around my plate. Extraordinary is the migration of butterflies, for example the Colias [clouded yellow butterflies or “sulphurs”], Heosilica,159 Morpho,160 Achilles,161 Leilus 162 and others to the northeast. In about six weeks many of these butterflies will have flown off without laying eggs. 156. Cotorra is a generalized Spanish term for any member of the superfamily Psittacoidea, the true parrots. 157. This is possibly the scarlet macaw, Ara macao, which reaches its northernmost limit in Veracruz state. 158. Actually, arriero in Spanish means “muleteer” in English. 159. The identity of this genus name is unknown. 160. These are morpho butterflies.

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Anyone who has not yet seen the metallic colors of these big day butterflies cannot imagine it. One, seven inches wide with the most beautiful blue color and with three-quarter-inch eyes on the wings, which seem to look neat, is a new species and was called Morpho Uranus.163 We also found splendid new species of beetles, notably a large, vivacious green beetle with shining points belonging to the lineage of Culopygos.164 The German colony: 165 After the Lower Rhine Mining Company had dissolved, several of their officials remained in Mexico and among these was Mr. Gründler and one known since the German people’s movements of 1817, Mr. Sartorius. Mr. Sartorius associated with Mr. Lavater, who was formerly a Swiss consul and merchant in Mexico City, and both founded the previously mentioned sugar plantation Mirador on a league of land166 acquired by the merchants Stallforth and de Wilde in Veracruz. Almost at the same time, it seems, Mr. Gründler bought a piece of land on the same league where there was a Mexican rancho and started a larger coffee plantation. Then Messrs. Sartorius and Lavater sold the Hacienda Mirador to a Mr. Stein, who was said to have made a significant fortune in the Lower Rhine Mining Company during the insolvency of that company. Stein handed over the administration of Mirador to his younger brother who, at the time when Sartorius and Lavater owned Mirador, had a tienda (store) there. Sartorius and Lavater then moved to the lower part of the league, to another sugar plantation in the tierra caliente that they called Zacuapán.

161. Morpho achilles does not occur in Mexico. 162. This is probably Urania fulgens, the urania swallowtail moth, at the northernmost extent of it range. 163. This is unlikely. The only similarly named butterfly is Morpho uraneis, which is found only in South America. The type is from Brazil. 164. The identity of this genus name is unknown. 165. Beginning with this paragraph, the ninth installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 4 December 1857, vol. 6(2), pg. 1. 166. A league usually referred to a unit of distance. In Spain and its colonies, there was wide variation in what that standard of distance was. A league of land encompassed a square that was one Spanish league on each side, and again, this area varied based on the local standard for a league of distance. Since Lindheimer wrote this after settling in Texas, one can assume that what he referred to was a standard Texas league of land, which in Texas was officially established as 4,428.4 English acres, or about 6.9 square miles or a square about 2.6 miles on a side.

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Not long before our arrival at the colony there had arrived several Germans who had bought into the colony and cultivated land. A Mr. Ziehl of Nordhausen, with wife and several children, had created a smaller coffee plantation, grown tobacco, and made cigars. A Mr. Renker, a strong young man from Lauterbach in Hesse, had a servant with him and grew corn and tobacco with the help of Mexican day laborers. Another young man from Lauterbach, Bär, by profession a pharmacist, lived with a servant and had set upon the unfortunate idea of a brewery in the colony, where there was a great shortage of customers and cash. A German physician, Dr. Eichhorn, who had previously practiced in the East Indies, New Orleans, and Tampico, lived on the Hacienda Zacuapán, where he made a planting of Ricinus [castor bean plant] to make large quantities of oil. He had not achieved a result at the time. Mr. Eduard Friederich, one of my traveling companions, had bought a lonely nook of land called el rincón del faisán (pheasant haven); he built a Mexican house on it and ordered several machines for ginning and grinding corn from North America. Mr. Otto Friederich, my other traveling companion, lived with me for a while on top of a lonely forested mountain in a homemade hut and we were engaged only in collecting of natural resources. Later, Otto Friederich helped the younger Stein, usually called by us Don Carlitos (little Carl), in the administration of Mirador and I directed the double distillery in Zacuapán that ran day and night. At the uniform temperature, the fermentation was regular right up to the hour and a strong spring, constantly running through the chill-pot, spared the trouble of the distilling in the usual way. Mr. Otto Friederich had also cleared a piece of wood by hand, planted ten thousand coffee trees, and milled the wood himself into a German home. A Frenchman also lived nearby on a small rancho who did the barrelmaking work for the two distilleries. A German carpenter and a German blacksmith lived at Mirador, and in Zacuapán a German potter and brickmaker, who, in addition to the clay molds for the sugar blocks, also provided some other work. The tailoring and shoemaking in the colony was provided by Mexicans. The whole colony consisted of about nineteen adult men, five of whom were married. Lavater did not very much agree with Sartorius’s settlement plans, calling it an unfortunate idea that Sartorius wanted to

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imitate the North Americans where things were quite different. Land speculation by attraction of German immigrants seemed to be a very advantageous thing since land in Mexico is infinitely cheaper to obtain compared to the northern states. Land was sometimes given by the government as a grant, or by a private person, on the condition that it be settled with immigrants, to whom it could then be sold. During our stay in Mexico, Minister Arriaca once said that he owned 100 leagues of land near Córdoba and that he wanted to give away 25 of them to somebody who settled them with German settlers because that would make his other 75 leagues worth more than his 100 leagues was worth then. A colony as small as the German that lies like a hermitage almost cut off from all roads of communication in solitude cannot bring to market the relatively insignificant products of its smaller farmers. If one had produced coffee in larger quantities one could only sell to large cities where many foreigners live, such as Mexico City and Veracruz, because the Mexicans themselves drink little coffee. Small quantities were worth being carried by mule transport and with larger quantities there would be the more expensive cultivation by Indian workers and not much came from the expensive shipping of Mr. Carlitos Stein. The same thing happened with the other products of the smaller farmers. All families and individuals, except for the more independent ones of Sartorius, Lavater, and Gründler, were oppressed by the leaching system of Carlitos Stein. All needs were only available through him if one could not support transport mules and drivers. Stein also controlled the meat sales of the colony. From time to time he had an ox slaughtered, the meat of which he sold the arroba (twenty-five pounds) for fourteen reales, one dollar and seventy-five cents, that’s seven cents per pound, while the oxen came to him in any case cheaper, like currently here in Texas where butchers sell meat at half that price. In fact, as Stein himself said, nothing was sold below 100 percent profit in the store. In the real world, however, there were often 200 to 400 percent profits. For example, a machete (Solingen blade) cost six reales (seventy-five cents) to buy and was sold by Stein for four dollars (more than five times more expensive). All the smaller farmers and craftsmen of the colony paid and received payment almost exclusively by settlement with Stein, where he did not hesitate to make a shabby profit off the smallest of them. For

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example, letters that came to Stallforth and de Wilde by ship cost nothing. They were occasionally sent to the colony with a returning mule transport that had brought sugar and chinguirito to Veracruz and for such letters Stein sometimes charged two dollars each. At the time of harvest, he regularly bought corn from poor Indians, which he could do from these reckless people at a reasonable price, although they then would have to buy it back for double that before the next harvest, of course not for cash, but on credit at Stein. In order to be able to carry on this business, Stein had offered the partnership of the corn trade to Mr. Otto Friederich, who had a sum of cash, but found it more advantageous after doing business to pay Mr. Friederich interest on the money borrowed than to share the profit with him. But not only in these small transactions did Stein frighten off the competition, but especially in his sale of sugar and chinguirito to the not very distant town of Córdoba and he would not have liked to see it, if Mr. Friederich, who had the means, started a sugar plantation. So long as there is no steady, but only an occasional, sales outlet for the products of smaller farmers, so long as there are few routes for wagons available to the market places in which the farmer on his own wagons without the help of expensive mules and forwarding companies à la Stein to bring its products to market, then we have to consider such a small closed colony lying in the wilderness, as the one described, as an absurdity that must impoverish itself and in which all artisans and small farmers can never come out of the pecuniary dependence of a peon. In the meantime, however, the colonization of Mexico will be very different in the next few decades. A country that has such abundant sources of aid in terms of its natural and cultural products must, with proper management, communication, and transport, soon take one of the first places in world trade. Once the already projected railroads connect the interior of the country with the ports of export, then an enterprising generation of Americans and Europeans will soon pour into Mexico, and then, by diligence and wealth combined with intellectual superiority, oust the meager Spanish-Mexican civilization in the spirit of English, German, and French Europeans. Railroads, transit roads, commercial interests, land speculation, improvement of agriculture, improvement of manufacturing, better exploitation of mines, increas-

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ing national wealth and with it increased needs, civilized pleasures, and spiritual education will then in a relatively short time also raise Mexico’s materially and intellectually busy life into modern times. The days of seclusion abroad that Mexico has inherited from Spain are numbered. In any case, the Mexican population is not a homogeneous national whole, but only an aggregate of alien national elements that mistrust and challenge each other. The material advantages and spiritual amenities of a higher civilization will not be resisted by the Spanish-speaking cities for long. The self-dissembling and hostile tribes and nationalities of the Native Americans, who were generally only the pariahs and serfs of the nation and their rulers and have always been used to resignation, Christianity grafted on later by no means freeing them, care little for politics and social status. They were just as satisfied under Spanish rule as they were under their own rulers. They did not make a revolution against Spain and rarely fielded troops during the first revolution. They are merely mestizos and mulattoes, the descendants of the whites and the priests who incited the Indians to revolution. The Indians, however, have so many honorable qualities that, despite their reserve, adherence to the manners of their fathers in agriculture, commerce, and household, and their apparent indolence, they can certainly, though slowly, be won for a higher civilization as soon as they can be assured of a reliable source of income and a secure ownership of their possessions. In a word, the large mass of the population, the Native American, certainly presents little difficulty in the way of new settlers in their beautiful, sparsely populated country. The hybrid population of mixed races makes up the relatively small contingent of rebels, thieves, revolutionaries, and robber gangs. After a ten-year period of European immigration, the political and social conditions of Mexico will change completely. Should an uprising against the whites be formed at most among the brown mixed race, then it would be the sign of the complete annihilation of Sartorius and other men, well known to the circumstances, if they have not succumbed to their destiny sooner. “It will be wiped out of the ranks of the nations. Then it will not have the strength of an energetic development, for it cannot resist the stream of the Caucasian

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race.”167 That’s what these men talked about twenty-three years ago, before they thought of a filibustering expedition168 and separating the province of Texas. Yes, in a jocular way, the most audacious filibuster cravings were expressed among us, mindless of the hopelessness of conquering the beautiful little-inhabited and unused land by means of a German contribution toward a sizable army of volunteers, so long as European and North American politics did not intervene. Just as the Crusades and the Napoleonic war brought the most distant and isolated peoples into close contact and thereby became powerful bearers of ideas, on a smaller scale the Mexican-American war has suddenly brought both peoples into close acquaintance with one another and prepared them for the speculation that is now fast-paced in Mexico.169 No filibustering expedition will conquer Mexico now, but the many-tentacled arms of the railways and its material advantage will bring Mexico into the inevitable and intermittent intercourse with civilized nations and conquer it for the culture. We are convinced that these developments in Mexico will be one of the most interesting of the near future and we hope to see German colonies of quite different vitality emerge there than the one we lived in twenty-three years ago. The conditions in Mexico and our experiences then were so stagnant they still live with us. As far as mercantile and social conditions are concerned, and especially the founding of colonies, this will change more a year from now than in the past.170 When I said at the beginning of my report how and why I came to Mexico, at the end of my report I must also say how and why I left Mexico again. After the previous sections one might think that a closer explanation is not needed. Who would want to live in a colony and in

167. Carl Christian Sartorius, Mexico als Ziel für deutsche Auswanderung (Darmstadt, Germany: Christian Kichler, 1850), 49. 168. Lindheimer used the word “filibuster” in its original sense, that of an American freebooter, adventurer, or pirate engaged in inciting insurrections or revolutions in Latin American states in the nineteenth century. 169. Lindheimer was writing this in 1857, long past the conclusion of the MexicanAmerican War. 170. Beginning with the next paragraph, the tenth and last installment of this essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on Friday, 11 December 1857, vol. 6(3), pg. 2.

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a country where the probable conditions predicted for him were an unworthy dependence on a few people? However, our actions are not simply guided by simple thoughts and wills. Chance, or rather the power of external events, and even diverse secondary events, also has a great influence on our actions. So maybe I would have stayed in the unwholesome confines of the Sartorius and Lavater distillery for a long time if the sugar fields of these gentlemen had not burned after I had been in the distillery for a month. (When the cane is ripe and warmed by the midday sun, it’s a very flammable material.) Soon after my departure from the distillery, I found myself in a far more comfortable position and might have stayed in Mexico for a long time if the Texan war had not broken out. I had previously mentioned a Mr. Gründler, who owned a coffee plantation in the colony. This gentleman kindly invited me to join him on his plantation. In the past, I had had little opportunity to make Gründler’s personal acquaintance, for unfortunately in the German colony as small as it was there was already a good amount of the wellknown German disagreement that had increased almost to personal animosity; and as I happened to first become acquainted with Stein and Sartorius, who spoke only reproachfully against Gründler, it is, of course, since they lived far apart from each other in any case, that I did not exactly seek the closer acquaintance of Gründler. Incidentally, the reasons for the disagreement between Gründler and Messrs. Stein, Sartorius, and Lavater seem to have been far too insignificant to be tempted by them to disturb the friendly coexistence of the other few people living in a confined wilderness. For my part, I have taken so little part in these conflicts that I have mostly forgotten the insignificant basics of them. Not so Mr. Eduard Friederich, whose indignation against Gründler went so far that he demanded satisfaction for it. A place in the forest was cleared of scrub; unfortunately, I had not been able to refuse the function of a second for this very unpleasant, and I would like to emphasize unnatural, event for the little colony. Gründler was about to appear on the spot when Sartorius, who had learned of the matter, sent us a messenger informing us that the event was considered a criminal offense under Mexican law and that he was obliged to report it. Thus ended this event.

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Later, when I lived with Gründler for a time, I came to know him as a prudent and orderly man, who, to be sure, could not have an interesting conversation in the same degree as Sartorius, but with whom, however, I still spent the most enjoyable days in Mexico, except for my former hermitage. Every morning we got up before sunrise, Gründler made coffee on a coffee machine, and each time we took our breakfast at the sight of a beautiful sunrise over the sea. After breakfast we went to the fields and assigned tareas (daily work) to the Native American workers that were also punctually completed by the workers every evening when we went looking for them. Usually in the morning at breakfast we read Mexican newspapers and in the evening we played chess. Nowhere else in the colony did I read newspapers or play chess with people. In our seclusion we lived such a comfortable life that it made me think of the Phaeacians of Homer; 171 but nevertheless, through the medium of the newspapers, we took the most vivid interest in everything that happened in the world. Often one could clearly see in individual articles of the Mexican newspapers that a not inconsiderable portion of Mexico took a large interest in the Texans. After the glorious resistance that Zacatecas had achieved, the usurper Santa Anna had massacred its citizens so mercilessly,172 as he later would do to Fannin’s division,173 only Texas had the last hope that the Constitution of 1824 would be upheld. Alongside these, in the Diario del Gobierno, bombastic articles appeared describing “how the insurmountable Mexican army, carrying on its flags the sacred image of the Guadalupe (María) across the Rio Grande, will chastise and exterminate the heretics who live like a snake in her breast.” Other articles were unmistakably written by friends of the Texas uprising, such as a vivid account of Milam,174 who helped to foster Mexi-

171. The Phaeacians were the last peoples encountered by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. They described themselves as “the furthermost of men, and no other mortals have dealings with us” (book 6, line 205). Though distrustful of strangers, they nevertheless gave Odysseus refuge and finally returned him to Ithaca, ending his ten-year journey. 172. Santa Anna first quelled the rebellion in Zacatecas (12 May 1835) before moving against Coahuila y Texas. 173. This refers to the Goliad Massacre, 27 March 1836. 174. Ben (Benjamin Rush) Milam (1788–1835), joined José Félix Trespalacios and James Long in a filibustering expedition in 1819 to help Mexicans gain their indepen-

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can freedom and later was dragged from dungeon to dungeon, rescuing himself by swimming across the Rio Grande where Mexican friends kept a strong horse for him ready to flee, on which he made a great ride through a desert several hundred miles long, like Mazeppa,175 until at last his racer and he fell down exhausted. Milam was lying under a mesquite bush near Goliad. He heard an armed band approach and he believed that these were his Mexican pursuers; then he heard English spoken that sounded so friendly to his ear. It was a group of Texans who wanted to take over the fortress at Goliad. After a joyful recognition, Milam was unanimously chosen to be the leader of the expedition, “which he carried out in the most glorious manner,” and that was described in detail with lively participation by the reporter in the Diario. Likewise, in the Diario, one could often find excellently “translated” (?) 176 freedom songs of the “brash” Texas rebels that were apparently Spanish-written originals. The Mexican newspapers often frankly called Santa Anna the Napoleon of the West, and it sounded almost ironic, if it were not perhaps the stupidity of the author of a long article, to compare the “glorious northern campaign” into Texas with the Russian campaign. I realized that right then was the time when I could accomplish the original plan of my trip to Texas in the most interesting way. If I hurried, I could reach Texas before the fight was decided, maybe before Santa Anna’s army had engaged with the Texans. Now Gründler revealed to me, but too late, his offer that I should manage his plantations until he got himself a partner from Europe, who would use his money to enable him to operate his business more vigorously. However, my decision to go to Texas was already made. I had sent quite a few things from the

dence. Milam later assisted in the capture of Goliad by the Texans and then was killed in the capture of San Antonio. Lindheimer’s account generally follows what is known about how Milam came to join the Texas Revolution, except perhaps the “unanimously chosen to be the leader of the expedition” part. 175. Mazeppa, a Poem, by Lord Byron (London: John Murray, 1819), recounts a fictional legend about a real Ukrainian Hetman (headman), Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), who, supposedly after consummating love with the wife of a Polish count, was tied naked to a horse that was taunted and proceeded to travel across much of eastern Europe before he was freed. 176. The question mark in parentheses was Lindheimer’s.

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United States to Mexico, for which I had to pay Mr. Carlito Stein significant transportation costs, and now I had to sell all of them out of hand at a very low price, for which I then received a promissory note from Stein instead of payment. He finally paid me off in heavy copper money that I had to exchange again in Veracruz. I was soon prepared for the journey. I needed only a strong suit for the war that was newly made for me by the Mexican tailor at Mirador. Since a silver shipment from the upper country was currently traveling to Veracruz at the time, and lately several murders had taken place on the highway, I found the way to Veracruz very uncertain. So I had Stein give me four strong horses that we, myself and a Mexican servant, rode in turns while each of us was keeping another horse close at hand. One travels in Mexico usually at the gallop but, because of robbers, we greatly accelerated our journey so we arrived in Veracruz on the afternoon of the second day, unfortunately not without a sensitive mishap for me because during the fast riding in the night the cloak bag with my clothes was lost. My Mexican companion at that time was leading the horse on which the cloak bag was located and I have no doubt the Mexican himself unbuckled it and threw it into a hedge to take home on the way back. This Mexican had fastened the cloak bag on the saddle himself and it is unheard of that a thing can be lost on the way if a Mexican has packed it. It was, at the very least, a great recklessness to give me just that Mexican who once, as a desperado with his machete in his hand, was seized by me, thrown to the ground, and bound because none of the nearby Mexicans, gathered by Mr. Stein at the command of the Alcalde, had the heart to do this. This Mexican was now quite hostile to me, as I could remember his talking with passing Mexicans, where I heard him quite clearly call me a villain (“es un pícaro”). Only once, during the whole ride, did we allow ourselves a few hours’ sleep in a village by tying the horses to the trees in front of the house of a friend of my companion and lying down on the ground near the horses. My weapons and my dog were lying next to me and it would not have been easy for someone to approach unnoticed. It was different with my Mexican who had his few reales in his pocket and wore big spurs during his sleep. When, for the first time, I heard again the surf of the sea that can be heard at a great distance, a longing to reach the other shore soon

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took hold of me that was certainly no weaker than the homesickness of Cortés’s people when they heard the surf again. Arriving in Veracruz, my guide took me to an inhospitable Mexican pub, and the next morning, after paying the bill for both of us and our four horses, I exchanged the pub for the posada 177 of the Frenchman with whom I had lodged when we arrived. As I said, I had lost my only proper suit on the way and therefore I was forced to appear in the city with very bad clothes that actually I wanted to throw away in Veracruz. My reception at Stallforth and de Wilde (the agents of the colony) was therefore also very cold, and I was told that I would not even be admitted to a hospital in case I became ill. On our way to Veracruz, we had already seen the harbingers of the disease, namely many large land crabs that migrated to the coast for laying eggs. These crabs are of quite the same quadrangular shape as the sea crabs and about four to five inches wide, but are not edible as they have almost no flesh but, if eaten, cause fever. Every spring, before the sick time begins, these crabs come to Veracruz where they are a veritable pest because they fall into the city wells and cellars and rot there. The gentlemen at the establishment of Stallforth and de Wilde believed that I was probably coming to claim their charity. They advised me to return to the colony as soon as possible. At their gracious request, I also answered them quite dryly what they could do for me: “Pay me this exchange,” and presented them the paper in question. Luckily I had on my second horse another small bundle that was not lost and in which, among other things, there were a pair of black silk tricot pants and likewise a jacket, whose original purpose was to serve as underclothes that I now, of necessity, had to wear as fantastic outer clothes. In addition, my long wading boots and red Mexican bandanna would of course have been better suited for a carnival parade than for daily life. In Veracruz, however, where many foreigners can be seen, my suit was not so conspicuous, and in my inn, probably misled by our strange appearance, a young Spanish actor who had just come from Havana joined me so kindly I had to eat with him from a plate and drink from the same glass and since we lived together in a room he often declaimed for me whole theatrical roles. Playing heroic roles, 177. A posada is a guesthouse.

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however, did not seem to be his strength and he really looked very comical when he thought he was worthy of portraying Julius Caesar using the highest ecstasy of false sentiment with my Turkish yatagan178 in his hand. Although this young actor was rather superficial and not at all a particularly interesting man, with his disinterested benevolence he had a friendly and agreeable demeanor after I had been treated so coldly and repugnantly by the German merchants and compatriots. I had already been waiting eight days for a boat opportunity and the situation started to get pretty scary to me. To cheer myself up I took a walk outside of the city, but there was only a pathetic environment, monotonous cactus bushes of the large Opuntia with almost no other vegetation. Then I came to the ruins of an old monastery where a few beggar families lived. They had hung the bare door and window opening of their miserable stay with old rags. Only the ever-moving sea, with its varied debris on the beach, could still catch my attention in a somewhat entertaining way. Seashells and seaweeds and individual shipwrecks populated with shipworms and barnacles lay there. Sometimes the breaking waves brought something new, and so a number of playing cards just came on a wave and were thrown at my feet on the beach. Coincidentally, the cards had fallen face down. “Well, if the sea wants to deal me cards,” I said, “I accept that,” and with that I picked up two cards. It was ace of hearts and two of swords 179 (the old German cards of lansquenet 180 that are still in use in Mexico). As this was a good omen I allowed myself this time to be a bit superstitious and returned to the city much relieved.181 In one of the first streets I came to, I saw through the door of a house a Mexican woman with two children shelling pepitas (big pump178. A yatagan or yataghan is a long hewing knife or short saber without a guard for the hand where the hilt joins the blade, and with a double-curved cutting edge, used particularly in the Ottoman Empire. Lindheimer also mentioned this instrument in the first essay in this book, “The Bald Cypress in Western Texas.” 179. The suit of swords in old German playing cards corresponds to spades in modern English playing cards. 180. Lansquenet is very old type of card game similar to faro (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 181. If fortune-telling websites can be believed, the ace of hearts can represent a new beginning, while the two of spades represents reluctance in the face of a difficult decision.

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kin seeds) and in the cheerful mood I was in I could not keep from addressing the woman with a verse from a well-known fandango, “if she does not want to take me to work.” The woman also kindly answered me with a verse and so I was introduced to the family that was poor but whose human worth was far more important to me than a personified trading company. On the same evening I made the acquaintance of a young Veracruzano from the middle classes and asked him if he would like to take me to the public places of entertainment in the city. My expectation of the experience was not great, of course. First, he took me to a few houses where they danced in private balls to the music of a fortepiano, where, of course, we did not have access. In a public house in which a fandango was taking place there were only two guitar players performing the music as in the German colony, only at the Veracruz fandango were many more dancers. Admission was free and almond milk was administered free of charge. Also at this fandango it was very decent, although only the lower class seemed to be present. Also I met the previously mentioned Colonel Holzinger again in Veracruz. He offered me an artillery officer’s position if I wanted to join the campaign in Texas. I told him then that this campaign would have an unfortunate outcome for the Mexicans and that one in Mexico knows too little of these Americans and therefore underestimates them. At last a ship was ready to sail to New Orleans. It was a small Mexican schooner. The only passengers were the wife of General Mexía 182 with children, me, and two young Frenchmen. The food on the ship was far better than on American ships and the captain was a friendly, benevolent man, who unfortunately did not seem to understand much of navigation because in the most beautiful weather on the fourth or

182. José Antonio Mexía (ca. 1800–1839) was a Mexican military officer and politician. In 1823 he married the English-born Charlotte Walker. By 1832 he was a brigadier general. Initially a supporter of Santa Anna, in 1834 he participated in an uprising against Santa Anna and was sent into exile in New Orleans. In 1835, he led an abortive filibustering expedition against Tampico but escaped to Texas. Señora de Mexía’s two children in 1836 were Adalaida, aged ten, and Enrique, aged seven. Enrique would later become a prominent landowner and businessman in Texas in the nineteenth century, and the city of Mexia in Limestone County is named in his honor. General Mexía later joined another rebellion against Santa Anna and was captured and executed.

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fifth day we ran upon a shoal near a coast unknown to us. It was night, of course, and the crew thought the white-shimmering coast was a city. The captain believed that we were near Matamoros.183 Even his compass should have told him that we were heading more toward the east. Right at the beginning of the disaster, one of the lifeboats was crushed by the ship, which was lying on its side. In the only remaining lifeboat women and children and money, of which there was a large amount on the ship, were brought to land. But as the ship finally capsized, I was forced to swim ashore. After a few days on the beach, a steamboat sailed by that took the main cargo and passengers of our stranded ship for a good price. We also learned from the steamboat that we were not far from Mobile Point on a narrow tongue of land at the western end of which lies Fort Morgan.184 Only I and the two Frenchmen preferred to walk to Mobile Point, which we reached in two days and from where we then went by ship to Mobile.

183. Matamoros is near the mouth of the Rio Grande. 184. Fort Morgan is a masonry bastion lying on the eastern side of the entrance to Mobile Bay, Alabama. It had just been completed in 1834.

ESSAY 8

Optimi#mu# Optimism1

The view of the world that sees the present reality as the best possible world is not only the happiest but also the only correct worldview; for the world, its people, and conditions are no better and no worse, but just as good as they can be under the circumstances. And not only every plant, every animal, every mechanical invention, every single idea, but also the whole of humanity with its political, religious, and social conditions of life, all things work toward a continuous development and finite perfection. This kind of worldview, this view of life, is called optimism. Often the worldview of individual people is clouded by the unfavorable circumstances of their own situation. They despair of mankind because they despair of themselves and they believe themselves justified in this despair because, as in the ancient fable of Hercules at the crossroads,2

1. This essay was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on 2 March 1855, vol. 3(15), pg. 1. 2. The Greek historian Xenophon told of a speech by Prodicus (ca. 465 BC–ca. 395 BC), who was known as an orator and teacher. In this speech, Hercules, as he approached manhood, came to a crossroads. There appeared two women. One of them, dressed simply and modestly, advised Hercules to take a steep and rocky road to an

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Hercules at the crossroads of vice and virtue. Sixteenth-century painting by Annibale Carracci in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. (PD-old)

many do not see honor and virtue in their future but turn instead to the epitome of possession and enjoyment, namely to make money. Gambling and winning have an irresistible appeal for many people. Unfortunately, only one player can win while the others lose. Big speculators are not concerned about who loses the game they play. They like to gamble with the chattels and luck of their fellow humans. Of course they play banquiers,3 which has ninety-nine chances against one. Money! Money is to them the epitome of all that one needs for the outward appearance of privilege, comfort, feasting, lust for drinking, sexual

honorable and noble, but far away, future. The other, dressed voluptuously, urged him to take the shorter road, enjoying without toil every possible pleasure along the way. At the crossroads between virtue and vice, Hercules eventually chose virtue. 3. Banquiers was a card game similar or identical to faro or paroli, with a dealer serving as banker. Bets were made on the order in which cards would appear from the deck. It was very popular in North America in the nineteenth century, eventually being displaced by poker.

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1839 ten-dollar Liberty Head gold eagle (old style). National Numismatic Collection. Photo by Jaclyn Nash. (PD-US)

satisfaction, revenge on enemies, and, above all, the well-to-do feeling of the rich man who can say: “Rejoice my soul, for you are set to live for many years!” 4 During my university years I knew a student who, by his own association of ideas, felt erotic emotions whenever he heard the clinking of coins. The situation is similar for speculators and money lovers. Sums of dollars are to them only algebraic equations for x and y passions. They do not care how much of the happiness of their fellow human beings is sacrificed or what contribution they make to the destiny of the human race by their egotistical pursuit of goals because “they know not what they do!” Who knows the history of a single fifty-year-old gold eagle? 5 How often has it been betrayed for, stolen for, robbed for, or murdered for, its innocence and honor sold, how it has paid for sanctimonious nonsense, mistresses, and bandits, how seldom it earns merit, and how much compassion or patriotism was sacrificed for the purposes of humanism?

4. This is probably a reference to the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:16–20, where the rich farmer says to his soul: “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry” (World English Bible). 5. An eagle was a ten-dollar gold coin minted by the United States from 1792 to 1933.

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A thousand years entrusted to the maternal womb of the Earth does not benefit a piece of gold when it has been circulating for fifty years from hand to hand. Tender human hands are not as soft and guiltless as they seem, for even metal can be abraded and even the gold loses weight from their touch! Innocent pure metal seems to withstand an eternity when the maternal breasts of the Earth surround it. Its character becomes unrecognizable and it is almost wiped out if it has only served the passions of men for a single century. But abraded atoms go back to the Earth, like the millions of coins that humans have shaped before and that have been lost again over the centuries; and they are not few. Thus all the passions and wrong turns to which money has served will ultimately lead back to one goal, to the attainment of the destiny of the human race. Wrong turns are only conceivable where there is a right way. The right way leads to happiness. Ultimately, the mass of humanity will come to the knowledge of the right way to happiness. Gradually light seems to shine in the minds of the masses. Great progress has lately and undeniably been made recognizing and acknowledging that one begins with the supreme moral principle, which is the first social principle. This supreme principle is none other than that the individual can achieve his purpose in life and his happiness in life without rudeness and without being separate from the purposes of all the rest of humanity, and that the true happiness of one individual becomes possible only in the happiness of all because all mankind in itself is a spiritual organic whole in which every individual, every organ, has no meaning and no direction if it wants to mean something for itself apart from the connection to the whole. That this knowledge is spreading more widely is proved by its ever-growing association in so many undertakings, as evidenced by socialist experiments of recent times, agrarian aspirations, the free-school system, and the hunger-generated labor movements that are not meant so much to satisfy immediate hunger as to find a radical social cure against the recurrence of such an evil. This is evidenced by the coalition of Europe’s revolutionary elements and a friendship among the European peoples that has never existed before.

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Now we are ready for the masses to have a better knowledge of the right path to their fortune, if they are not artfully and forcibly held back from this knowledge. This artificial restraint of the knowledge and consent of the masses in the spiritual movement already begun can be no more successful over time than an artificial dike against constantly invading ocean waves or a dam against a glacier in a valley. But for some impatient spirits, the way forward often seems too slow. This is because they see the knowledge of better things as achievable during their individual life, which then must bring tangible fruits during their lifetime, while their personal knowledge is actually only the achievement of previous millennia of the total life of all humanity. Indeed, the eternal life of humanity lives in those who have come to realize that humanity is an indivisible whole and whose personal purposes are but the individual modes of the collective purpose of humanity. Annual plants need to bear fruit the first summer to fulfill their destiny. Purely personal purposes of individuals must be achieved within a lifetime. Long-lived humanity can apparently exempt centuries for no purpose and yet achieve its purposes. That is why no one despairs who lives the eternal life of humanity itself and, only in this communal way, believes that humanity, and thus also those individuals, are reaching for more perfect and therefore happier states. This cheerful worldview that does not leave us despairing even with the saddest experiences nor praying even in the greatest need but teaches us, this worldview is called optimism and it is the only one that can often save troubled minds from madness and despair, but it is also the worldview less learned than any other that has to be earned.

ESSAY 9

Ueber Schulunterricht On School Instruction1

Copied from the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung of 19 May 1854 In response to a written inquiry into how far one could build on the factual basis of Christianity for the education of the future generation, the editors see themselves again called to the religious field and urged, in spite of the fact that we do not publish a church newspaper, to take a closer look at the Christian element in relation to morality and to clearly explain its inhibiting and promoting quality in the education of a new generation. The request received is as follows: “Perhaps I would do better to make my request to the San Antonio newspaper,2 especially as it has distinguished itself by a collection of essays violently attacking the church and clericalism; but even you have expressed similar views in your newspaper and are well suited and inclined to entertain my ideas. All those articles were intent on tearing down; but building up, I think,

1. This untitled response to a letter to the editor was published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung on 19 May 1854, vol. 2(26), pg. 3. 2. The San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung was edited by anticlerical firebrand Adolph Douai (1819–1888), a German Texan teacher, Marxist revolutionary, and abolitionist who created the first kindergarten in the United States.

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would be the more substantial thing. Not all newspaper readers are professors; attacking belief without explanation only arouses hatred. In countries like ours the newspaper often has to represent the seat of learning. Recent research about the present state of Christianity should be presented and not presumed to be known. Textbooks and children’s books in this spirit have not been written to my knowledge. Just as little is it clearly understood that to love thy neighbor as thyself imposes much stricter duties than any belief. Instead of conciliating or mediating one just tends to disregard such articles. The doctrine of original sin is not so unreasonable. Se non è vero è ben trovato.3 Anyone who has children knows that. The lesson: Enjoyment is permitted, but it is worth less than abstinence. Abstinence, sacrifice ennobles. Even the ancients praised it as the purest spiritual pleasure. Love for one’s neighbor often commands them. There was no great man in war or peace who did not more or less gain the supremacy of the spirit over the demands of the body. I want to adopt the first ecclesiastical textbook for the sake of my children that, with only the change of a few words of its teachings, stripping away everything that makes no sense, at least that which involves the weakness of man and his most trivial position in general, incorporates all this. “Would you devote your pen or that of one of your friends to this question?” We fully agree with the charity of Christianity that is preceded in the previous request as a feature of this religion, only we doubt that there would be a Christian religion as it actually now exists if this charity were fully implemented. Moreover, there would be no religious war as the tsar now intends,4 no expulsion of heretics as often occurs in North 3. “Even if it is not true, it is well conceived” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Other sources translate it: “Even if it is not true, it is a good story.” 4. At the time this essay was published, the Crimean War was just beginning. Reacting to French shows of force, the Ottoman sultan had renounced previous treaties with Russia, revoking Orthodox Church control of Christian holy places in Palestine and turning those places over to Catholic (and French) control. Russian Tsar Nicholas I viewed these opening phases of the war as a religious conflict, issuing an ultimatum to the Turks that Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire be placed under his protection. With promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853. Lindheimer covered the events of the “Russich-Türkischer Krieg” each week in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung.

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American Christian communities, no political excitement of the Irish Catholics against the Protestants in the United States, and no closure by religious hatred and sectarianism against admission of one’s fellow man. If, first of all, it were only once possible to introduce among men this much-praised, seldom-practiced Christian love, how loose then would be the bond of sectarianism and how shaky the standing of existing Christian churches that are all based only on opposition to and seclusion from each other. Never have these Christian churches been serious about Christian love, for in truth Christian sects are only sustained by Christian hatred. The doctrine of original sin is a crude sanctimonious invention. Errors, both physical and mental, can be forgiven, but not the moral responsibility for these mistakes. We have no objection to abstinence except that it is a negative term as the Christian church usually understands it. One should not do something, or not be something, or not have something. If one grasps the same concept only as a positive term, namely, that one should do or be or have something by apparent deprivation, then the demand will prove much more joyful than according to the Essenes’ 5 doctrine of renunciation. For example, do not eat a piece of bread, to save your loved one from starvation. Isn’t that easy? Overcome your fatigue and sleepiness, to protect your wife and child from a robbery in the night. Expose yourself to the risk of burning alive, to save your neighbor from the flames. What is negative about abstinence is positive about honorable deprivation, the result being a noble man, a hero, in a word, a man. Of course if we get used to that from the beginning then it will not be difficult for us. That one must not only harden the body but also the moral willpower of youth so that the man becomes fit for life is certain, and in this every teacher and every father will agree with the questioner. If, in recent times, the desire to enjoy the senses and the cheerful joys of life were to be restored to their rights, this would only be a reaction against a misunderstood Christian asceticism (self-mortification) 5. The Essenes were an ascetic Jewish sect of the period from the second century BCE to the second century CE. They lived in highly organized communities and held property in common. The Dead Sea Scrolls are commonly held to be the Essenes’ library.

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that confounds everything carnal as possessed by the devil and that commands that one should abstain from all and every sense enjoyment. As for its part, the Christian (and much more pagan) asceticism was again only a reaction against a misunderstood apotheosis of the purest sensuality, which by reason of indulgence and orgies, a fanatically voluptuous divine worship so threatened to ruin state and human society that in the old Roman republic the state had to intervene. We may well agree with the demands of abstinence if they are not regarded as one-sided, as mere mortification of the sensuous, as by the Indian fakirs, but when practiced with the clear joyful consciousness of a higher purpose. However, it should be difficult to establish a true morality upon the Christianity now existing among people and upon the existing textbooks and class books because this Christianity is based on a foundation of immorality and educates a person immoral at heart, a man whose impulses to act are fear of punishment and hope of reward, hell and heaven. This chapter on salvation was conceived in the Hebrew sense as justification before the statute (satisfactio juridica plenaria),6 that another innocent must be sacrificed for atonement, like the ram for the son of Abraham. This at its very core hides the secret immoral idea that at last (through the mediation of the priests) one does not have to pay for one’s mistakes and unjust acts, a way of thinking that the Jesuits themselves used in the education of the French crown princes by giving the Dauphin another classmate during their lessons who was beaten each time for the errors of the Dauphin. Such ideas are in fact a matter of course in our Christianity as a popular religion, and these are the dark sides of existing Christianity. Now, as all that is to become must develop from the existing, the question arises, how shall a better foundation of morality be developed out of immoral folk beliefs now existing? That will be difficult as long as it gives priests the advantage of selling bliss and as long as people still pay for this commodity with a clinking of coins. 6. A Google search for this Latin phrase returns one hit: Lindheimer’s Aufsätze und Abhandlungen.

1522 title page of Johannes Tauler’s sermons. Even though he lived in the 1300s, Tauler’s sermons are considered among the most eloquent in the German language. Title page design by Hans Holbein. Photo from Galerie Bassenge. (PD-old)

Front doorway of the Dominican Church in Erfurt where Eckhart von Hochheim was prior of a monastery in the Middle Ages. The inscription on the doorway quotes John 1:5 (in German): “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. In memoriam, Meister Eckhart, 1260–1327.” Photo by Michael Sander. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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At the Battle of Sempach in 1386, between the fledgling Swiss Confederacy and the invading Austrians, Arnold von Winkelried threw himself onto the enemy weapons, taking down enough of their pikes that his countrymen could attack through the opening he made, ensuring Swiss independence. Engraving from a painting by Konrad Grob. Photo by Internet Archive Book Images from John Clark Ridpath, Ridpath’s History of the World, vol. 3 (Cincinnati: Jones Brothers, 1891). (PD-1923)

The Catholic preacher Tauler,7 Thomas à Kempis,8 and others, whose writings we still have in the original text, had long before the Reformation seen this evil and simply established the principle of true morality, that one must accomplish right and justice for the sake of right and justice, not for the sake of reward. Even before Tauler, a German monk apparently and paradoxically pronounced this morally and logically correct fundamental theorem: “One must love God even if one should go to hell for that too!” 9 Disassemble this statement from the cinders 7. Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300–1361) was a German mystic theologian, who left about eighty sermons considered to be among the most noble in the German language. 8. Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471) was a German Dutch monastic priest, author of De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), one of the most widely read and translated Christian devotional works next to the Bible. 9. No exact quote in German can be found; however, considering that Lindheimer often paraphrased, reinterpreted, or misremembered well-known quotes, this may have

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The self-sacrifice of Marcus Curtius, saving Rome from devastation by the God of Hades. Color on canvas by Paolo Veronese. Photo by Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, Bilddatenbank. (PD-old)

of the imperfect materialist view of the time and it means nothing else than: One must want the good not only if one has personal advantage but even if one personally has the biggest disadvantage. There is no greater moral confidence in the correctness and efficiency of our action than if that principle is the instinct of our will. People who act in this way are the model people, the heroes, the role models of our race, they are the Messiah and Redeemer of humanity who by their martyrdom, by their tangible example (the clearest demonstratio ad hominem 10), try to redeem the perplexed people from their delusion that the individual person has no special interest for himself that he can pursue and be happy independent from the interest of mankind.

been a reference to Eckhart von Hochheim, usually known as Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260– ca. 1327), a German theologian, philosopher, and mystic. Attributed to Meister Eckhart is Spruch 66 (Proverb 66) about a preacher and a poor man, at the end of which the poor man declares, “Ich will lieber in der Hölle sein und Gott haben, als im Himmelreich und Gott nicht haben” (I would rather be in hell and have God than in the kingdom of heaven and not have God). Gustav Landauer, Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften, Verschollene Meister der Literatur 1 (Berlin: Schnabel, 1903), 232–33. 10. Latin for “a demonstration of humanity.” The Latin phrase is believed to have originated with Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the immensely influential Italian philosopher, theologian, and jurist, in one of his commentaries on Aristotle.

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The death of Socrates. Oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David. Photo by Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (PD-old)

When a Winkelried 11 plunges into the enemy lances to make a passageway for freedom, when a Marcus Curtius 12 plunges on horseback into the blazing abyss to save Rome from the plague, when a Socrates drinks the poison cup to give honor to truth, when a Messiah suffers shameful slavery on the cross because he does not want to revoke his mission as a religious reformer, then every man, with that peculiar feeling in his breast that lifts up his heart, is not at all wrong to give his consent to such actions. This more general and distant effect of moral 11. Arnold von Winkelried (?–1386) was a legendary hero of Swiss history. When the Old Swiss Confederacy faced the massive army of Duke Leopold III of Austria at Sempach, the Swiss at first could not break the closed ranks of the Hapsburg pikemen. Winkelried declared to his countrymen that he would open a passage for them to attack. He threw himself upon the Austrian pikes, pulling the pikes downward and breaking the ranks of interlocked shields with the weight of his body, allowing the Swiss to penetrate the ranks. The battle was a decisive Swiss victory in which the duke and four hundred Austrian nobles died. The Battle of Sempach is considered a turning point in Swiss unification and national identity. 12. Marcus Curtius was a mythical young Roman soldier. After an earthquake, a deep hole opened in the Roman Forum emitting fire and sulfurous fumes. Romans attempted to fill it, but in vain, so they consulted an oracle who said that the God of Hades de

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exploits, in its wider pursuit, is far more important than its particular and nearer purpose because such acts, more than anything else in man, affirm one’s faith in humanity and are the foundation of all virtue and all human happiness. Who can deny that in Christianity, despite the Credo13 and the Augsburg Confession,14 this principle of joyful self-sacrifice for the whole is contained, that in it lies a victorious consciousness that humanity is only a united and indivisible whole? What prevents us from understanding the essence of Christianity as the doctrine of humanity, as its founder, the great Essene,15 himself conceived of it? No one prevents us from this, even as the wage priests, like spiritual robber barons who in the old days laid by the most tractable roads and waterways in order for the most manipulative knights and small sovereigns in Germany to be able to take fees from the people, lay such fees upon the way to heaven that we must buy from them what should be more common than water and air, the common property and private property of all people, our religious conviction! But it is not these spiritual robber barons alone that are the great culprit, as in Tetzel’s 16 day, selling salvation in detail for a clinking coin. The immorality of the masses bears the biggest blame. Furthermore, as in politics there is the principle: “First make a people bad, then you can enslave them,” in the positive religion there is the principle: “First make a people immoral, then they are ripe for any positive dogma.”

manded Rome’s most precious possession as sacrifice. When no one could guess what that might be, Marcus Curtius stepped forward and declared that Rome’s army and the courage of her soldiers was her most precious possession. Mounting his horse in full armor, he and the horse plunged into the pit, which immediately closed over him, saving Rome. 13. The Credo usually refers to the Nicene Creed, which dates from the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and/or from the First Council of Constantinople in 381. Alternatively, it could also refer to the Apostles’ Creed, which dates from 390. 14. The Augsburg Confession, developed at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church. 15. This is usually interpreted as a reference to Jesus. 16. Johann Tetzel (1465–1519) was a Dominican friar and grand commissioner for indulgences in Germany. Tetzel was famous for selling indulgences (a reduction in the term of punishment for sins after death) for money. His actions were challenged by Martin Luther and contributed to the Reformation.

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Schreiber 17 believes this Christianity doesn’t need his salvation. Therefore, his view must be all the more impartial when he claims that in the discussion of civilized peoples one must start from Christianity because Christianity was a historical fact and the basis of morality, as was the immorality of western peoples in general. Where it was the basis of immorality, namely, the Jewish and pagan concept of the Atonement and therefore the need of the priest, it is to be exterminated because Christ himself considered it his most peculiar mission to abolish sacrifices and priests. “Everyone should be his own High Priest and sacrifice himself,” as early Christianity taught. It was precisely through this doctrine that the foundation of the highest morality was personified to one’s God, that of the doctrine of the immediacy and self-sufficiency of every individual person in relation to the idea of humanity for the purpose of all existence and life. Whether we philosophically have the right to accept such a personified God has certainly passed. If we can deal with the construction of the universe without God then we have just as little right, as elsewhere in science, to assume an unknown force where the explanation and understanding of a natural phenomenon can be given without this unknown force. However, we are still a long way from understanding the universe as an organic whole in all its integrating parts and powers (as Humboldt emphatically mentions in his preface to his Cosmos 18). That is precisely why we must leave unanswered the question of whether one God, a self-consciousness of this universe, exists. Suppose, however, that the whole universe is an organism, one organism, just as the human body is one organism. If, perhaps, the entire universe is a highly organized totality, or even higher than the human body, should not self-consciousness, reflection, and thought have come to it just as well as man? Then, of course, God would only be the big world animal. Since in the physical as well as in the spiritual world, despite all dif-

17. This is possibly Heinrich Schreiber (1793–1872), German historian and moral theologian. 18. Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, Erster Band (Stuttgart, Germany: Cotta, 1845); Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, trans. Elizabeth Leeves Sabine and Sir Edward Sabine (London: Longman and Murray, 1846).

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ferences, all beings are formed only analogously, and since, moreover, the essence of thinking is always the summarizing into a unity, a concept, and all further education of these concepts, all further thinking is again summarizing many concepts into one concept, how then should not all thinking and comprehension of all humanity and of the whole universe analogously, in the same way, not be united again as a unity? What is this other than a self-confident, highest spiritual being? Such a god would be conceivable. Of course, I do not need a god for my morality, for what is truly useful and good is self-evident and needs no other impulse. I need neither the approval nor the reward of a god. And as for the ordinary conception of world government by an extraterrestrial god, it seems to me even more miserable than if it were constantly necessary for a watchmaker to keep the watch going by turning the hands around every hour. Now, the universe is not just a clock but an actual perpetual motion, an organism even less capable of being moved by a force beyond it if it is not to descend to the dead mechanism. I do not need a special world god, nor a demiurge, but I do not want to deny the necessity of such a god for the pious, childlike worldview of the people, nor the real existence of such a god. I am neither an atheist nor a deist. If it is a pious satisfaction to devout Christians to invoke the words of their gospel with their minds, then do not hold it against us when, after twenty-two hundred years in the language Socrates spoke, the words of brotherly academics sound spiritual to us: “As for the gods, I do not know whether there are any or if there are none.” 19 Thus those Greek philosophers said that it was “a shameless levity that cannot tolerate the dignity of a thinking man to believe false things, or to assert oneself in the day that which is neither sufficiently explored nor proven (sine ulla dubitatione defendere).” 20 19. This quote is more properly ascribed to Protagoras (ca. 490 BC–ca. 420 BC), a pre-Socratic philosopher. Because of his agnosticism, Athenians confiscated all his writings and burned them. Reportedly, in his lost work On the Gods, he wrote: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.” 20. “Quid tam temerarium est, quam quod non satis cognitum sit, sine ulla dubitatione defendere?” (What is so rash as to defend without any hesitation what is not sufficiently known?). Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), book 3.

ESSAY 10

War der Mensch schon ein Zeitgenosse de# Mastodon? Was Man Really a Contemporary of the Mastodon?1

The time that has elapsed since the end of the Quaternary period is called the present period, and the layers formed during its duration are called the newer deposits. They are new in relation to the Quaternary period, but not according to the concept of ordinary timekeeping since the causes of their formation in most cases took thousands of centuries. These preliminary remarks may enable us to grasp the essential facts by which we determine the paleontology of the human race. These facts are ascertained first by geology, second by paleontology, and third by prehistorical archaeology. The geological facts are mainly recorded in environments where the great floods of the Quaternary period have left deposits in the form of beds more or less regularly layered. If the layers of these deposits remain undisturbed, they are superimposed on one another according

1. The work of Heinrich Georg Bronn referred to by Lindheimer in the last paragraph includes a work he coauthored with Lindheimer’s friend Ferdinand Roemer between 1851 and 1856.

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Ice age fauna of northern Spain. Clockwise from left: horses, woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, and European cave lions with a reindeer carcass. Mauricio Antón, from Caitlin Sedwick, “What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?,” PLoS Biology 6, no. 4 (2008): e99. (CC BY 2.5)

to their age. The oldest lie on the bottom and are called bottom layers; above them are the middle layers, which are of later age; and these are covered by the upper layers. In determining the age of these strata we first apply geology, thanks to facts that it gives us about the relative age of the animal species whose bones are found in the different layers and which at the same time determine the age of the layers. The animals that lived at the beginning of the Quaternary period, such as the mastodon, now exist only in the fossil state. They are extinct animals. Others, like the reindeer, have disappeared from the temperate zone but still live in other parts of the world. These are impermanent animals. Others that have lived with us for a long time are called permanent animals, like the horse. Animals that are now extinct were very common in the first period of the Quaternary period. Some of them were gigantic mammals with terribly strong limbs, beside which the naked and feeble human seemed insignificant. There lived at that time the great cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), the great cave lion (Panthera spelaeus), the amphibious hippopotamus (Hippopotamus antiquus [also known as the European hippopotamus]), the big rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis [also known as the woolly rhinoceros]), the primeval elephant (Palaeoloxodon an-

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tiquus [also known as the straight-tusked elephant]), and, above all, the gigantic king of the animal kingdom, the mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius [also known as the woolly mammoth]). The reindeer and several other impermanent animals were found in the fauna of the time but were rare, while a large number of so-called permanent animals appeared. Of all the animals of that period, the strangest, strongest, and most numerous was the mammoth. Protected against the cold by thick fur and equipped with formidable weapons for defense against its enemies, it flourished and multiplied. It spread and ruled over the whole Earth in such a way that the first part of the Quaternary period that corresponds to the lowest layers of the depositional sequence can rightly be called the Age of the Mammoth. At that time all favorable conditions for the prosperity of these animals were present; but over time changes took place that caused their extinction. An increase in temperature allowed the multiplication of many herbivorous species of animals that had hitherto been held back in their development. The reindeer, the horse, the ox, and the bison multiplied. These powerful rivals competed with the mammoth for vegetable food, and with that the struggle for existence began. Already the mammoth had encountered the power of man against it, who was sufficiently enabled by the improved climate to begin hunting it. Finally, this warmer climate that was so favorable for its adversaries became unfavorable for it because the mammoth was created for a colder climate. These are the reasons why the mammoth that played such an important role in the first part of the Quaternary period began to decline. It ceased to be the predominant species of wildlife and other animals that formed its ancient entourage also succumbed to the changing temperature and gradually disappeared one by one. Some survived and prolonged their existence until the end of paleontological time, but their reign was over. In the middle of the Quaternary period there was a transitional time corresponding to the middle layers of the depositional sequence, a time in which several species that had lived with the mammoth had already become extinct and other species were almost extinct and existed only as a few individuals. Animals that were better suited for the changed conditions prospered. Predominant among the latter was the reindeer

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Reindeer (Europe) or caribou (North America). Photo by Are G. Nilsen. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

(Rangifer tarandus), but only in the following period did it receive its full importance. The fauna of the middle part of the Quaternary period has no special paleontological characteristics; it is less distinguished by the peculiarity of the species than by the proportion of their quantities. Some animals from the mammoth era were gone, while others could be found here and there. Although the mammoth was no longer so frequent it had not become rare, while the reindeer, the deer, the horse, and the ox were frequent. This middle section gave way to the last section of the Quaternary period. The deposition of the upper strata began to form. The animals we call extinct were almost all gone. However, some rare specimens of the mammoth had survived the changes. Even rarer was the large Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus) and the Eurasian cave lion. The rest of the animal world had changed very little. The reindeer had multiplied so greatly that one can rightly call the third period of the Quaternary period the Age of the Reindeer. This period differs from our present time not only by the abundance of the reindeer. A number of animals that benefited from cold and snow

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and could not live in a temperate climate lived together with the reindeer in still cold regions. As the temperature neared that of the present, these animals disappeared from our plateaus and plains; but they did not perish because of this, but found a more favorable temperature in a colder climate and have survived to the present day. Among these species that were impermanent, some went to the north, like the reindeer and the musk ox; others, like the chamois, the goat, and the groundhog, did not leave our zone but fled to higher places and got up to the peaks of the Alps and Pyrenees. The disappearance of the reindeer and other impermanent species marks the end of the Quaternary period and paleontological time when the new period began.2 Our climate at the time was probably colder than it is now, but it was already temperate and the small changes it has suffered since then have not been enough to cause the decline of animals. It is true that the aurochs and the bison have disappeared from Germany, but this has to be attributed more to the destructive activity of people. With these exceptions, we can say that since the end of the Quaternary period the wildlife of our zone has not changed and the new deposits contain only the remnants of now-living species of animals. People lived in all these periods of which we have just spoken. It does not matter to us now whether people lived in the preceding, the Tertiary period. Such a Tertiary person does not come into the circle of our present investigations. But what interests us, and what is quite positively proved by Boucher de Perthes,3 is that in the oldest strata of the Quaternary period certain signs of human industry are found. The knowledge of metals, one could say, dates only from yesterday; but before man possessed these powerful resources he was not without tools to work or without weapons for his defense. He made these out

2. Here, Lindheimer’s “new period” is today referred to as the Holocene and is still considered part of the Quaternary period. What Lindheimer had previously described is today referred to as the Pleistocene. 3. Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (also simply Boucher de Perthes; 1788– 1868) was a French archaeologist and antiquarian noted for his discovery, about 1830, of flint tools in the gravels of the Somme valley, but his discoveries remained controversial throughout his life. Today, the tools he discovered are widely accepted as the

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of various hard materials, for example, bones, teeth, and horns of animals, but especially of stone, particularly of flint, and this is the reason that the history of man that preceded the use of metals was named the Stone Age. This Stone Age still exists among some wild tribes today and it came to an end with the earliest civilized peoples only very shortly before historic time. It therefore encompasses almost the whole duration of the human race; and considering that hard substances, such as rock, endure indefinitely in the Earth, one realizes that such remnants of human activity are indestructible records of the past. There are many caves along the Vézère River4 in France that evidently formed the homes of cave dwellers. In the lowest layers that cover the bottom of these caves we find the bones of the mammoth, the great lion, and the great hyena.5 The main weapons of these cave dwellers were the stone ax and the lance with a stone tip, weapons of attack against animals that offered resistance. Tools to kill the smaller animals, birds, and fish seemed unknown to these oldest cave dwellers for in those caves there are no bones of smaller animals. These oldest cave dwellers were followed by a human race that was more advanced and whose tools were less massive, more numerous, more diverse, and above all better worked. These cave dwellers wore ornaments of shells, and from the large number of scraping blades it is concluded they made hides into garments. Their favorite food was horse meat, but their meals were already more varied. Among the remnants of these meals we find, besides the bones of the reindeer that had already begun to become more frequent, the bones and the teeth of the aurochs, the boar, the deer, the goat, the wolf, the fox, the hare, and even the bones of a bird from the genus of cranes. Man chased the smaller animals as well as big game, but he had not yet learned how to catch fish.

products of Neanderthal populations, and some authorities think they may possibly be associated with Homo erectus. 4. The Vézère is in southwestern France, flowing 131 miles (211 km) from the Massif Central at 3,192 feet (973 m) to its confluence with the Dordogne at 164 feet (50 m) above sea level. 5. This would be the giant short-faced hyena, Pachycrocuta brevirostris, a 440-pound (200 kg) megascavenger that could splinter the bones of elephants.

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Mammoth carved on mammoth ivory found by Édouard Lartet in 1864 at Abri de la Madeleine cave in Dordogne, France. Photographer unknown. (PD-1923)

Barbs on arrows and harpoons and a more or less artistic decoration are the characteristic features of the third and last period of the Stone Age. In this third and final period of the Stone Age, when the mammoth, the great lion, and other large animals had become rarer and the other animals resisted less, lighter weapons became necessary. If the reindeer could not be reached with the lance and if it was too fleeting for the javelin, it could not escape fast arrows. But the dart and javelin were still too bulky in construction. The slightest irregularity and lack of symmetry in the form, or if a single point was too heavy, made them deviate from their direction. The cave dwellers saw this and gave their arrowheads a better and more elegant shape. Great progress had been made by using the horns of the reindeer and the bones of other animals and they made stone arrowheads and lances more lightweight. The main occupation of these people and the means of obtaining their food was hunting. They hunted animals of every size, from the little bird to the unruly mammoth. The old giant of the Quaternary period was still alive but had become very rare. For a long time it had been thought to have died out in the middle of the Quaternary period, and when some teeth of this animal and some pieces of carved ivory were found, many people believed that these belonged to an earlier era and that those cave dwellers used fossil ivory they had found, as is still done today by the people in Siberia. In that polar region the summer heat has an influence only on the superficial layer of the soil; the lower soil has been frozen for centuries. Bodies of mammoths have been so perfectly preserved that their flesh is still edible but very badly

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Woolly mammoth (left) and American mastodon (right) facing each other, showing the physical differences between the two animals. Photo by Dantheman9758. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

flavored. Due to this, Siberian ivory is in such a state that it can be applied in arts and industry, while ordinary fossil ivory merely has a value in museums. Besides many other figures marked by incised lines on ivory and horny plates found in the caves of the cave dwellers of the third and last part of the Quaternary period, by far the most important is the fragment of a so-called command staff 6 carved from reindeer horn on which a mammoth head is depicted that the Marquis de Vibraye 7 found in 1864 at Madeleine 8 (on the Vézère River in France) and since then again by the Marquis de Vibraye at the lower Laugerie.9 These are so far the only representations of the mammoth found in the caves of the Vézère, but sufficiently prove that humans were contemporaries of the mammoth. 6. This is a translation from the French, bâton de commandement, and its function is much debated. The French name presumes a symbol of power or status. The most likely function was the manufacture and throwing of spears, and a more neutral term would be a perforated baton. 7. Paul Hurault, eighth Marquis de Vibraye (Guillaume-Paul Louis Maximilien Hurault; 1809–1878), was a French amateur archaeologist. He is noted for discovering the first Paleolithic sculptural representation of a woman in modern times, the so-called Magdalenian Venus. 8. Abri de la Madeleine is a prehistoric shelter under an overhanging cliff in southwestern France, after which the Magdalenian culture of the Upper Paleolithic is named. 9. Laugerie-Basse is an important Upper Paleolithic archaeological site in southwestern France.

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Further evidence of this fact is provided by the so-called Elephant Mound 10 on the east side of the Mississippi eight miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin River. The whole length of this artificial hill is 135 feet and five feet above the ground. The head is large and the proportions of each part of the animal are depicted right, so that the whole rightly deserves the name of the “Big Elephant Mound.” An even more striking proof of the contemporaneity of mammoth, mastodon, and man is provided by the curious findings of Dr. Albert Koch.11 In 1839, in the bottom of the Bourbeuse River 12 in Gasconade County, Missouri, he found the remains of a Mammut americanus 13 in very strange circumstances. Most of the bones seemed more or less burned, and one could see that fire had been kindled by men to kill the great beast that had sunk and was helpless in the mud that was a gray clay. The fore and hind legs remained untouched by the fire, but the body parts above the clay were partially consumed by the fire and the deposit of ash and coals that accumulated from two to six inches thick showed that the most destructive fire had worked around the head of the animal. Mixed with ashes and bones lay a great deal of rocks that had evidently been brought from the banks of the Bourbeuse River and thrown against the animal; arrowheads and spearheads and some stone axes were also found by Koch under the ashes and bones that were collected in the presence of many witnesses. The location of the ashes and bones was covered by an eight- to nine-foot-thick alluvial layer. 10. Certainly adequately described by Lindheimer, this large, low linear outline today seems to have the shape of an elephant, except that the “trunk” was probably produced by washouts of the adjacent banks of the mound, plus there is the possibility of “horns” projecting above the head, making it possible that the mound was intended to represent a buffalo. 11. Albert Carl Koch (1804–1867) was a German American fossil showman. Koch was notorious for assembling objects he found from different individuals and different locations until a skeleton emerged that he then exhibited in New York, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and elsewhere, making fantastic claims about the animal depicted. Most importantly, Koch misdescribed the mastodon, which he named Missourium theristocaulodon, with extra vertebrae and ribs from a second individual and with its tusks positioned in the wrong direction, turned downward instead of upward. 12. The Bourbeuse River flows 154 miles (248 km) from the Ozarks at 1,140 feet (350 m) to its confluence with the Meramec River at 463 feet (141 m), entirely within central Missouri. 13. This is the name for the American mastodon.

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About a year after this excavation, Koch found in Benton County, Missouri, in the bottom of the Pomme de Terre14 about ten miles above its union with the Osage,15 several stone arrowheads blended with the bones of an almost complete skeleton of the Missourium.16 Two of the arrowheads proved that they were at least of the same if not older age as the animal, moreover that they lay in a layer of humus soil beneath a twenty-foot-thick layer of alternating clay, sand, and boulders, and one of the arrowheads was just under the hip bone of the skeleton. Not only does our famous compatriot Bronn17 acknowledge that fossil remains of humans with fossil bones of primitive animals have been found recently in such circumstances but that there is almost no doubt that man was a contemporary of these animals. He also calculates the age, which is within the so-called alluvial time or the last period following the diluvium. He estimates it to be 158,000 years18 from fossilized tree trunks found in Louisiana

14. The Pomme de Terre River is a 130-mile-long (210 km) tributary of the Osage River in central Missouri. 15. The Osage River is a 276-mile-long (444 km) tributary of the Missouri River in central Missouri. 16. Koch’s proposed name for the mastodon. 17. Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800–1862) was a German geologist and paleontologist whose work is noted as the foundation of German stratigraphy. He was the first to translate Darwin’s Origin of Species into German. 18. This age is wrong by a factor of ten. The Holocene as accepted today began 11,650 years before the present.

ESSAY 11

Scheinbare Anastrophe im Leben der Natur und der Menschheit An Apparent Inversion1 in the Life of Nature and Humanity 2

All progress and all perfection in nature and in the human spirit are only a step backward to the beginning, but to a beginning with a higher meaning. The seed sprouts, grows, and flowers, and yields again in the end the same seed. But that one seed has now become indefinitely many seeds and at the same time every single one of these seeds has the power to

1. Lindheimer used the word Anastrophe, a term of linguistics referring to an inversion of normal word order to emphasize a particular word. An example is the opening line to Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline”: “This is the forest primeval.” Normal English word order would be “primeval forest.” Anastrophe allows the poet to emphasize “primeval” and develop that emphasis throughout the prelude. What Lindheimer intended in this essay goes far beyond linguistics and does not involve any inversion, but rather a reversion of history where religion again influences politics. 2. In this essay, Lindheimer referred to the New-York Tribune. Between 1842 and 1866, that newspaper was named the New-York Daily Tribune, dating this essay to the early post–Civil War period.

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reproduce its species. Thus, by germinating, growing, and blooming, the seed has proved to be an unlimited entity in both number and time in that it can multiply itself into the indefinite future and reproduce itself for all time. It is similar with the spirit. In the animal and initially in the child all experience and recognition take place only regarding itself. It hears, sees, and feels only its personal feeling in the outer world; it only has personally pleasant and unpleasant sensations. Later, it distinguishes the objects that caused these sensations from the sensations caused by the objects. The whole world now appears to the child as an infinite variety of individual objects. It is only through the development of thought that this variety of objects is again conceived of as a unity, but as a higher unity than that expressed in sensory sensation, as a unity in concept. Likewise in morality, true virtue is only the return to the state of innocence, but of a higher innocence than the irresponsible innocence of the child. Thus we have now advanced so far in the perfection of the physical sciences that we seem to approach, albeit with a different content, the first form of these sciences, that of sorcery and necromancy. What a wonder then, in spite of the latest progress in the political life of Europe and America, what seems to be an essential and, so to say, an ultimate development looks like a step back to the original. In all the original states of human history, the religion of the people was at the same time the state religion: that is, the kingship and the priesthood, or the aristocracy and the priesthood, or at least legislation and worship, had the closest connection. Tyranny and deception 3 celebrated their triumphs, and public opinion was so used to deception that even Moses could not introduce his excellent Ten Commandments without a religious miracle, or that Solon 4 and Draco 5 themselves needed the approval of the oracles to enact their laws.

3. Lindheimer used the word Humbug, usually translated as “nonsense” or “fiddlefaddle,” but here translated as “deception.” 4. Solon (ca. 640–ca. 560 BCE) was an Athenian lawmaker, statesman, and poet, generally credited for having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. 5. Draco (fl. ca. seventh century BCE) was the first recorded legislator of ancient Athens, replacing oral law with written laws generally considered harsh, hence “draconian.”

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Medallion of Solon, Athenian author of constitutional laws, in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. Photo by Architect of the Capitol. (PD-US)

The aristocratic and the hierarchical elements have always been the attractive and repulsive poles in the history of humanity that soon encouraged the formation of the social and democratic elements, while at the same time stimulating lively progress. Since the last excess of religious influence in the development of history, that is, since the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, the religious element has receded into the background giving way on the political stage to the more veiled self-interested and selfish elements of princes, aristocracy, and private individuals. The Protestant clergy since that time has acted more like a civil servant and the Catholic priesthood more like a kind of spiritual nobility, both of which willingly added to the mechanism of the state machine. In the latest turn of events, however, the state of affairs of the ecclesiastical estate relative to secular rulers has changed considerably. In Germany, in France, and above all in free North America, the clergy want to assert themselves as a power within the state in a demagogic way. First and foremost, with a few exceptions, the articulate press in the United States has consistently warned of the danger of spiritual activity

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combined with arrogance here in this country. Lately, some important English language newspapers, among them the New-York Tribune,6 have come forward with their censure of spiritual arrogance. The time has now come for such an important advance that all essential progress looks quite similar to a step back to the original state in a religious sense. We seem now back in a time when the profession of faith, the confession, strives to assert itself as a social and political force. But this struggle and this self-defeating action is no longer directed against a material power, as in the past, but essentially against the moral conviction and against the spiritual freedom of the mass of the people. The clergy fight not only against the powerful for the enjoyment of power, but against the enlightenment of the masses and its existence. The free press, rapid and frequent mobility in modern times, and above all the tremendous progress in the natural sciences, which are so intimately connected with our material advantage that no prince or clerical power can suppress it, contribute so much to the spiritual liberation of the human race that a very special effort is needed by the spiritual army of faith to suppress this general breakthrough and victory of reason. Therefore, in France, the clergy have seized public education, therefore German bishops issue pastoral letters that stir up the people, therefore a Bedini 7 has been brought to America, therefore the wealth and in6. Before 1866, this newspaper was the New-York Daily Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley. Both names hyphenated “New York.” 7. Gaetano Bedini (1806–1864) was an Italian priest, cardinal, and papal prelate. In 1848, a liberal revolution in Italy established the Roman Republic, causing the pope and his entourage to flee. Austria, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont), and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples) vied through constantly shifting alliances to control Rome and the Papal States. Bedini, as papal secretary of state, was reported (rightly or wrongly) to play a role in the chaos of shifting alliances that eventually resulted in the execution of democratic patriots in Bologna and the restoration of the Papal States to the control of the pope. In 1852, Bedini was named papal nuncio to Brazil but was unable to travel there because of a plague. Instead, he visited the United States, the first papal nuncio to do so, at least partly at the request of the archbishop of Cincinnati. After he landed in New York, his travel route was publicized and he was accompanied by anti-Catholic demonstrations along the way. Many Cincinnati Germans had immigrated to America following the liberal uprisings in Germany in 1848. Bedini’s visit was announced in advance in German-language newspapers as a visit by the “butcher of Bologna.” On Christmas Day 1853, an armed mob of about six hundred German men and women marched on the home of Archbishop John Purcell, protesting the visit. One protester was killed and more than sixty were arrested.

Gaetano Bedini, bishop of Viterbo (Italy). Bedini’s visit to the United States caused rioting in Cincinnati in 1853. Josef Kriehuber, lithograph in the Albertina (Vienna). Photo by Peter Geymayer. (PD-1923)

Saint Peter in Chains Cathedral in Cincinnati, where German immigrants rioted following a sermon by Cardinal Bedini on 21 December 1853. From Robert Sears, A Pictorial Description of the United States (New York: R. Sears, 1860). (PD-old)

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fluence of the Mexican clergy has helped raise a usurper, Santa Anna, to the throne of the emperor, therefore American “Reverends” fight against free schools. No informed man can deny it can be proven that we are once again in the time of such rapid progress as no previous time in human history, and yet this religious development appears to be a step backward to the barbaric times of persecution of heretics and an imminent religious war so similar that, without the clear conviction that progress often looks so much like retrogression, one would despair of the future. To be sure, there will still be hard fighting before the religious Hydra with its innumerable heads of different sects is vanquished. I do not believe, as Colonel H. B. Wright of Pennsylvania 8 once said in the United States Congress, “that the great battle for civil and religious freedom will be fought primarily at sea,” but rather here on land, where already for Joe Smith,9 for Bedini, and in Philadelphia where Catholic citizens’ blood has flowed.10 Let us hope, however, that this struggle will be brought to an end, not with weapons and violence but with reason and persuasion, to true material and spiritual advantage, and that the English press of America will rise up like the German Man for man Who can swing the flamberg! 11

in the great spiritual struggle for freedom of belief and conscience. 8. Hendrick Bradley Wright (1808–1881) was a Democratic (after 1876, a Greenback) congressional representative from Pennsylvania at various times between 1853 and 1881. He ran unsuccessfully to be the Greenback candidate for president in 1880. 9. This was perhaps Lindheimer’s equivalent of John Doe. 10. The Philadelphia Nativist Riots were a series of anti-Catholic riots in and around Philadelphia between 6 and 8 May and 6 and 7 July 1844, resulting in about twenty deaths and some Catholic churches being burned or damaged by cannon fire. 11. This is the chorus refrain from a poem, “Männer und Buben” (Men and Boys), written about 1813 by Theodore Körner, a German poet and soldier known for his fiery, patriotic verse, often set to music by Carl Maria von Weber. A flamberg or flambard is a sword with two cutting edges that are characteristically undulating or wave shaped. Lindheimer and Körner used Flamberg, which is usually a lighter, thinner, rapier-like one-handed sword. The heavier, two-handed flambard is Flammenschwert in German.

ESSAY 12

Reflexionen eine# Botaniker# Reflections of a Botanist1

The clear-sighted botanist, unlimited by his senses and impulses while using his imagination and thoughts like morning dew and sunlight spread across the joyous vegetation of a country in order to understand the language of the beautiful mute children of Flora, can discern the character of the whole vegetation of a land and make clear the accord and character of the whole vegetation to which they belong in their homeland. The botanist can do this, just as anyone sitting in the great chapel of Saint Petersburg 2 where each organ pipe produces only one note but all together form the most beautiful harmony, based on only a few plants, a few tones, can discern the whole chord. This essential 1. In this essay, Lindheimer referred to a speech delivered by the tsar of Russia “not long ago.” That speech was made by Tsar Alexander II on 30 March 1856, declaring his intention to abolish serfdom, dating this essay to the late 1850s. 2. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine which great chapel in Saint Petersburg Lindheimer was referring to (or even how he would have known of it without traveling there). Possible candidates include Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest in Saint Petersburg, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, the mother cathedral for the Russian Orthodox metropolis of Saint Petersburg, but there are many other possibilities. Following the revolution, Soviets stripped the religious trappings from most churches in Russia. The German siege of Leningrad lasted almost two and a half years and caused widespread destruction. Although restored after the war, churches were not returned to Russian Orthodox control until after the end of the Soviet government in the 1990s,

Organ built in 1850 by Walcker Organbau for the Bartholomäuskirche in Markgröningen, Baden-Württemberg. Photo by Pilettes. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Colossi of Memnon in Egypt on the Plain of Thebes. After the statues were heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1200 BCE, then collapsed by another earthquake in 27 BCE, the cracked base of the statue on the right was reported to “sing” at sunrise until it was repaired by the Romans in the second century CE. Albumen silver print from glass photo negative taken in 1857 by Francis Frith, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (CC0 1.0)

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force in the ability of a naturalist presupposes the presence of a representative type in nature that the naturalist could anticipate. What joy of spiritual cognition and witness it must grant if we increasingly recognize the infinite harmony of nature and understand the basso continuo of the music of the universe. Cognition (in the Old Testament sense) 3 and witness are comparable to all true knowledge. Like electric sparks from touching opposite poles, and from the meeting of the a priori essential conceptions with reality after the fact manifest themselves (or, rather, as they manifest each other, independently and intimately), this coincides with a life force that suddenly finds itself only in the other. Every kind of this true cognition is a spiritual act of procreation, spiritually a figurative re-creation, a picture of the demiurgic activity as well as bodily procreation. This is the life I lead as a botanist—to be quiet and cheerful and to listen to the Memnon sounds 4 of nature that only its priests understand, even if it were only the feeling of physical well-being (which so far has only lately and fully become my way of life) with the spiritual rhythm of longing beyond oneself, in which at times even the frugal and then not all at once (Saint Isaac’s was not returned until 2017). Current descriptions on Wikipedia of churches in Saint Petersburg do not mention any organs. Then again, there were churches of other denominations in Saint Petersburg. In 1840, Walcker Organbau of Ludwigsburg north of Stuttgart delivered an organ weighing over twenty tons to the Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Saint Petersburg. The Walcker company, established in 1780, supplied churches all over Germany with organs. It is possible Lindheimer was familiar with a church that had an organ similar to the one later built for the Saint Petersburg Lutheran community. 3. Lindheimer seemed to be using “cognition” in the sense of Jeremiah 1:4–5: The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Thereafter, Jeremiah could find himself only by finding himself in God. 4. Memnon, the son of Eos, goddess of the dawn, was a mythical king of Ethiopia who brought an army to aid Troy against the Greeks. He was ultimately killed in battle by Achilles. Upon Memnon’s death, Zeus, moved by Eos’s tears, granted Memnon immortality. Two massive stone statues in Thebes, west of the Nile across from modern Luxor, Egypt, are known to tourists as the Colossi of Memnon (but they are actually seated depictions of Pharaoh Amenhotep III).

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herdsman of Theocritus 5 revels. Shall I interchange it with the joys of man, the paterna rura bubus exercet ? 6 If some men give me their friendly seedpod (it happened), then it will not be necessary for me to step into the state of glebae adscriptis7 with their meanings and character. I do not mean to be a member of the equites 8 and hoplites, 9 but I think I’m a brave velite 10 and rorarian 11 who precede the phalanx; 12 I mean to conquer the world through knowledge. As a youth I had already said: “Faith has forged the chains of peoples and knowledge will make them free.” 13 The gentleman’s easy yoke of faith has become a heavy yoke of bondage. Why did Arnold of Brescia die a fiery death in Rome? 14 Because he preached spiritual and loving freedom. If Redbad, the Saxon prince, did not want to be baptized in the Elbe a thousand years ago,15 he probably knew that the spiritual bondage of Christianity had a loving effect. How the priests, in association with the aristocrats, brought about the complete enslavement of the free Ger-

5. Theocritus was a Greek poet of the third century BCE, noted for his bucolic or pastoral poetry. In his Idyll 1, a mythical herdsman dies rather than yield to a passion the goddess Aphrodite has inflicted on him. 6. Lindheimer used a phrase from the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 BCE–8 BCE), Epodes II: 3; literally, “(one who) plows with his own oxen his ancestral fields.” The full quatrain in translation: “Blessed is the man who, far from the business of the town, plows with his own oxen his ancestral fields, with mind free from all cares about money.” 7. This phrase was taken from the title of a work (De hominibus glebae adscriptis Lusatiae Superioris) written in 1715 by Johann Christoph Schacher (1667–1720), a German jurist. As used by Schacher, it referred to the Slavic-speaking Sorb or Wendish minority of eastern Saxony (Upper Lusatia). It literally means “enrolled in the soil” or “attached to the soil.” In Roman times, it referred to serfs or slaves who served the master or owner of the soil, were annexed to the land, and passed with the land when it was conveyed. 8. Equites were a class of Roman citizens (mostly aristocrats, but later free commoners as well) obligated to serve as cavalrymen in the Roman legions. 9. Hoplites were infantry citizen-soldiers of Greek city-states who fought in phalanx formations in order to be more effective in battle with fewer soldiers. 10. Velites were a class of light infantry skirmishers in the Roman army who were sent out ahead of the slower-moving phalanx to disrupt the enemy until heavy infantry could arrive and engage in more intense battle. 11. Originally, the rorarii were a class of light infantry who formed the rear guard and, in the sequence of battle, mopped up (so to speak) any final enemy resistance. They also served as reserves, filling the places of fallen soldiers. Later, however, they

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man people is shown by the history of Germany, from the times of the Frankish Charlemagne to the Peasants’ War.16 Not long ago, the high tsar of Russia, in his speech to the assembled bishops, recognized most beautifully and most clearly this intimate relationship of Christianity and servility.17 To be sure, the disbelief that has taken possession of western Europe is the primordial guilt of all these revolutions, as the tsar quite rightly sees. I share my opinion with those with knowledge, skepticism, and freedom. Who wants ignorance, faith, and bondage! And so, although I have not accomplished much with my botanizing, if I, like the bird in the fairy tale of “One Thousand and One Nights”

were used in the same manner as the velites and became indistinguishable from them in function. 12. A phalanx was a mass military formation, usually rectangular, composed of heavy infantry in close order with their shields locked and armed with outward-pointing spears or pikes. 13. The last half of Lindheimer’s quote was from the Gospel of John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The first half was uniquely Lindheimer’s or a paraphrase of Karl Marx. 14. Arnold of Brescia (ca. 1090–1155) was an Italian priest who called on the church to renounce its ownership of property. He was exiled for his views at least three times. He ended up participating in, and later leading, the Commune of Rome, a rebellion in 1144 against the temporal power of the pope. He was excommunicated for this. When a new pope had the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, recapture the city, Arnold was arrested, tried as a rebel, and hanged. His dead corpse was burned at the stake by the Papal Guards and the ashes cast into the River Tiber to prevent his burial place becoming venerated as the shrine of a martyr. 15. Redbad (also Radbod or Radbot; died 719) was king or duke of Frisia, the coastal area of the modern Netherlands and northwestern Germany. He was not Saxon but was allied with the Saxons against the Franks. It is said that Redbad was nearly baptized but refused when he was told he would not be able to find any of his ancestors in heaven after his death, only his enemies, the Franks. 16. The German Peasants’ War was a widespread popular revolt centered mostly in southwestern Germany in 1524 and 1525. It failed because of intense opposition by the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. Martin Luther condemned the revolt, but it was strongly supported by Thomas Müntzer and other radical reformation preachers. 17. The speech to which Lindheimer refers was delivered by Tsar Alexander II on 30 March 1856, declaring his intention to abolish serfdom. The speech led to the Russian Emancipation Manifesto of 1861.

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carry only one grain of sand, then many sand grains make a mountain in the end.18 Like the snowflake falling on the high firn fields,19 the crystallization of my mind and its spiritual content may weigh only one flake, but these flakes form the avalanche 20 that increases in falling to form the glacier, cold and merciless, its movement forward invisible to the fool, like the spirit of the time, or rather the human spirit whose atom I am. Build a dam against the glacier, if you can! You stupid ones with your ostrich-like wisdom, when you put your heads in the sand and see no danger then there is no danger. No! Danger is not all that is there, because where there is danger there is often also salvation. Here is merely the final demise for you in perspective. If you understand history, you can see that revolutions are not individual events but the products of an organic life that is most closely connected with itself, namely the development of mankind. An Abbot Joachim of Calabria,21 an Abélard,22 an Arnold of Brescia,23 a Hus,24 an

18. Lindheimer was very wrong here. There is no such bird in One Thousand and One Nights by Sir Richard Burton. Instead, in Jacob Grimm’s 1835 work Deutsche Mythologie (usually translated as Teutonic Mythology), volume 2, chapter 25, there is a footnote on the enormous amount of time before the end of the world: “Ähnlich ist die vorstellung des bergs der ewigkeit, dem alle hundert jahre ein vogel nur ein sandkorn zuträgt” (Similar is the image of the mountain of eternity, to which every hundred years a bird transmits only one grain of sand). 19. Firn is crystalline or granular snow at the head of a glacier left over from past seasons. It is in an intermediate state between the original snow and glacial ice. It has the appearance of wet sugar but is extremely hard. The weight of its accumulation and transformation into glacial ice is what causes glaciers to move. 20. Lindheimer seemed to be mixing his metaphors here. 21. Joachim of Calabria, also known as Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1135–1202), was an Italian monk and theologian whose work influenced a great many apocalyptic movements. 22. Pierre Abélard (1079–1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian, and preeminent logician. His love for, and affair with, Héloïse d’Argenteuil have become legendary. He has been described as the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the twelfth century. Abélard was a friend of Arnold of Brescia. 23. Arnold of Brescia is described in note 14. 24. Jan Hus (ca. 1369–1415) was a Czech priest, philosopher, and church reformer. His teachings had a strong influence on Martin Luther. He was burned at the stake for heresy against the doctrines of the church. Afterward, followers of his teachings in Bohemia and Moravia rebelled against their Catholic rulers and defeated five consecutive papal armies in the Hussite Wars of 1420–1431.

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Ulrich von Hutten,25 and Franz von Sickingen,26 Voltaire,27 Rousseau,28 Thomas Paine 29 are all just epics of a subterranean closely connected volcanic series attributable to the living fire of our globe; they are attributable to the history of humanity, to the living fire that burns within. You can extinguish the volcanoes and the Earth-fire before you suppress these effervescences and the glowing life of the human spirit. If you had the power to do it, you would at the same time annihilate yourself in one case as in the other. But we who know what it is, we want to continue working, not in the vineyard of the Lord or men, but in the mountains of fire where the spiritual weapons are forged. We want to blow the Promethean sparks to the powerful flame and, as worthy sons of the Earth, finally help the titanic race to prophesy the victory already prophesied in the gray of antiquity, albeit after a millennial struggle over the proud Uranians.30

25. Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) was a scholar, poet, satirist, reformer, and outspoken critic of the Catholic Church. His works influenced the advance of the Renaissance and the Lutheran Reformation. 26. Franz von Sickingen (1481–1523) was a German knight, wealthy landowner, and one of the best known figures of the early Protestant Reformation. He was a close friend of Ulrich von Hutten. In 1522 he led a short revolt by a number of Protestant and religious humanist German knights against the church and Holy Roman Emperor. This Knights’ Revolt would inspire the bloody German Peasants’ War described in note 16. Sickingen died of wounds incurred in the siege of his castle, which ended the Knights’ Revolt. 27. François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state. 28. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671–1741) was a French playwright and poet, particularly noted for his cynical epigrams. Voltaire and Rousseau met and became fierce enemies. 29. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. 30. Uranus was a primal Greek god personifying the sky. Uranus mated with his own mother, Gaia (Earth), to produce the twelve Titans, as well as many others. The Titans overthrew their father and were described as proud, ruling over a legendary Golden Age. The Titans were in turn overthrown by the six children of the youngest Titan, Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, and Demeter, known as the Olympians.

ESSAY 13

Geburt#tag#-Gedanken eine# 75 Jährigen Birthday Thoughts of a 75-Year-Old1

In his commendable popular work on natural science, Aaron Bernstein 2 says: “With the approach of old age, the mind of man finally alienates from the spirit of advanced time. His mind becomes unproductive, as his body is unproductive.” Cicero,3 in his treatise on old age, says: “But this is enough to show you how, so far from being listless and sluggish, old age is even a busy time, always doing and attempting something, of course of the same 1. As stated in the forward to the German edition of the Aufsätze, this essay first appeared in Die Zukunft, the organ of the North American Turners’ Federation, vol. 11(22), pg. 5, published in Indianapolis on 14 March 1878. 2. Aaron David Bernstein (1812–1884) was a German Jewish author, political reformer, and scientist. The popular scientific work Lindheimer referred to was Bernstein’s multivolume From the Field of Natural Science (Aus dem Reiche der Naturwissenschaft; 1853–1856). This was later republished as Popular Books on Natural Science (Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher; 1880) and was translated into nearly all the languages of Europe. Albert Einstein read Bernstein’s work as a teenager and credits it as a source of his inspiration in the preface to Bernstein’s work republished in 1923. 3. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC) was a Roman politician and lawyer, considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists. The work Lindheimer referred

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nature as each man’s taste had been in the previous part of his life.” 4 And in another place: “The fact is that, just as it is not every wine, so it is not every life that turns sour from keeping.” 5 We can only lament such old men of our time for they have experienced and seen infinitely more of the panorama of world history than the four-hundred-year-old patriarchs of the Old Testament. We would like to share some resolution with our old companions, if such a wish were not outrageous after having lived for more than two generations, and if they ever took part in the well-being and progress of the human race, there has now come a time when, in all aspects, in religious, political, social, and scientific development, the conditions of humanity are like an exciting novella in which the most interesting puzzles and entanglements are taking place. When you read the death reports in the papers, you see that noticeably more people are reaching their sixtieth year of life than their seventieth. If one wanted to design an age map of the living generation, based on the pattern of a Humboldt altitude map, the seventies with their white crests would protrude above the other people of their generation like single alpine peaks. From these alpine peaks of old age, when our spiritual eyes are still healthy, one has a broad view, a bird’seye view of life. The people down there seem much smaller than when we were still in our teens, twenties, and thirties. Many deceptions and even material losses have their cause in the better opinion we had at that time of our fellow survivors. Some of the better people among us have become misanthropes and pessimists through this life experience. It is at this point in the view of life that the spiritual work for the salvation of humanity begins with modern science. It orients us and makes our point of view clear, and not only in the life of material organisms, but also in the analogous spiritual world, that the development of our planet and its inhabitants is not in decline on a descending path of

to was Cato Maior de Senectute (On Old Age), written in 44 BC as if the esteemed Cato Major were lecturing two students. 4. Rather than translate from Lindheimer’s abbreviated German, the translation presented here is that of the Harvard Classics English version (1909–1914), On Old Age, paragraph 20, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. 5. On Old Age, paragraph 44.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and statesman. Goethe’s observation on the similarity of plant parts is basically the same as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Joseph Karl Stieler, oil on canvas (1828). Photo by Neue Pinakothek, Munich. (PD-1923)

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deterioration, as the dualists and orthodox so willingly claim, but on a climbing path to the ascendency to better states. All progress toward more perfect existence has not been affected in nature by new acts of creation connected with the old, not by revolution, but by evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution is basically the same as Goethe’s metamorphosis,6 only with the difference that Goethe begins with the seed leaf, the cotyledon, and speaks only of the plant, while Darwin starts from the cell and manifests his theory throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Just as in the case of material organisms, the further development of single individuals (as the sexes and classes take place only after a gapless causal nexus) can be claimed for millions of years (because nature may be wasteful over time, as Hegel 7 expresses it). Likewise, the spiritual and moral life of humanity develops only from within through a logical causal nexus and not through an external act of creation and grace as claimed in the redemptive doctrines of the so-called revealed religions. How long it will take for present humanity (whose condition is almost comparable to that of the blind voracious caterpillar to become the light form of the butterfly, or from the state of the headless mollusk to the thinking vertebrate) to evolve is not what matters because it is only a question of time. But modern science has given us the compass and the logbook, which prove to us that the human race, analogous to the whole organic nature of our planet, is in the process of moving forward to more perfect and nobler states and is not in decadence. This

6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German writer and statesman. His works include four novels, epic and lyric poetry, prose and verse dramas, literary and aesthetic criticism, and scientific works on botany, anatomy, and color. His 1790 work Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (Gotha, Germany: C. W. Ettinger), usually translated as Metamorphosis of Plants, demonstrated the homologous nature of all plant organs, from cotyledons, to leaves, to the parts of a flower; as he later wrote, “from top to bottom a plant is all leaf.” Also: “The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given . . . a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places.” In many aspects, his views were a precursor to ideas about adaptation and natural selection, only half a century earlier than Darwin. 7. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher and one of the most important figures of German idealism.

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comforting faith of all noble people has become even more comforting knowledge through the advances of modern natural science. Goethe and Darwin have done far more than they originally intended if we take account of this upswing of humanity. Even paleontology, the doctrine of fossils, could have shown us in its various strata how our planet and its inhabitants, the plants and animals, have gradually (over immeasurable periods of time) become higher organisms as progressively ever more perfectly formed beings appear in the higher layers as in the deeper older layers. Another irrefutable proof of the astonishing progress toward better states is provided by the inventions made in mechanics over the past fifty years. Consider only the relief provided by the sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, and tilling machines, and above all the enormous improvement in firearms that has transformed the whole of military tactics. Greater still are the achievements of the human spirit, in that it has made the physical forces to a great extent serviceable. Here we only want to remember the photograph, the electric telegraph, and the telephone; and chemistry, which has done incredibly lately, is now at the threshold of its most important discoveries. A new naturalist says about the goals of humanity: “Judgment and cognition are undoubtedly the next task of human existence. As a way to this goal, only two directions in the present are recognizable. One is a free religiosity dissociating itself from outdated dogmas, the other is the progressive direction of the natural sciences.” 8 How much even the luminaries of science of our day are sown in the bonds of orthodoxy was shown by Winckelmann,9 who could not keep himself in Rome without becoming Catholic. It was shown by Fichte,10 who in his old age, after having endured a clash with orthodoxy, preached in a series of public speeches his “directive to the blessed 8. Aaron Bernstein, Aus dem Reiche der Naturwissenschaft, 3rd ed., vols. 10–13, Das Leben der Pflanzen, der Thiere und der Menschen, parts I–IV (Berlin: Duncker, 1870). 9. Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist whose writings influenced not only archaeology and art history but also Western painting, sculpture, literature, and philosophy with great influence on Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, and Spengler. 10. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) was a German philosopher and a founding figure of the movement known as German idealism.

Alexander von Humboldt, Prussian polymath, painted with a background of South America in 1859 by Julius Schrader. Photo by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (PD-old)

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life.” 11 Hegel showed this (not to mention Schelling 12) in his proof of the existence of a personal God. It was shown by the formerly liberal Görres.13 It was shown above all by Agassiz.14 It was shown even in the worldly advice of so free-minded a person as Alexander von Humboldt,15 who was advised on his trip to America not to offend against orthodoxy if he wanted to see the success of his research there. It was shown by the solid historian Schlosser in his world history.16 And it is shown even by the excellent professor at Harvard University, Asa Gray,17 in his teleological view of carnivorous plants. Anyone who does not go into the dust before the hierarchical Samum18 is paralyzed or killed by its poisonous breath, who does not worship the anthropomorphic fetish is crushed by the Juggernaut,19 and only he is a righteous man who with devotion and self-conquest chokes down the excrement of the Dalai Lama.

11. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre (Berlin, 1806). The published book was based on eleven lectures Fichte gave the same year. 12. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) was a German philosopher. 13. Johann Joseph von Görres (1776–1848) was a German writer, philosopher, theologian, historian, and journalist. 14. Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–1873) was a Swiss American biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth’s natural history. After 1847 he was a professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University. 15. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He explored extensively in Venezuela, Cuba, the Andes, and Mexico and visited the United States in 1804 before returning to Germany. He later explored the Ural Mountains and the steppes of Central Asia. 16. Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776–1861) was a German historian. 17. Asa Gray (1810–1888) was the most important American botanist of the nineteenth century. Gray corresponded with Charles Darwin on the topic of teleology several times. Teleology tries to explain evolutionary adaptation using the language of a conscious direction toward a perceived goal. 18. Samum is an Arabic term found in the Koran that refers to the tormenting fires of Jahannam, the Islamic afterlife place of punishment for evildoers. In other sources, the Samun are demons with poisonous breath who serve Satan. 19. A juggernaut originally referred to a massive Hindu temple car of the Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri carrying representations of Vishnu. Devotees were apocryphally reputed to be crushed beneath the wheels.

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Who counts the number of martyrs for life views that are higher? It goes as far back as the life of mankind itself, for, as far as our knowledge goes, the interests of the earlier faith, which has been outmoded to superstition, are constantly in dispute with the spiritual progress of humanity. Socrates had to drink the poison cup, not because he “seduced the youth,” but because his philosophy was dangerous to the interests of the priesthood. Christ was not crucified because he was a rebel who wanted to be a Rex Judaeorum,20 for his kingdom was not of this world as he said, but because his teaching had to bring about the fall of the hierarchy. Unfortunately, the falsification of his doctrine has only produced the opposite of what Christ intended. Yes, even if we go back to Moses, who can believe that the man who wrote the Ten Commandments is also the author of the priestly law that the non-Levite who kisses the daughter of a Levite should have glowing lead poured into his mouth? The mysterious disappearance of Moses on Mount Nebo is too reminiscent of the end of Romulus, who, on the occasion of a public sacrifice, was taken to Olympus as the legend says, but in reality murdered by the patricians because he was in their way and the corpse was secretly taken to the side and cut into individual pieces. Even learned Jews have suspected that the Levites secretly murdered Moses because he was in their way. The fight against the Leviathan of superstition is a giant fight, for on the side of superstition on which the earthly and the heavenly interest fight, the orthodox realize that their faith brings them not only earthly gain but also, as proclaimed by divine word, they will be forgiven of their sins because of their faith. Soul, what more do you want?! Here are earthly goods and beyond are heavenly joys! That is the high price that is made for the army of believers; this is Tetzel’s 21 old indulgence sale in a modified form and the buyers of bliss must be careful that their checks are not written on “wild cat bank.” 20. Ie¯sus Nazare¯snus, Re¯x Iu¯daeo¯rum (INRI, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews), from John 19:19. 21. Johann Tetzel (1465–1519) was a Dominican friar and grand commissioner for indulgences in Germany. Tetzel was famous for selling indulgences (a reduction in the term of punishment for sins after death) for money. His actions were challenged by Martin Luther and contributed to the Reformation.

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In the United States of North America the terrorism of the orthodox rabble often almost reaches the cruelty of sordid Egyptian anchorites,22 who in Alexandria took off Hypatia 23 by night and tore her apart because she was lecturing to an educated audience on the highest issues held by humanity. Here in our republic, where the zealots of the faith seek to obscure the light of truth by their arduous stirring up of verbal dust, two fixed stars gleam in our spiritual firmament, but they cannot evoke ecclesiastical exorcism and blow out anathema just as little as they can the light of Sirius and Aldebaran, and these stars are Thomas Paine 24 (about the Bible) and J. W. Draper (in his conflict between religion and science).25 Anyone who appreciates the importance of this conflict should read Draper’s work, and though we ourselves cannot be standard-bearers or generals in this culture-struggle, we want to fight faithfully in the fore-encounter so that we may sing at our death the Spartan battle song of Tyrtaeus: 26 “It is beautiful to die, fighting in the front ranks!”

22. An anchorite is someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. 23. Hypatia (ca. 350–415) was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She was murdered by a mob of Christian monks. 24. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary, famous for his pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis. In the first part of The Age of Reason (published in 1794), Paine launched an assault on organized “revealed” religion by producing a compilation of the many inconsistencies he found in the Bible. 25. John William Draper (1811–1882) was an English-born American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian, and photographer. One of Draper’s books, the History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton, 1874), popularized the conflict thesis proposing intrinsic hostility in the relationship between religion and science. 26. Tyrtaeus was a Greek lyric poet from Sparta who composed verses around the latter part of the seventh century BCE. He is known especially for political and military elegies, exhorting Spartans to support the state authorities.

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION TO APPENDIXES

How Plants Get Described and Named

The process of describing and naming plants is called taxonomy. It is a specialized discipline within the science of botany. The process is regulated; there is an international congress that meets about once every seven years that sets and changes the rules. Basically, one must describe why a species is distinguished from any other related species. There used to be a requirement that the description had to be in Latin, but that rule has been revoked. Older descriptions could be very brief, sometimes just a sentence or two, but modern descriptions of new species tend to be very complete, describing roots, stems, leaves, and flowering parts in great detail, and sometimes including chromosome number and DNA or biochemical information. Everything an author says to distinguish a species is called its diagnosis. An author must also designate a type specimen (see below) and usually lists other specimens seen. Sometimes drawings or photographs are included with the published description, and there can be a map showing the distribution of the new species. All this information about the new species published at the same time is included in what is called the protologue of the species. Next, the new species must be given a name, and the name is always treated as Latin and must follow Latin grammatical rules even though it may be derived from Greek or Arabic or Chinese or any other language.

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The name must be binomial; that is, it must consist of a generic name (the name of the genus) followed by a specific epithet (a descriptor that distinguishes the species within the genus). The name must be unique (that is, no one else can have published the same combination of generic name and specific epithet for some other species), and it cannot be superfluous (that is, Jones may not knowingly substitute his or her name for a species in place of Smith’s older name for the same species). The name must be validly and effectively published according to a long list of technical requirements for publication. Finally, the new name must be attached to a specimen located in a named, responsible repository of specimens called a herbarium. This requirement did not come into effect for higher plants until 1958, but luckily older authors frequently mentioned the specimens they saw on which they were basing their description of the new species, and those older specimens can usually be located. This is where Lindheimer fits into this picture. Most of his specimens were named and described by Asa Gray and George Engelmann in a publication called Plantae Lindheimerianae. If a new species in that publication was named by Asa Gray, then the original type specimen (or “holotype”) can still be found in the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University. If a new species was named by George Engelmann, then the holotype will be at the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Since Lindheimer collected in bulk and since Engelmann and Gray sorted his collections and numbered them for distribution in identical (or nearly identical) sets to people around the world, all those other specimens with identical numbers can serve as “isotypes,” that is, equivalent to the true, original holotype until or unless someone is able to demonstrate otherwise. That is what made Lindheimer’s collections so valuable—specimens that could be reliably treated as equivalent to the original type material were distributed all over the world. Lindheimer traded specimens with Ferdinand Roemer before Roemer returned to Germany, and Roemer’s mixed set of specimens was turned over to Adolph Scheele for description and naming. Many of Scheele’s new species were based on Lindheimer’s specimens. Scheele’s holotypes eventually ended up being deposited at the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Museum. Unfortunately, that institution was destroyed in World War II. This is where the value of isotypes becomes

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apparent, because identically numbered specimens of Lindheimer’s collection remain in institutions all over the world. After World War II, botanists went about determining the locations of those isotypes and designating one of them to become the “lectotype” for the species. Also, Scheele may have based his description and name for a new species on a specimen from Roemer’s collection, but he frequently cited a Lindheimer specimen as being the same, or at the least he would say he was looking at a Lindheimer specimen at the same time he was describing the species from a Roemer specimen. In instances where an author states that his description is based in part on specimens other than the single holotype, those other specimens can be considered “syntypes,” not quite as reliable as a holotype, an isotype of a holotype, or a designated lectotype at hand, but at least more reliable than any other specimen. Finally, taxonomic concepts change over time. In 1865 a Swiss botanist from Aargau, Johannes Müller, described and named a new species based on a Lindheimer specimen. Müller thought the species belonged to a very old genus, Jatropha, established by Linnaeus in 1753, and Müller named it Jatropha texana. By the turn of the century, an American botanist, John Kunkel Small, at the New York Botanical Garden realized that Müller’s species actually belonged to the distinct genus Cnidoscolus, named for plants from Brazil in 1827, and in his Flora of the Southeastern United States in 1903 Small renamed the species Cnidoscolus texanus (Müll. Arg.) Small. He did so because Müller’s epithet texana is the oldest epithet for the species regardless of genus— one of the basic principles of plant taxonomy. Small only had to alter the ending of the epithet to agree with the Latin grammatical gender of the receiving genus. Small’s name is the name “accepted” for the species by most botanists today, and Müller’s name is a “synonym,” a very special type of synonym called a “basionym” because it is the basis of the specific epithet brought forward by Small. Most Texans know this plant as Texas bull-nettle. There are other synonyms besides basionyms. If a new combination of genus name and specific epithet is based on the same type specimen, then it is a “homotypic” synonym of the original name. “Heterotypic” synonyms are based on different type specimens when researchers realize that two plants given different names are actually the same species

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at different extremes of its natural variation or its geographic range. It takes time for botanists to explore, collect, and examine all the range of natural variation to make that connection. This also happens at higher levels, such as when Dr. Small realized that Müller’s species belonged to the genus Cnidoscolus. Finally, the author of a species name gets his or her name attached at the end of the species name. If the last name of the author is short, it is spelled out in full (except for Linnaeus, which is generally abbreviated as L., and very few others). Also, if the new combination for the species name has a basionym, then the basionym’s author is included in parentheses. If the name of the author is longer than two or three syllables, it is generally abbreviated. If there are other botanists with the same last name, like Smith or Brown or Gray or Müller, then the author’s name is distinguished by adding an initial for the first name, or, since there are several botanists named Johannes Müller, for instance, then the Swiss botanist with that name from Aargau is distinguished as Müll. Arg. (for the Latin Müller Argoviensis, “Müller from Aargau”). If an author credits someone else with a new combination (because that other author has suggested the name or the other author has not had time to publish yet), then the two authors are attached with the Latin preposition ex, as in the evergreen sumac, Rhus virens Lindh. ex A. Gray, where Asa Gray gave Lindheimer credit for originally suggesting the name. If an author invites another author, usually a specialist in a particular group of plants, to contribute his or her expertise to be published in the first author’s work, then the two authors are attached with the Latin preposition in, as in the plains prickly-pear, Opuntia macrorhiza Engelm. in A. Gray, where Asa Gray asked Engelmann to sort out and name the cacti in Gray’s publication. A glossary of taxonomic terms follows appendixes 1–3.

APPENDIX 1

Plants Named by Lindheimer

ROSIDAE Vitaceae Grape Family 1. Vitis populifolia Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 165. 1850. Status = invalid (a nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Vitis rupestris Scheele (1848)

Rosaceae Rose Family 2. Prunus tawakonia Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 186. 1850. Status = invalid (a nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Prunus rivularis Scheele (1848)

Anacardiaceae Sumac Family 3. Rhus virens Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 159. 1850. Status = legitimate, valid, effectively published, and accepted (evergreen sumac)

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ASTERIDAE Apocynaceae Dogbane Family 4. Asclepias himanthophylla Lindheimer, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 32. 1879. Status = legitimate, valid, and effectively published, probably a synonym of Asclepias lanceolata Walter (1788)

Asteraceae Aster, Daisy, or Sunflower Family 5. Gaillardia odorata Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 230. 1850. Status = invalid (a nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Gaillardia suavis (A. Gray & Engelm.) Britton & Rusby (1847 / 1887)

Caprifoliaceae Honeysuckle Family 6. Fedia amarella Lindheimer ex Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 217. 1850. Status = legitimate, valid, effectively published, and accepted as a taxon but the name a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of (and the basionym for) Valerianella amarella (Lindh. ex Engelm.) Krok (1864) (hairy cornsalad)

LILIIDAE Asparagaceae Asparagus Family 7. Yucca tortifolia Lindheimer ex Torrey, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey . . . Botany 2(1): 221. 1858. Status = invalid (a nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Yucca rupicola Scheele (1850)

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COMMELINIDAE Poaceae Grass Family 8. Alopecurus geniculatus Lindheimer ex Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 340. 1849. Status = illegitimate (a later homonym, the earlier name dating from 1753) synonym of Setaria scheelei (Steud.) Hitchc. (1849 / 1928) 9. Andropogon glaucus Lindheimer, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 35. 1879. [as “glaucum”] Status = illegitimate (a later homonym, the earlier name dating from 1789), also invalid (a nomen nudum and impossible to determine any modern accepted species name)

APPENDIX 2

Plants Named in Honor of Lindheimer

Summary: 124 total names for 65 distinct entities + 59 homotypic (or nomenclatural) synonyms

32 accepted entity names (genus, species, subspecies, or variety)



9 entities that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety or subspecies

POLYPODIIDAE Adiantaceae Maiden-hair Fern Family 1. Cheilanthes lindheimeri Hooker, Species Filicum 2: 101, pl. 107, f. A. 1852. Status = accepted (alternatively: Hemionitis lindheimeri (Hook.) Christenh.) (fairy swords) Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Myriopteris lindheimeri (Hook.) J. Sm. in Seem., Bot. Voy. Herald [Seemann] 9: 340. 1856. Allosorus lindheimeri (Hook.) Farw., Amer. Midl. Naturalist 12: 285. 1931. Hemionitis lindheimeri (Hook.) Christenh., Global Fl. 4: 17. 2018. [epublished]

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Appendix 2

Thelypteridaceae Shield-fern Family 2. Thelypteris ovata var. lindheimeri (C. Christensen) A.R. Smith, American Fern Journal 61: 30. 1971. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s marsh fern or Lindheimer’s shield fern) Name-bringing Basionym: Dryopteris normalis var. lindheimeri C. Christensen, Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter. Naturvidenskabelig og Mathematisk Afdeling (ser. 7) 10: 182. 1913. Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Aspidium lindheimeri A. Braun ex C. Chr., Kongel. Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Skr., Naturvidensk. Math. Afd. (ser. 7) 10: 182. 1913. Thelypteris augescens var. lindheimeri (A. Braun ex C. Chr.) R.P. St. John ex Small, Ferns S.E. States [Small] 241. 1938. Dryopteris augescens var. lindheimeri (A. Braun ex C. Chr.) M. Broun, Index N. Amer. Ferns 62. 1938. Thelypteris × lindheimeri (C. Chr.) Wherry, Amer. Fern J. 54(3): 145. 1964. Cyclosorus ovatus var. lindheimeri (C. Chr.) Mazumdar & R. Mukhop., Bionature 33(1): 27. 2013. [epublished] Cyclosorus × lindheimeri (C. Chr.) Mazumdar, Ann. Bot. Fenn. 50(6): 399. 2013. [epublished]

MAGNOLIIDAE Ranunculaceae Buttercup or Crowfoot Family 3. Ranunculus trachyspermus var. lindheimeri Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 211. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ranunculus pusillus Poir. (1804) ([Lindheimer’s] low spearwort) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Ranunculus pusillus var. lindheimeri (Engelm.) A. Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 21: 367. 1886.

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CARYOPHYLLIDAE Cactaceae Cactus Family 4. Echinocactus lindheimeri Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 246–247. 1845. Status = synonym of Echinocactus texensis Hopffer (1842) 5. Mammillaria lindheimeri Engelmann ex Hemsley, Biologia Centrali-Americana; Botany 1(6): 525. 1880. Status = invalid (cited only as a synonym), probably Mammillaria heyderi Muehlenpf. (1848) 6. Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri (Engelmann) B.D. Parfitt & Pinkava, Madroño 35(4): 346–347. 1989. Status = accepted (alternatively: Opuntia engelmannii subsp. lindheimeri (Engelm.) U. Guzmán & Mandujano) (Texas prickly-pear) Name-bringing Basionym: Opuntia lindheimeri Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 207. 1850. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Opuntia engelmannii subsp. lindheimeri (Engelm.) U. Guzmán & Mandujano, Cactaceae Syst. Init. 16: 18. 2003.

Caryophyllaceae Chickweed or Pink Family 7. Paronychia lindheimeri Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 152. 1850. Status = accepted (forked nailwort)

Nyctaginaceae Four-o’clock Family 8. Boerhavia lindheimeri Standley, North American Flora 21(3): 208. 1918. Status = synonym of Boerhavia linearifolia A. Gray (1853) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Boerhavia linearifolia subsp. glandulosa Standl., Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. 12(8): 387. 1909.

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Appendix 2

9. Mirabilis jalapa subsp. lindheimeri Standley, Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 12(8): 368. 1909. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type subspecies) of Mirabilis jalapa L. (1753) ([Lindheimer’s] common four-o’clock) Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Mirabilis jalapa var. lindheimeri (Standl.) Cory, Rhodora 38(455): 405. 1936. Mirabilis lindheimeri (Standl.) Shinners, Field & Lab. 19(4): 175. 1951.

Polygonaceae Buckwheat Family 10. Eriogonum lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 149. 1849. Status = synonym of Eriogonum annuum Nutt. (1835) 11. Eriogonum longifolium var. lindheimeri Gandoger, Bulletin de la Société Royale de Botanique de Belgique 42(3): 190–191. 1906. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s long-leaved buckwheat)

ROSIDAE Oxalidaceae Sorrel Family 12. Oxalis lindheimeri Torrey ex R. Knuth, Notizblatt des Botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin-Dahlem 7(67): 291. 1919. Status = unresolved (based on Mexican material collected after Lindheimer’s death by a different collector)

Euphorbiaceae Spurge Family 13. Acalypha lindheimeri Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(1): 47. 1865. Status = synonym of Acalypha phleoides Cav. (1800) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Ricinocarpus lindheimeri (Müll. Arg.) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 618. 1891.

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14. Croton glandulosus var. lindheimeri Müller Argoviensis in A. de Candolle & A.L.P.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 15(2[2]): 685–686. 1866. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s croton) 15. Croton lindheimeri (Engelmann & A. Gray) Alphonso Wood, A Class-book of Botany 631. 1861. Status = accepted (goatweed or woolly croton) Name-bringing Basionym: Pilinophytum lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 232. 1845. Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Croton capitatus var. lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) Müll. Arg. in DC. & A. DC., Prodr. [A.P. de Candolle] 15(2[2]): 687. 1866. Croton engelmannii A.M. Ferguson, Rep. (Annual) Missouri Bot. Gard. 12: 54. 1901. 16. Croton lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 25(5): 580–581. 1853. Status = accepted (three-seeded croton) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Oxydectes lindheimeriana (Scheele) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 612. 1891. 17. Euphorbia lindheimeriana Engelmann ex Boissier in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 15(2): 142. 1862. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Euphorbia longicruris Scheele (1849)

Salicaceae Willow Family 18. Salix nigra var. lindheimeri C.K. Schneider, Botanical Gazette 65(1): 9–12. 1918. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Salix nigra Marshall (1785) (Lindheimer’s black willow)

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Appendix 2

Fabaceae Bean or Legume Family 19. Astragalus lindheimeri Engelmann ex A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 52. 1852. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s milk-vetch) Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Tragacantha lindheimeri (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 946. 1891. Hamosa lindheimeri (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Rydb. in Small, Fl. S.E. U.S. [Small] 617, 1332. 1903. 20. Desmodium lindheimeri Vail, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 18(4): 120. 1891. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s tick-trefoil) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Meibomia lindheimeri (Vail) Vail, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 19(4): 111. 1892. 21. Indigofera lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 464–465. 1848. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s indigo) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Anila lindheimeriana (Scheele) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 939. 1891. 22. Mimosa lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 181–182. 1850. Status = synonym of Mimosa aculeaticarpa Ortega (1800) var. biuncifera (Benth.) Barneby (1839 / 1991) Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Mimosa biuncifera var. lindheimeri (A. Gray) B.L. Rob., Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 33(17): 328. 1898. Mimosopsis lindheimeri (A. Gray) Britton & Rose, N. Amer. Fl. 23(3): 177. 1928. 23. Neptunia lindheimeri B.L. Robinson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 33(17): 333. 1898. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Neptunia pubescens Benth. (1841) ([Lindheimer’s] yellow powder-puff)

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Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Neptunia pubescens var. lindheimeri (B.L. Rob.) B.L. Turner, Amer. Midl. Naturalist 46(1): 88. 1951. 24. Senna lindheimeriana (Scheele) H.S. Irwin & Barneby, Phytologia 44(7): 500. 1979. Status = accepted (velvet-leaved senna) Name-bringing Basionym: Cassia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 457–458. 1848. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Earleocassia lindheimeriana (Scheele) Britton, N. Amer. Fl. 23(4): 249. 1930. 25. Tephrosia lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 172. 1850. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s hoary-pea) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Cracca lindheimeri (A. Gray) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 1: 175. 1891.

Polygalaceae Milkwort Family 26. Polygala lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 150–151. 1850. Status = accepted (alternatively: Rhinotropis lindheimeri (A. Gray) J.R. Abbott) (shrubby milkwort) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Rhinotropis lindheimeri (A. Gray) J.R. Abbott, J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 5(1): 135. 2011.

Ulmaceae Elm Family 27. Celtis lindheimeri Engelmann ex K. Koch, Dendrologie 2(2): 434. 1873. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s hackberry)

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Appendix 2

Cucurbitaceae Gourd Family 28. Ibervillea lindheimeri (A. Gray) Greene, Erythea 3(5): 75. 1895. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s globeberry) Name-bringing Basionym: Sicydium lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 194–195. 1850. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Maximowiczia lindheimeri (A. Gray) Cogn. in A. DC. & C. DC., Monogr. Phan. 3: 727. 1881.

Onagraceae Evening-primrose Family 29. Gaura lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 217–218. 1845. Status = accepted (alternatively: Oenothera lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) W.L. Wagner & Hoch) (Lindheimer’s beeblossom) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Oenothera lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) W.L. Wagner & Hoch, Syst. Bot. Monogr. 83: 213. 2007. 30. Oenothera pyramidalis var. lindheimeri H. Léveillé, Bulletin de l’Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique 19(241–242): 343. 1909. Status = unresolved, possibly Oenothera rhombipetala

Malvaceae Mallow Family 31. Malva lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 470. 1848. Status = synonym of Malvastrum coromandelianum (L.) Garcke (1753 / 1857) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Malvastrum lindheimerianum (Scheele) Walp., Ann. Bot. Syst. [Walpers] 2(4): 753. 1852.

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32. Sida lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 213–214. 1845. Status = accepted (showy fanpetals) 33. Sphaeralcea lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 162–163. 1850. Status = accepted (woolly globemallow) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Sphaeroma lindheimeri (A. Gray) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 1: 74. 1891.

Brassicaceae Mustard or Crucifer Family 34. Lesquerella lindheimeri (A. Gray) S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 23(2): 253. 1888. Status = accepted (alternatively: Physaria lindheimeri (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz) (Lindheimer’s bladderpod) Name-bringing Basionym: Vesicaria lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 145. 1850. Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Alyssum lindheimeri (A. Gray) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 931. 1891. Physaria lindheimeri (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz, Novon 12(3): 325. 2002.

ASTERIDAE Hydrangeaceae Hydrangea Family 35. Fendlera rupicola var. lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 77–78, pl. 5, f. 1, 3–4. 1852. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Fendlera rupicola Engelm. & A. Gray (1852) ([Lindheimer’s] cliff fendler-bush)

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Appendix 2

Loasaceae Loasa Family 36. Mentzelia lindheimeri Urban & Gilg, Nova Acta Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino-Carolinae Germanicae Naturae Curiosorum 76(1): 54–55. 1900. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s blazing-star)

Polemoniaceae Phlox Family 37. Gilia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 753. 1848. Status = synonym of Giliastrum incisum (Benth.) J.M. Porter (1845 / 1998)

Garryaceae Silk-tassel Family 38. Garrya ovata subsp. lindheimeri (Torrey) Dahling, Contributions from the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University 209: 81. 1978. Status = accepted (alternatively: Garrya ovata var. lindheimeri (Torr.) J.M. Coult. & W.H. Evans) (Lindheimer’s silk-tassel) Name-bringing Basionym: Garrya lindheimeri Torrey in Whipple, Pacific Railroad Reports 4(5): 136. 1857. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Garrya ovata var. lindheimeri (Torr.) J.M. Coult. & W.H. Evans, Bot. Gaz. 15(4): 94. 1890.

Apocynaceae Dogbane Family 39. Asclepias lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 250–251. 1845. Status = synonym of Asclepias oenotheroides Schltdl. & Cham. (1830) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Podostemma lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) Greene, Pittonia 3(17C): 236. 1897.

Plants Named in Honor of Lindheimer

273

Loganiaceae Logania Family 40. Spigelia lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 108. 1878. Status = synonym of Spigelia hedyotidea A. DC. (1845) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Coelostylis lindheimeri (A. Gray) Small, Fl. S.E. U.S. [Small] 922, 1336. 1903.

Solanaceae Nightshade Family 41. Solanum lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 766–767. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Solanum triquetrum Cav. (1795) ([Lindheimer’s] Texas nightshade) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Solanum triquetrum var. lindheimerianum (Scheele) A. Gray ex Blank., Rep. (Annual) Missouri Bot. Gard. 18: 145. 1907.

Convolvulaceae Bindweed Family 42. Convolvulus equitans var. lindheimeri J.R.I. Wood & Scotland, PhytoKeys 51: 104. 2015. [epublished] Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Convolvulus equitans Benth. (1839) ([Lindheimer’s] Texas bindweed) 43. Ipomoea lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 210. 1878. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s morning-glory) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Pharbitis lindheimeri (A. Gray) Small, Fl. S.E. U.S. [Small] 964, 1336. 1903.

274

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Acanthaceae Acanthus Family 44. Dipteracanthus lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 764–765. 1849. Status = unresolved, Dipteracanthus is mostly absorbed within Ruellia, possibilities include Ruellia drummondiana, R. metziae, or R. nudiflora

Lamiaceae Mint Family 45. Monarda lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 228. 1845. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s beebalm)

Oleaceae Olive Family 46. Fraxinus pubescens var. lindheimeri Wenzig, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 4(2): 184. 1883. Status = synonym of Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall (1785) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Fraxinus lanceolata var. lindheimeri (Wenz.) Lingelsh., Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 40(2): 221. 1907.

Orobanchaceae Broomrape Family 47. Castilleja purpurea var. lindheimeri (A. Gray) Shinners, Spring Flora of the Dallas-Fort Worth Area Texas 410. 1958. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s paintbrush) Name-bringing Basionym: Castilleja lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 298. 1878.

Plants Named in Honor of Lindheimer

275

Campanulaceae Bellflower Family 48. Specularia lindheimeri Vatke, Linnaea 38(6): 713. 1874. Status = synonym of Triodanis coloradoensis (Buckley) McVaugh (1861 / 1945)

Asteraceae Aster, Daisy, or Sunflower Family 49. Ambrosia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 156. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ambrosia psilostachya DC. (1836) ([Lindheimer’s] western ragweed) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Ambrosia psilostachya var. lindheimeriana (Scheele) Blank., Rep. (Annual) Missouri Bot. Gard. 18: 173. 1907. 50. Artemisia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 163. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Artemisia ludoviciana Nutt. (1818) ([Lindheimer’s] western mugwort or white sage) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Artemisia ludoviciana var. lindheimeriana (Scheele) Bush, Amer. Midl. Naturalist 11: 35. 1928. 51. Eupatorium lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 599. 1848. Status = synonym of Ageratina havanensis (Kunth) R.M. King & H. Rob. (1818 / 1970) 52. Gutierrezia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 351. 1849. Status = synonym of Amphiachyris dracunculoides (DC.) Nutt. (1836 / 1840) 53. Helianthus lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 159–160. 1849. Status = unresolved, possibly Helianthus debilis Nutt. (1841) 54. Lindheimera A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 47. 1847. Status = accepted ((Lindheimer daisy or Texas yellow-star)

276

Appendix 2

55. Mulgedium lindheimeri Gandoger, Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France 65: 52. 1918. Status = unresolved, possibly Lactuca floridana (L.) Gaertn. (1753 / 1791) 56. Perityle lindheimeri (A. Gray) Shinners, Southwestern Naturalist 4(4): 204. 1959. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s rock-daisy) Name-bringing Basionym: Laphamia lindheimeri A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 101. 1852. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Laphamia halimifolia subsp. lindheimeri (A. Gray) W.E. Niles, Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 21(1): 45. 1970. 57. Senecio lindheimeri Greenman, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 32(1): 20. 1902. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, no description or citation of specimens), later cited by Greenman as a synonym of Senecio obovatus Muhl. ex Willd. (1803) (alternatively: Packera obovata (Muhl. ex Willd.) W.A. Weber & Á. Löve (1981)) 58. Solidago lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 599–600. 1848. Status = synonym of Solidago petiolaris Aiton (1789) var. angusta (Torr. & A. Gray) A. Gray (1842 / 1882) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Aster lindheimerianus (Scheele) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 1: 318. 1891. 59. Verbesina lindheimeri B.L. Robinson & Greenman, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 34(20): 541–542. 1899. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s crownbeard) 60. Vernonia lindheimeri A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 46. 1847. Status = accepted (woolly ironweed) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Cacalia lindheimeri (A. Gray & Engelm.) Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 970. 1891.

Plants Named in Honor of Lindheimer

277

LILIIDAE Asparagaceae Asparagus Family 61. Nolina lindheimeriana (Scheele) S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 14: 247. 1879. Status = accepted (devil’s shoestring) Name-bringing Basionym: Dasylirion lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 25(3): 262. 1853. Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Beaucarnea lindheimeriana (Scheele) Baker, J. Bot. 10: 328. 1872.

COMMELINIDAE Cyperaceae Sedge Family 62. Eleocharis lindheimeri Svenson, Rhodora 31: 199. 1929. Status = synonym of Eleocharis radicans (Poir.) Kunth (1805 / 1837) Homotypic Synonym (name based on the same type specimen): Eleocharis acicularis var. lindheimeri C.B. Clarke ex Britton, J. New York Microscop. Soc. 5: 105. 1889. invalid (cited only as a synonym)

Poaceae Grass Family 63. Andropogon provincialis subvar. lindheimeri Hackel in A.L.L.P. de Candolle & A.C.P. de Candolle, Monographiae Phanerogamarum 6: 443. 1889. Status = synonym of Andropogon gerardi Vitman (1782) 64. Dichanthelium acuminatum var. lindheimeri (Nash) Gould & C.A. Clark, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 65(4): 1127. 1979. Status = accepted (alternatively: Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. lindheimeri (Nash) Freckmann & Lelong) (Lindheimer’s panic-grass)

278

Appendix 2

Name-bringing Basionym: Panicum lindheimeri Nash, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 24(4): 196–197. 1897. Homotypic Synonyms (names based on the same type specimen): Panicum lanuginosum var. lindheimeri (Nash) Fernald, Rhodora 36(423): 77. 1934. Dichanthelium lindheimeri (Nash) Gould, Brittonia 26(1): 60. 1974. Dichanthelium lanuginosum var. lindheimeri (Nash) Harvill, Castanea 42(2): 177. 1977. Panicum acuminatum var. lindheimeri (Nash) Beetle, Phytologia 48(2): 193. 1981. Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. lindheimeri (Nash) Freckmann & Lelong, Sida 20(1): 168. 2002. 65. Muhlenbergia lindheimeri Hitchcock, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 24(7): 291. 1934. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s muhly)

APPENDIX 3

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections (at least in part)

Summary: 373 scientific names based on Lindheimer collections

198 accepted entity names (genus, species, subspecies, or variety)



41 entities that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety or subspecies

POLYPODIIDAE Ophioglossaceae Adder’s-tongue Family 1. Ophioglossum engelmannii Prantl, Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 1: 351. 1883. Status = accepted (limestone adder’s-tongue)

Adiantaceae Maidenhair-fern Family 2. Cheilanthes lindheimeri Hooker, Species Filicum 2: 101, pl. 107, f. A. 1852. Status = accepted (alternatively: Hemionitis lindheimeri (Hook.) Christenh. (2018)) (fairy swords)

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Marsileaceae Water-clover Family 3. Marsilea macropoda A. Braun ex Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts (ser. 2) 3: 55. 1847. Status = accepted (big-foot water-clover) 4. Marsilea tenuifolia Engelmann ex Kunze, American Journal of Science and Arts (ser. 2) 6: 89. 1848. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type subspecies) of Marsilea vestita Hook. & Grev. (1830) (as: M. vestita subsp. tenuifolia (Engelm. ex Kunze) D.M. Johnson (1986)) (hairy water-clover) 5. Marsilea uncinata var. texana A. Braun, Monatsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1870: 742. 1871. Status = invalid (nomen nudum) synonym of Marsilea vestita Hook. & Grev. (1830)

Thelypteridaceae Shield-fern Family 6. Dryopteris normalis var. lindheimeri C. Christensen, Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter. Naturvidenskabelig og Mathematisk Afdeling (ser. 7) 10: 182. 1913. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Thelypteris ovata R.P. St. John (1938) var. lindheimeri (C. Chr.) A.R. Sm. (1971) (Lindheimer’s marsh fern or Lindheimer’s shield fern)

MAGNOLIIDAE Aristolochiaceae Birthwort Family 7. Aristolochia longiflora Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 259–260. 1845. Status = synonym of Aristolochia erecta L. (1763)

Ranunculaceae Buttercup or Crowfoot Family 8. Ranunculus texensis Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 210–211. 1845. Status = synonym of Ranunculus laxicaulis Darby (1841)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

281

9. Ranunculus trachyspermus Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 211. 1845. Status = probably a synonym of Ranunculus pusillus Poir. (1804) 10. Ranunculus trachyspermus var. angustifolius Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 211. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Ranunculus pusillus Poir. (1804) var. angustifolius (Engelm.) L.D. Benson (1942) (narrow-leaved spearwort) 11. Ranunculus trachyspermus var. lindheimeri Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 211. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ranunculus pusillus Poir. (1804) (as: R. pusillus var. lindheimeri (Engelm.) A. Gray (1886)) (Lindheimer’s spearwort)

CARYOPHYLLIDAE Amaranthaceae Amaranth Family 12. Alternanthera villiflora Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 149. 1849. Status = synonym of Alternanthera caracasana Kunth (1818) 13. Celosia texana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 148–149. 1849. Status = synonym of Celosia nitida Vahl (1791)

Cactaceae Cactus Family 14. Cereus caespitosus Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 247. 1845. Status = synonym of Echinocereus reichenbachii (Terscheck ex Walp.) J.N. Haage (1843 / 1859) 15. Cereus caespitosus var. castaneus Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 203. 1850. Status = synonym of Echinocereus reichenbachii (Terscheck ex Walp.) J.N. Haage (1843 / 1859) 16. Cereus roemeri Engelmann in A Gray, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, new series 4(1): 50. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in

282

Appendix 3

1848 by Mühlenpfordt) synonym of Echinocereus triglochidiatus Engelm. (1848) 17. Echinocactus lindheimeri Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 246–247. 1845. Status = synonym of Echinocactus texensis Hopffer (1842) 18. Echinocactus setispinus Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 246. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Thelocactus setispinus (Engelm.) E.F. Anderson (1987) (miniature barrel cactus) 19. Echinocactus setispinus var. setaceus Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 201. 1850. Status = illegitimate (superfluous name citing the species Echinocactus setispinus Engelm. (1845) as a synonym of the variety) 20. Mammillaria applanata Engelmann in Wislizenus, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico 105. 1848. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Mammillaria heyderi Muehlenpf. (earlier in 1848) (as: M. heyderi var. applanata (Engelm.) Engelm. (1856)) (little nipple cactus) 21. Mammillaria calcarata Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 195. 1850. Status = illegitimate (superfluous name substituted for Mammillaria sulcata Engelm. (1845)) 22. Mammillaria hemisphaerica Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 198–199. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Mammillaria heyderi Muehlenpf. (1848) subsp. hemisphaerica (Engelm.) D.R. Hunt (1997) (little nipple cactus) 23. Mammillaria radiosa Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 196–197. 1850. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Escobaria vivipara (Nutt.) Buxb. (1813 / 1951) (as: E. vivipara var. radiosa (Engelm.) D.R. Hunt (1978)) (spiny-star) 24. Mammillaria similis Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 246. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

283

Escobaria missouriensis (Sweet) D.R. Hunt (1826 / 1978) (as: E. missouriensis var. similis (Engelm.) N.P. Taylor (1983)) (Missouri foxtail cactus) 25. Mammillaria similis var. caespitosa Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 200. 1850. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Escobaria missouriensis (Sweet) D.R. Hunt (1826 / 1978) (as: E. missouriensis var. caespitosa (Engelm.) D.R. Hunt (1978)) (tufted foxtail cactus) 26. Mammillaria similis var. robustior Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 200. 1850. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Escobaria missouriensis (Sweet) D.R. Hunt (1826 / 1978) (as: E. missouriensis var. robustior (Engelm.) D.R. Hunt (1978)) (robust foxtail cactus) 27. Mammillaria sulcata Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 246. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Coryphantha sulcata (Engelm.) Britton & Rose (1923) (pineapple cactus) 28. Opuntia engelmannii Salm-Dyck ex Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 207–208. 1850. Status = accepted (cactus apple) 29. Opuntia fragilis var. frutescens Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 245. 1845. Status = synonym of Cylindropuntia leptocaulis (DC.) F.M. Knuth (1828 / 1935) 30. Opuntia frutescens Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 245. 1845. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Cylindropuntia leptocaulis (DC.) F.M. Knuth (1828 / 1935) 31. Opuntia lindheimeri Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 207. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri (Engelm.) B.D. Parfitt & Pinkava (1989) (alternatively: Opuntia engelmannii subsp. lindheimeri (Engelm.) U. Guzmán & Mandujano (2003)) (Lindheimer’s prickly-pear)

284

Appendix 3

32. Opuntia macrorhiza Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 206. 1850. Status = accepted (plains pricklypear)

Caryophyllaceae Chickweed or Pink Family 33. Paronychia lindheimeri Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 152. 1850. Status = accepted (forked nailwort) 34. Silene antirrhina var. laevigata Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 213. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Silene antirrhina L. (1753) (sleepy silene) 35. Spergularia salsuginea var. bracteata B.L. Robinson, Synoptical Flora of North America 1: 251. 1897. Status = synonym of Spergularia echinosperma Čelak. (1881)

Nyctaginaceae Four-o’clock Family 36. Acleisanthes longiflora A. Gray, American Journal of Science and Arts (ser. 2) 15(44): 260. 1853. Status = accepted (angel’s trumpets) 37. Boerhavia lindheimeri Standley, North American Flora 21(3): 208. 1918. Status = homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Boerhavia linearifolia subsp. glandulosa Standl. (1909) 38. Boerhavia linearifolia A. Gray, American Journal of Science and Arts (ser. 2) 15(45): 322. 1853. Status = accepted (narrow-leaved spiderling) 39. Boerhavia linearifolia subsp. glandulosa Standley, Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 12(8): 387. 1909. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type subspecies) of Boerhavia linearifolia A. Gray (1853) (glandular spiderling) 40. Mirabilis jalapa subsp. lindheimeri Standley, Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 12(8): 368. 1909. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type subspecies) of Mirabilis jalapa L. (1753) (common four-o’clock)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

285

Polygonaceae Buckwheat Family 41. Eriogonum lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 149. 1849. Status = synonym of Eriogonum annuum Nutt. (1835) 42. Eriogonum longifolium var. lindheimeri Gandoger, Bulletin de la Société Royale de Botanique de Belgique 42(3): 190–191. 1906. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s long-leaved buckwheat) 43. Eriogonum longifolium var. plantagineum Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 230. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Eriogonum longifolium Nutt. (1835) (long-leaved buckwheat) 44. Eriogonum tenellum var. ramosissimum Bentham in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 14(1): 20. 1856. Status = accepted (tall buckwheat) 45. Eriogonum texanum Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 150–151. 1849. Status = synonym of Eriogonum longifolium Nutt. (1835) 46. Polygonella ericoides Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 230. 1845. Status = illegitimate (superfluous name substituted for Gonopyrum americanum Fisch. & C.A. Mey. (earlier in 1845)) 47. Polygonum cristatum Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 259. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Polygonum scandens L. (1753) var. cristatum (Engelm. & A. Gray) Gleason (1952) (alternatively: Fallopia cristata (Engelm. & A. Gray) Holub (1971)) (climbing false buckwheat)

Portulacaceae Purslane Family 48. Portulaca lanceolata Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 154–155. 1850. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1803 by Haworth) synonym of Portulaca umbraticola Kunth (1823) 49. Portulaca lanceolata var. minor Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 154–155. 1850. Status = synonym of Portulaca umbraticola Kunth (1823)

286

Appendix 3

50. Portulaca lanceolata var. versicolor Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 154–155. 1850. Status = synonym of Portulaca umbraticola Kunth (1823) 51. Portulaca retusa Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 154. 1850. Status = synonym of Portulaca oleracea L. (1753) 52. Portulaca umbraticola subsp. lanceolata J.F. Matthews & Ketron, Castanea 56(4): 305. 1991[1992]. Status = accepted (alternatively: Portulaca umbraticola var. lanceolata (J.F. Matthews & Ketron) B.L. Turner (2003)) (wing-podded purslane)

Talinaceae Fameflower Family 53. Talinum aurantiacum Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 153. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Phemeranthus aurantiacus (Engelm.) Kiger (2001) (orange fameflower) 54. Talinum sarmentosum Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 153–154. 1850. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Talinum paniculatum (Jacq.) Gaertn. (1760 / 1791) (as: T. paniculatum var. sarmentosum (Engelm.) Poelln. (1933)) (pink baby-breath)

ROSIDAE Vitaceae Grape Family 55. Vitis candicans Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 166. 1850. Status = synonym of Vitis mustangensis Buckley (1861) 56. Vitis populifolia Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 165. 1850. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Vitis rupestris Scheele (1848)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

287

Zygophyllaceae Caltrop Family 57. Guaiacum angustifolium Engelmann in Wislizenus, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico 113. 1848. Status = accepted (alternatively: Porlieria angustifolia (Engelm.) A. Gray (1852)) (Texas lignum-vitae)

Euphorbiaceae Spurge Family 58. Acalypha hederacea Torrey in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 200. 1859. Status = synonym of Acalypha monostachya Cav. (1800) 59. Acalypha lindheimeri Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(1): 47. 1865. Status = synonym of Acalypha phleoides Cav. (1800) 60. Acalypha radians var. geraniifolia Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(1): 52. 1865. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Acalypha radians Torr. (1859) (cardinal’s feather) 61. Aphora humilis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 262. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Argythamnia humilis (Engelm. & A. Gray) Müll. Arg. (1865) (alternatively: Ditaxis humilis (Engelm. & A. Gray) Pax (1890)) (low silverbush) 62. Argythamnia aphoroides Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(2): 146–147. 1865. (alternatively: Ditaxis aphoroides (Müll. Arg.) Pax (1890)). Status = accepted (Hill Country silverbush) 63. Croton fruticulosus Engelmann ex Torrey in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 194–195. 1859. Status = accepted (bush croton) 64. Croton glandulosus var. angustifolius Müller Argoviensis in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 15(2[2]): 686. 1866. Status = synonym of Croton glandulosus L. (1759) var. septentrionalis Müll. Arg. (1866)

288

Appendix 3

65. Croton glandulosus var. lindheimeri Müller Argoviensis in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 15(2[2]): 685–686. 1866. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s croton) 66. Croton glandulosus var. parviseminus Croizat, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 26(2): 188. 1945. Status = synonym of Croton glandulosus L. (1759) var. lindheimeri Müll. Arg. (1866) 67. Croton lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 25(5): 580–581. 1853. Status = accepted (three-seeded croton) 68. Euphorbia angusta Engelmann in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 189. 1859. Status = accepted (alternatively: Chamaesyce angusta (Engelm.) Small (1903)) (blackfoot sandmat) 69. Euphorbia arkansana Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 261. 1845. Status = synonym of Euphorbia spathulata Lam. (1788) 70. Euphorbia bicolor Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 233. 1845. Status = accepted (snow-on-theprairie) 71. Euphorbia bicolor var. concolor Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 233. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Euphorbia bicolor Engelm. & A. Gray (1845) (one-colored snowon-the-prairie) 72. Euphorbia fendleri Torrey & A. Gray in Pope, Pacific Railroad Reports 2(4): 175. 1857. Status = accepted (alternatively: Chamaesyce fendleri (Torr. & A. Gray) Small (1903)) (Fendler’s sandmat) 73. Euphorbia flexicaulis Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 153. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Euphorbia serpens Kunth (1817) (as: E. serpens var. flexicaulis (Scheele) Coult. (1894)) (matted sandmat) 74. Euphorbia lindheimeriana Engelmann ex Boissier in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 15(2): 142. 1862. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Euphorbia longicruris Scheele (1849)

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289

75. Euphorbia longicruris Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 152. 1849. Status = accepted (wedge-leaved spurge) 76. Euphorbia marginata var. uloleuca Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 261. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Euphorbia marginata Pursh (1814) (snow-on-the-mountain) 77. Euphorbia rupicola Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 153. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1838 by Boissier) synonym of Euphorbia fendleri Torr. & A. Gray (1857) 78. Euphorbia tetrapora Engelmann in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 191. 1859. Status = accepted (weak spurge) 79. Euphorbia villifera Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 153–154. 1849. Status = accepted (alternatively: Chamaesyce villifera (Scheele) Small (1903)) (hairy sandmat) 80. Jatropha texana Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(2): 211–212. 1865. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a synonym of Cnidoscolus texanus (Müll. Arg.) Small (1903) (Texas bull-nettle) 81. Pilinophytum lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 232. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Croton lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) Alph. Wood (1861) (goatweed or woolly croton) 82. Tragia brevispica Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 262. 1845. Status = accepted (short-spike noseburn) 83. Tragia scutellariifolia Scheele, Linnaea 25(5): 587. 1853. Status = synonym of Tragia ramosa Torr. (1828) 84. Tragia stylaris var. angustifolia Müller Argoviensis, Linnaea 34(2): 180–181. 1865. Status = synonym of Tragia ramosa Torr. (1828) 85. Tragia teucriifolia Scheele, Linnaea 25(5): 586–587. 1853. Status = synonym of Tragia brevispica Engelm. & A. Gray (1845) 86. Tyria myricifolia Scheele, Linnaea 25(5): 581–582. 1853. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Bernardia myricifolia (Scheele) S. Watson (1880) (mouse ear)

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Hypericaceae St.-John’s-wort Family 87. Hypericum gymnanthum Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 212. 1845. Status = accepted (claspingleaved St.-John’s-wort)

Linaceae Flax Family 88. Linum bootii var. rupestre A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 155. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Linum rupestre (A. Gray) Engelm. ex A. Gray (1850) (rock flax)

Passifloraceae Passionflower Family 89. Passiflora affinis Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 233. 1850. Status = accepted (bracted passionflower) 90. Passiflora tenuiloba Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 192. 1850. Status = accepted (bird-winged passionflower)

Salicaceae Willow Family 91. Salix nigra var. lindheimeri C.K. Schneider, Botanical Gazette 65(1): 9–12. 1918. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Salix nigra Marshall (1785) (Lindheimer’s black willow)

Fabaceae Bean or Legume Family 92. Acacia hirta var. glabrior Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 216. 1845. Status = probably a synonym of Acaciella angustissima (Mill.) Britton & Rose (1768 / 1928) var. hirta (Nutt.) B.L. Turner (1840 / 2015)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

291

93. Amorpha fruticosa var. subglabra A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 174. 1850. Status = unresolved, probably a synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Amorpha fruticosa L. (1753) (false indigo-bush) 94. Amorpha texana var. glabrescens E.J. Palmer, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 12: 180. 1931. Status = synonym of Amorpha roemeriana Scheele (1848) 95. Astragalus lindheimeri Engelmann ex A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 52. 1852. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s milk-vetch) 96. Cassia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 457–458. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Senna lindheimeriana (Scheele) H.S. Irwin & Barneby (1979) (velvet-leaved senna) 97. Cassia pumilio A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 180–181. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Senna pumilio (A. Gray) H.S. Irwin & Barneby (1979) (dwarf senna) 98. Cassia roemeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 457. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Senna roemeriana (Scheele) H.S. Irwin & Barneby (1982) (two-leaved senna) 99. Cercis occidentalis Torrey ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 177–178. 1850. Status = synonym of Cercis canadensis L. (1753) var. texensis (S. Watson) M. Hopkins (1878 / 1942) 100. Dalea frutescens A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 175–176. 1850. Status = accepted (black prairie-clover) 101. Dalea lasiathera A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 48–49. 1852. Status = accepted (purple dalea) 102. Desmanthus falcatus Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 455–456. 1848. Status = synonym of Desmanthus illinoensis (Michx.) MacMill. ex B.L. Rob. & Fernald (1803 / 1908) 103. Desmanthus velutinus Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 455. 1848. Status = accepted (velvet bundleflower)

292

Appendix 3

104. Desmodium lindheimeri Vail, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 18(4): 120. 1891. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s tick-trefoil) 105. Eysenhardtia texana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 462–463. 1848. Status = accepted (Texas kidneywood) 106. Galactia heterophylla A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 171. 1850. Status = accepted (Gray’s milkpea) 107. Heterocarpaea texana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 468. 1848. Status = synonym of Galactia canescens Benth. (1837) 108. Indigofera lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 464–465. 1848. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s indigo) 109. Lablab texanus Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 467. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Galactia texana (Scheele) A. Gray (1850) (Texas milkpea) 110. Mimosa fragrans A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 182. 1850. Status = synonym of Mimosa borealis A. Gray (1849) 111. Mimosa lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 181–182. 1850. Status = synonym of Mimosa aculeaticarpa Ortega (1800) var. biuncifera (Benth.) Barneby (1839 / 1991) 112. Neptunia lindheimeri B.L. Robinson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 33(17): 333. 1898. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Neptunia pubescens Benth. (1841) (as: N. pubescens var. lindheimeri (B.L. Rob.) B.L. Turner (1951)) (yellow powder-puff) 113. Petalostemon virgatus Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 461. 1848. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1841 by Nees von Esenbeck) synonym of Dalea compacta Spreng. (1826) var. pubescens (A. Gray) Barneby (1852 / 1977) 114. Phaseolus maculatus Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 465–467. 1848. Status = accepted (spotted bean) 115. Psoralea cyphocalyx A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 172–173. 1850. Status = accepted (alternatively: Pediomelum cyphocalyx (A. Gray) Rydb. (1919)) (turniproot) 116. Psoralea hypogaea var. scaposa A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 173. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

293

homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Pediomelum hypogaeum (Nutt.) Rydb. (1838 / 1919) var. scaposum (A. Gray) Mahler (1987) (alternatively: Psoralea hypogaea subsp. scaposa (A. Gray) Ockendon (1965)) (subterranean Indian breadroot) 117. Rhynchosia texana var. angustifolia A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 44. 1852. Status = synonym of Rhynchosia senna Gillies ex Hook. (1833) var. texana (Torr. & A. Gray) M.C. Johnst. (1840 / 1984) 118. Schrankia platycarpa A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 183. 1850. Status = synonym of Mimosa roemeriana Scheele (1848) 119. Tephrosia lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 172. 1850. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s hoary-pea)

Polygalaceae Milkwort Family 120. Polygala lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 150–151. 1850. Status = accepted (alternatively: Rhinotropis lindheimeri (A. Gray) J.R. Abbott (2011)) (shrubby milkwort) 121. Polygala texensis B.L. Robinson, Synoptical Flora of North America 1(1[2]): 451. 1897. Status = synonym of Polygala lindheimeri A. Gray (1850) var. parvifolia Wheelock (1891)

Rhamnaceae Buckthorn Family 1 22. Colubrina stricta Engelmann in A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 33. 1852. Status = accepted (Comal nakedwood) 1 23. Paliurus texanus Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 594–595. 1848. Status = unresolved, probably Paliurus spina-christi Mill. (1768)

Rosaceae Rose Family 124. Geum canadense var. texanum Fernald & Weatherby, Rhodora 24(279): 49. 1922. Status = accepted (Texas avens)

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125. Prunus gracilis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 243–244. 1845. Status = accepted (Oklahoma plum) 126. Prunus minutiflora Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 185–186. 1850. Status = accepted (Texas almond) 127. Prunus rivularis Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 594. 1848. Status = accepted (creek plum or Tawakoni plum) 128. Prunus tawakonia Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 186. 1850. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Prunus rivularis Scheele (1848)

Ulmaceae Elm Family 129. Celtis lindheimeri Engelmann ex K. Koch, Dendrologie 2(2): 434. 1873. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s hackberry) 130. Celtis texana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 146–147. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Celtis laevigata Willd. (1814) var. texana (Scheele) Sarg. (1919) (Texas sugarberry)

Cucurbitaceae Gourd Family 131. Echinocystis pedata Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 587–588. 1848. Status = synonym of Cyclanthera dissecta (Torr. & A. Gray) Arn. (1840 / 1841) 132. Melothria chlorocarpa Engelmann ex S. Watson, Bibliographical Index to North American Botany 395. 1878. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Melothria pendula L. (1753) 133. Melothria pendula var. chlorocarpa Cogniaux in A.L.L.P. de Candolle & A.C.P. de Candolle, Monographiae Phanerogamarum 3: 587. 1881. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Melothria pendula L. (1753) (creeping cucumber)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

295

134. Sicydium lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 194–195. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Ibervillea lindheimeri (A. Gray) Greene (1895) (Lindheimer’s globeberry) 135. Tristemon texanus Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 586–587. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cucurbita melopepo L. (1753) subsp. texana (Scheele) G.L. Nesom (2011) (alternatively: Cucurbita pepo L. (1753) var. texana (Scheele) D.S. Decker (1988)) (Texas gourd)

Juglandaceae Walnut Family 136. Juglans nana Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 5: 226. 1851. Status = synonym of Juglans microcarpa Berland. (1850) 137. Juglans rupestris Engelmann ex Torrey in Sitgreaves, Report of an Expedition down to the Zuni and Colorado Rivers 171, pl. 15–16. 1853. Status = synonym of Juglans microcarpa Berland. (1850) 138. Juglans subrupestris Dode, Bulletin de la Société Dendrologique de France 13: 169, 191. 1909. Status = synonym of Juglans microcarpa Berland. (1850)

Geraniaceae Geranium Family 1 39. Erodium texanum A. Gray, Genera Florae Americae BorealiOrientalis Illustrata 2: 130, pl. 151. 1849. Status = accepted (Texas stork’s-bill or Texas filaree) 1 40. Geranium carolinianum var. texanum Trelease, Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History 4(4): 76–77, pl. 12, f. 8. 1888. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Geranium texanum (Trel.) A. Heller (1898) (Texas geranium)

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Lythraceae Loosestrife Family 1 41. Ammannia texana Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 588–589. 1848. Status = synonym of Ammannia coccinea Rottb. (1773) 1 42. Lythrum alatum var. breviflorum A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 187. 1850. Status = unresolved probably a synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Lythrum alatum Pursh (1813) (winged lythrum) 1 43. Lythrum alatum var. linearifolium A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 188. 1850. Status = unresolved probably a synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Lythrum alatum Pursh (1813) (winged lythrum) 1 44. Lythrum alatum var. ovalifolium A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 187. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lythrum ovalifolium (A. Gray) Engelm. ex Koehne (1881) (low loosestrife) 1 45. Lythrum alatum var. pumilum A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 187. 1850. Status = unresolved probably a synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Lythrum alatum Pursh (1813) (winged lythrum)

Onagraceae Evening-primrose Family 146. Gaura exaltata Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 244. 1845. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy under Gaura longifolia) synonym of Gaura filiformis Small (1898) (alternatively: Oenothera filiformis (Small) W.L. Wagner & Hoch (2007)) 147. Gaura lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 217–218. 1845. Status = accepted (alternatively: Oenothera lindheimeri (Engelm. & A. Gray) W.L. Wagner & Hoch (2007)) (Lindheimer’s beeblossom) 148. Gaura suffulta Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 190–191. 1850. Status = accepted (alternatively: Oenothera suffulta (Engelm. ex A. Gray) W.L. Wagner & Hoch (2007)) (kisses)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

297

149. Ludwigia fluitans Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 580–581. 1848. Status = synonym of Ludwigia repens J.R. Forst. (1771) 150. Ludwigia linearis var. puberula Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 217. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ludwigia linearis Walter (1788) (narrow-leaved primrose-willow) 151. Oenothera capillifolia Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 576–577. 1848. Status = unresolved, probably a synonym of Calylophus berlandieri Spach (1835), or of Calylophus drummondianus subsp. berlandieri (Spach) Towner & P.H. Raven (1835 / 1970), but recognized as accepted by W.L. Wagner & Hoch (2013) (who include subsp. berlandieri (Spach) W.L. Wagner & Hoch (2013) within Oenothera capillifolia Scheele) 152. Oenothera pyramidalis var. lindheimeri H. Léveillé, Bulletin de l’Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique 19(241–242): 343. 1909. Status = unresolved, possibly a synonym of Oenothera rhombipetala Nutt. ex Torr. & A. Gray (1840) 153. Oenothera serrulata var. pinifolia Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 189. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Calylophus berlandieri Spach (1835) subsp. pinifolius (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Towner (1977) (alternatively: Oenothera serrulata Nutt. (1818) subsp. pinifolia (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Munz (1965) (Berlandier’s sundrops)

Anacardiaceae Sumac Family 154. Rhus microphylla Engelmann ex A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 31. 1852. Status = accepted (little-leaved sumac) 155. Rhus verrucosa Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 592–593. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Toxicodendron radicans (L.) Kuntze (1753 / 1891) subsp. verrucosum (Scheele) Gillis (1971) (eastern poison ivy) 156. Rhus virens Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 159. 1850. Status = accepted (evergreen sumac)

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Appendix 3

Rutaceae Rue Family 157. Rutosma texana A. Gray, Genera Florae Americae BorealiOrientalis Illustrata 2: 143–144, pl. 155. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Thamnosma texana (A. Gray) Torr. (1859) (Texas desert rue) 158. Zanthoxylum carolinianum var. fruticosum A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 30. 1852. Status = synonym of Zanthoxylum hirsutum Buckley (1861)

Sapindaceae Soapberry Family 1 59. Acer negundo var. texanum Pax, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 7(3): 212. 1886. Status = accepted (Texas box elder) 1 60. Ungnadia heterophylla Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 589–590. 1848. Status = synonym of Ungnadia speciosa Endl. (1835)

Malvaceae Mallow Family 161. Abutilon holosericeum Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 471–472. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Allowissadula holosericea (Scheele) D.M. Bates (1978) (velvetleaved mallow) 162. Abutilon hypoleucum A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 20. 1852. Status = accepted (white-leaved Indian-mallow) 163. Hermannia texana A. Gray, Genera Florae Americae BorealiOrientalis Illustrata 2: 88, pl. 135. 1849. Status = accepted (Texas burstwort) 164. Malva aurantiaca Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 469. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Malvastrum aurantiacum (Scheele) Walp. (1851) (Wright’s false mallow)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

299

165. Malva lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 470. 1848. Status = synonym of Malvastrum coromandelianum (L.) Garcke (1753 / 1857) 166. Malvastrum wrightii A. Gray, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, new series 4(1): 21–22. 1849. Status = synonym of Malvastrum aurantiacum (Scheele) Walp. (1848 / 1851) 167. Pavonia lasiopetala Scheele, Linnaea 21(4): 470–471. 1848. Status = accepted (rose pavonia or Texas rockrose) 168. Sida heterocarpa Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 163. 1850. Status = synonym of Sida spinosa L. (1753) 169. Sida lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 213–214. 1845. Status = accepted (showy fanpetals) 170. Sida physocalyx A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 163–164. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Rhynchosida physocalyx (A. Gray) Fryxell (1978) (buffpetal) 171. Sphaeralcea lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 162–163. 1850. Status = accepted (woolly globemallow)

Brassicaceae Mustard or Crucifer Family 172. Cakile maritima var. geniculata B.L. Robinson, Synoptical Flora of North America 1(1[1]): 132. 1895. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cakile geniculata (B.L. Rob.) Millsp. (1900) (gulf sea-rocket) 173. Lepidium intermedium A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 5(6): 15. 1853. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1847 by A. Richard) synonym probably of Lepidium virginicum L. (1753) 174. Lepidium medium Greene, Erythea 3(2): 36. 1895. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of

300

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Lepidium virginicum L. (1753) var. medium (Greene) C.L. Hitchc. (1936) (intermediate pepperweed) 175. Lesquerella gracilis var. sessilis S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 23(2): 253. 1888. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella sessilis (S. Watson) Small (1903) (alternatively: Physaria sessilis (S. Watson) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (sessile bladderpod) 176. Streptanthus bracteatus A. Gray, Genera Florae Americae BorealiOrientalis Illustrata 1: 146, pl. 60. 1848. Status = accepted (bracted jewel-flower) 177. Vesicaria argyraea A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 146–147. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella argyraea (A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Physaria argyraea (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (silver bladderpod) 178. Vesicaria auriculata Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 240–241. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella auriculata (Engelm. & A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Paysonia auriculata (Engelm. & A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (ear-leaved bladderpod) 179. Vesicaria densiflora A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 145–146. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella densiflora (A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Physaria densiflora (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (dense-flowered bladderpod) 180. Vesicaria engelmannii A. Gray, Genera Florae Americae BorealiOrientalis Illustrata 1: 162, pl. 70. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella engelmannii (A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Physaria engelmannii (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (Engelmann’s bladderpod)

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301

181. Vesicaria engelmannii var. elatior A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 145. 1850. Status = synonym of Lesquerella engelmannii (A. Gray) S. Watson (1848 / 1888) (alternatively: Physaria engelmannii (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) 182. Vesicaria lindheimeri A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 145. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella lindheimeri (A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Physaria lindheimeri (A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (Lindheimer’s bladderpod) 183. Vesicaria recurvata Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 147. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Lesquerella recurvata (Engelm. ex A. Gray) S. Watson (1888) (alternatively: Physaria recurvata (Engelm. ex A. Gray) O’Kane & Al-Shehbaz (2002)) (gaslight bladderpod)

Santalaceae Sandalwood Family 1 84. Phoradendron orbiculatum Engelmann ex A. Gray, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, new series 4(1): 59. 1849. Status = synonym of Phoradendron leucarpum (Raf.) Reveal & M.C. Johnst. (1817 / 1989)

ASTERIDAE Hydrangeaceae Hydrangea Family 185. Fendlera rupicola Engelmann & A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 77–78, pl. 5. 1852. Status = accepted (cliff fendler-bush) 186. Fendlera rupicola var. lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 77–78, pl. 5, f. 1, 3–4. 1852. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Fendlera rupicola Engelm. & A. Gray (1852) (Lindheimer’s fendler-bush)

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Loasaceae Loasa Family 1 87. Eucnide bartonioides var. edwardsiana B.L. Turner, Phytologia 94(3): 306–307, f. 1, 2–3 [maps]. 2012. Status = accepted (Edwards Plateau yellow stingbush) 1 88. Mentzelia lindheimeri Urban & Gilg, Nova Acta Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino-Carolinae Germanicae Naturae Curiosorum 76(1): 54–55. 1900. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s blazing-star)

Ebenaceae Ebony Family 189. Diospyros texana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 145–146. 1849. Status = accepted (Texas persimmon)

Polemoniaceae Phlox Family 190. Gilia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 753. 1849. Status = synonym of Giliastrum incisum (Benth.) J.M. Porter (1845 / 1998) 191. Phlox roemeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 752–753. 1849. Status = accepted (golden-eye phlox)

Styracaceae Styrax Family 1 92. Styrax platanifolius Engelmann ex Torrey, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 6(4): 4. 1853. Status = accepted (sycamore-leaved snowbell)

Garryaceae Silk-tassel Family 193. Garrya lindheimeri Torrey in Whipple, Pacific Railroad Reports 4(5): 136. 1857. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Garrya ovata Benth. (1839) subsp. lindheimeri (Torr.) Dahling (1978) (alternatively: Garrya ovata var. lindheimeri (Torr.) J.M. Coult. & W.H. Evans (1890)) (Lindheimer’s silk-tassel)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

303

Apocynaceae Dogbane Family 1 94. Amsonia angustifolia var. texana A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 81. 1878. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Amsonia ciliata Walter (1788) var. texana (A. Gray) J.M. Coult. (1892) (Texas blue-star) 1 95. Asclepias himanthophylla Lindheimer, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 32. 1879. Status = probably a synonym of Asclepias lanceolata Walter (1788) 1 96. Asclepias lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 250–251. 1845. Status = synonym of Asclepias oenotheroides Schltdl. & Cham. (1830) 1 97. Asclepias linearis Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 758–759. 1849. Status = accepted (slim milkweed) 1 98. Asclepias longipetala Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 757–758. 1849. Status = synonym of Asclepias viridis Walter (1788) 1 99. Asclepias texana A. Heller, Contributions from the Herbarium of Franklin and Marshall College 1: 77–78, pl. 4. 1895. Status = accepted (Texas milkweed) 200. Gonolobus cynanchoides Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 251–252. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Matelea cynanchoides (Engelm. & A. Gray) Woodson (1941) (prairie milkvine) 01. Gonolobus granulatus Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 759–760. 1849. 2 Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Gonolobus suberosus (L.) R. Br. (1753 / 1811) var. granulatus (Scheele) Krings & Q.Y. Xiang (2005) (angular-fruit milkvine) 02. Gonolobus unifarius Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 760. 1849. Status 2 = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cynanchum racemosum (Jacq.) Jacq. (1760 / 1763) var. unifarium (Scheele) Sundell (1981) (talayote) 03. Macrosiphonia berlandieri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North 2 America 2(1): 83. 1878. Status = synonym of Mandevilla macrosiphon (Torr.) Pichon (1859 / 1948)

304

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204. Metastelma barbigerum Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 760–761. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cynanchum barbigerum (Scheele) Shinners (1951) (bearded swallow-wort)

Loganiaceae Logania Family 2 05. Spigelia lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 108. 1878. Status = synonym of Spigelia hedyotidea A. DC. (1845)

Rubiaceae Madder Family 2 06. Hedyotis humifusa A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 216. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Houstonia humifusa (A. Gray) A. Gray (1859) (matted bluet)

Solanaceae Nightshade Family 07. Solanum citrullifolium A. Braun, Index Seminum (Fribourg) 2 1849: [3]. 1849. Status = accepted (watermelon nightshade) 08. Solanum lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 766–767. 2 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Solanum triquetrum Cav. (1795) (as: S. triquetrum var. lindheimerianum (Scheele) A. Gray ex Blank. (1907)) (Texas nightshade) 09. Solanum texense Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of 2 Natural History 5(2): 227. 1845. Status = synonym of Solanum elaeagnifolium Cav. (1794) 2 10. Solanum torreyi A. Gray, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 6: 44. 1862. Status = synonym of Solanum dimidiatum Raf. (1840)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

305

Convolvulaceae Bindweed Family 2 11. Convolvulus equitans var. lindheimeri J.R.I. Wood & Scotland, PhytoKeys 51: 104. 2015. [epublished] Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Convolvulus equitans Benth. (1839) (Texas bindweed) 2 12. Convolvulus lobatus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 252. 1845. Status = unresolved, probably Convolvulus arvensis L. (1753) 2 13. Convolvulus sagittifolius Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 747–748. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1803 by Michaux) synonym of Convolvulus equitans Benth. (1839) 2 14. Convolvulus sinuatus Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 748–749. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1787 by Petagna) unresolved 215. Cuscuta arvensis var. pubescens Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 1(3): 495. 1859. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cuscuta glabrior (Engelm.) Yunck. (1842 / 1932) var. pubescens (Engelm.) Yunck. (1932) (downy dodder) 2 16. Cuscuta arvensis var. verrucosa Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 1(3): 495. 1859. Status = synonym of Cuscuta glabrior (Engelm.) Yunck. (1842 / 1932) var. glabrior 17. Cuscuta campestris Yuncker, Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 2 18(2): 138. 1932. Status = accepted (field dodder) 18. Cuscuta cuspidata Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston 2 Journal of Natural History 5(2): 224–225. 1845. Status = accepted (cusp dodder) 19. Cuscuta cuspidata var. humida Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston 2 Journal of Natural History 5(2): 224–225. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Cuscuta cuspidata Engelm. (1845) (low cusp dodder)

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220. Cuscuta cuspidata var. pratensis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 224–225. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Cuscuta cuspidata Engelm. (1845) (meadow cusp dodder) 221. Cuscuta decora var. pulcherrima Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 1(3): 502. 1859. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 222. Cuscuta exaltata Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 1(3): 513. 1859. Status = accepted (tall dodder) 223. Cuscuta gronovii var. calyptrata Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 1(3): 508. 1859. Status = accepted (hooded scaldweed) 224. Cuscuta neuropetala Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 45(1): 75–76. 1843. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 225. Cuscuta neuropetala var. littoralis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 223–224. 1845. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 226. Cuscuta neuropetala var. minor Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 223. 1845. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 227. Cuscuta pentagona Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 340–341, pl. 6, f. 22–24. 1842. Status = accepted (five-angled dodder) 228. Cuscuta pentagona var. calycina Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 45(1): 76. 1843. Status = synonym of Cuscuta campestris Yunck. (1932) 229. Cuscuta polygonorum Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 342, pl. 6, f. 26–29 1842. Status = accepted (smartweed dodder) 230. Cuscuta pulcherrima Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 750–751. 1849. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 231. Cuscuta saururi Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 339–340, pl. 6, f. 17–21. 1842. Status = synonym of Cuscuta gronovii Willd. (1820) var. latiflora Engelm. (1859)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

307

232. Cuscuta verrucosa Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 341–342, pl. 6, f. 25. 1842. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1823 by Sweet) synonym of Cuscuta glabrior (Engelm.) Yunck. (1932) var. glabrior 233. Cuscuta verrucosa var. glabrior Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 341. 1842. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Cuscuta glabrior (Engelm.) Yunck. (1932) (smooth dodder) 234. Cuscuta verrucosa var. hispidula Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 43(2): 341. 1842. Status = synonym of Cuscuta indecora Choisy (1841) 235. Ipomoea lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 210. 1878. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s morning-glory) 236. Ipomoea trifida var. torreyana A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 212. 1878. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Ipomoea cordatotriloba Dennst. (1810) var. torreyana (A. Gray) D.F. Austin (1988) (Torrey’s tievine or cotton morning-glory)

Boraginaceae Borage Family 237. Eutoca patuliflora Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 253–254. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Phacelia patuliflora (Engelm. & A. Gray) A. Gray (1875) (sand phacelia) 238. Eutoca strictiflora Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 253. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Phacelia strictiflora (Engelm. & A. Gray) A. Gray (1875) (prairie phacelia) 239. Lithospermum breviflorum Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 252–253. 1845. Status = unresolved, probably a synonym of Lithospermum incisum Lehm. (1818)

308

Appendix 3

240. Myosotis macrosperma Engelmann, American Journal of Science and Arts 46(1): 98. 1844. Status = accepted (large-seeded forgetme-not) 241. Nama hispida A. Gray, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 5: 339. 1862. Status = accepted (bristly nama)

Acanthaceae Acanthus Family 2 42. Dicliptera glandulosa Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 765–766. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Dicliptera brachiata (Pursh) Spreng. (1813 / 1824) (as: D. brachiata var. glandulosa (Scheele) Fernald (1941)) (branched fold-wing) 2 43. Dipteracanthus lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 21(6): 764–765. 1849. Status = unresolved, Dipteracanthus is mostly absorbed within Ruellia, possibilities include Ruellia drummondiana, R. metziae, or R. nudiflora 2 44. Dipteracanthus micranthus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 257–258. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ruellia strepens L. (1753) (as: R. strepens var. micrantha (Engelm. & A. Gray) Britton (1894)) (limestone wild petunia) 2 45. Dipteracanthus nudiflorus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 229. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Ruellia nudiflora (Engelm. & A. Gray) Urb. (1912) (violet wild petunia) 46. Ruellia caroliniensis var. salicina Fernald, Rhodora 47(555): 2 81–82, pl. 873. 1945. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ruellia caroliniensis (J.F. Gmel.) Steud. (1792 / 1841) (willow-leaved wild petunia)

Buddlejaceae Butterflybush Family 247. Buddleja racemosa Torrey in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 121. 1859. Status = accepted (wand butterflybush)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

309

Lamiaceae Mint Family 248. Brazoria scutellarioides Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 257. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Warnockia scutellarioides (Engelm. & A. Gray) M.W. Turner (1996) (prairie brazosmint) 249. Monarda lindheimeri Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 228. 1845. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s beebalm) 250. Salvia coriifolia Scheele, Linnaea 22(5): 587–588. 1849. Status = synonym of Salvia azurea Michx. ex Vahl (1804) 251. Salvia engelmannii A. Gray, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 8: 368. 1872. Status = accepted (Engelmann’s sage) 252. Salvia pentstemonoides Kunth & C.D. Bouché in Link, C.D. Bouché & Kunth, Index Seminum in Horti Botanici Berolinensis 13. 1848. Status = accepted (big red sage) 253. Salvia roemeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(5): 586–587. 1849. Status = accepted (cedar sage) 254. Salviastrum texanum Scheele, Linnaea 22(5): 585–586. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Salvia texana (Scheele) Torr. (1859) (Texas sage) 255. Scutellaria cardiophylla Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 227–228. 1845. Status = accepted (gulf skullcap) 256. Scutellaria wrightii A. Gray, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 8: 370. 1872. Status = accepted (Wright’s skullcap)

Oleaceae Olive Family 257. Bolivaria grisebachii Scheele, Linnaea 25(3): 254. 1853. Status = synonym of Menodora heterophylla Moric. ex DC. (1844)

310

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258. Forestiera angustifolia Torrey in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 168. 1859. Status = accepted (desert olive) 259. Fraxinus pubescens var. lindheimeri Wenzig, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 4(2): 184. 1883. Status = synonym of Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall (1785) 260. Menodora heterophylla Moricand ex A. de Candolle in A. de Candolle & A.L.L.P. de Candolle, Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 8: 316. 1844. Status = accepted (low menodora) 261. Menodora longiflora Engelmann ex A. Gray, American Journal of Science and Arts (ser. 2) 14(40): 45. 1852. Status = accepted (showy menodora)

Orobanchaceae Broomrape Family 262. Agalinis edwardsiana Pennell, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 73(3C): 522–523. 1922. Status = accepted (plateau false-foxglove) 263. Castilleja indivisa Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 255. 1845. Status = accepted (Texas paintbrush) 264. Castilleja lindheimeri A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 298. 1878. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Castilleja purpurea (Nutt.) G. Don (1835 / 1837) var. lindheimeri (A. Gray) Shinners (1958) (Lindheimer’s paintbrush) 265. Gerardia spiciflora Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 227. 1845. Status = synonym of Agalinis maritima (Rafinesque) Rafinesque (1808 / 1837) var. grandiflora (Bentham) Pennell (1836 / 1929) 266. Seymeria bipinnatisecta var. texana A. Gray in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 117. 1859. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Seymeria texana (A. Gray) Pennell (1935) (Texas black-senna)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

311

Phrymaceae Lopseed Family 2 67. Mimulus jamesii var. texensis A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 2(1): 277. 1878. Status = synonym of Mimulus glabratus Kunth (1818)

Verbenaceae Vervain Family 268. Lantana urticoides Hayek, Repertorium Specierum Novarum Regni Vegetabilis 2(24): 162. 1906. Status = accepted (Texas lantana or calico bush)

Campanulaceae Bellflower Family 2 69. Specularia lindheimeri Vatke, Linnaea 38(6): 713. 1874. Status = synonym of Triodanis coloradoensis (Buckley) McVaugh (1861 / 1945)

Asteraceae Aster, Daisy, or Sunflower Family 270. Agassizia suavis A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 49–50. 1847. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Gaillardia suavis (A. Gray & Engelm.) Britton & Rusby (1887) (perfume-balls) 271. Ambrosia glandulosa Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 157–159. 1849. Status = synonym of Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. (1753) 272. Ambrosia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 156. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Ambrosia psilostachya DC. (1836) (as: Ambrosia psilostachya var. lindheimeriana (Scheele) Blank. (1907)) (western ragweed) 273. Ambrosia trifida var. texana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 156. 1849. Status = accepted (Texas giant ragweed) 274. Aphanostephus skirrhobasis var. thalassius Shinners, Wrightia 1(2): 106–107. 1946. Status = accepted (seaside lazy-daisy)

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275. Artemisia cuneifolia Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 162. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1838 by de Candolle) synonym of Artemisia ludoviciana Nutt. (1818) 276. Artemisia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 163. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Artemisia ludoviciana Nutt. (1818) (as: Artemisia ludoviciana var. lindheimeriana (Scheele) Bush (1928)) (western mugwort or white sage) 277. Aster praealtus var. imbricatior Wiegand, Rhodora 35(409): 26. 1933. Status = synonym of Symphyotrichum praealtum (Poir.) G.L. Nesom (1811 / 1995) 278. Aster praealtus var. texicola Wiegand, Rhodora 35(409): 25–26. 1933. Status = synonym of Symphyotrichum praealtum (Poir.) G.L. Nesom (1811 / 1995) 279. Aster texanus E.S. Burgess in Small, Flora of the Southeastern United States 1214, 1339. 1903. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Symphyotrichum drummondii (Lindl.) G.L. Nesom (1835 / 1995) var. texanum (E.S. Burgess) G.L. Nesom (1995) (alternatively: Symphyotrichum texanum (E.S. Burgess) Semple (2002)) (Drummond’s aster) 280. Aster vernalis Engelmann ex E.S. Burgess in Small, Flora of the Southeastern United States 1215, 1339. 1903. Status = synonym of Symphyotrichum oolentangiense (Riddell) G.L. Nesom (1835 / 1995) var. poaceum (E.S. Burgess) G.L. Nesom (1903 / 1995) 281. Barrattia calva A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 48. 1847. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Simsia calva (A. Gray & Engelm.) A. Gray (1850) (awnless bushsunflower) 282. Brickellia cylindracea A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 46–47. 1847. Status = accepted (gravelbar brickell-bush) 283. Chaptalia texana Greene, Leaflets of Botanical Observation and Criticism 1(14): 191. 1906. Status = accepted (silver-puff)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

313

284. Chrysopsis hispida var. stenophylla A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 223. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Heterotheca stenophylla (A. Gray) Shinners (1951) (stiff-leaved golden-aster or stiff-leaved false golden-aster) 285. Egletes texana Engelmann ex A. Gray in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 222. 1845. Status = synonym of Aphanostephus skirrhobasis (DC.) Trel. ex Coville & Branner (1836 / 1888) 286. Erigeron canadensis var. glabratus A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 220. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Conyza canadensis (L.) Cronquist (1753 / 1943) var. glabrata (A. Gray) Cronquist (1947) (Canadian horseweed) 287. Erigeron modestus A. Gray, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, new series 4(1): 68. 1849. Status = accepted (plains fleabane) 288. Eupatorium ageratoides var. angustatum A. Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America 1(2): 101. 1884. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Ageratina altissima (L.) R.M. King & H. Rob. (1753 / 1970) var. angustata (A. Gray) Clewell & Wooten (1971) (white snakeroot) 289. Eupatorium lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 599. 1848. Status = synonym of Ageratina havanensis (Kunth) R.M. King & H. Rob. (1818 / 1970) 290. Franseria tenuifolia var. tripinnatifida A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 227. 1850. Status = synonym of Ambrosia confertiflora DC. (1836) 291. Gaillardia odorata Lindheimer ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 230. 1850. Status = invalid (a nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy under Agassizia suavis) synonym of Gaillardia suavis (A. Gray & Engelm.) Britton & Rusby (1847 / 1887)

314

Appendix 3

292. Grindelia microcephala var. adenodonta Steyerm., Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 21(3): 467–470. 1934. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Grindelia adenodonta (Steyerm.) G.L. Nesom (1992) (Lonestar gumweed) 293. Grindelia texana Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 601–602. 1848. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Grindelia lanceolata Nutt. (1834) var. texana (Scheele) Shinners (1951) (Texas gumweed) 294. Gutierrezia lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 351. 1849. Status = synonym of Amphiachyris dracunculoides (DC.) Nutt. (1836 / 1840) 295. Helianthella latifolia Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 160. 1849. Status = synonym of Viguiera dentata (Cav.) Spreng. (1795 / 1826) 296. Helianthus lindheimerianus Scheele, Linnaea 22(2): 159–160. 1849. Status = unresolved, possibly Helianthus debilis Nutt. (1841) 297. Helianthus maximiliani var. asperrimus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 249. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Helianthus maximiliani Schrad. (1835) 298. Helianthus praecox Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 221. 1845. Status = accepted (Texas sunflower) 299. Hymenatherum wrightii A. Gray, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, new series 4(1): 89. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Thymophylla tenuiloba (DC.) Small (1836 / 1903) var. wrightii (A. Gray) Strother (1986) (Wright’s prickly-leaf) 300. Keerlia bellidifolia A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 47–48. 1847. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Chaetopappa bellidifolia (A. Gray & Engelm.) Shinners (1946) (white-rayed least-daisy)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

315

301. Keerlia effusa A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 222. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Chaetopappa effusa (A. Gray) Shinners (1946) (spreading least-daisy) 302. Kuhnia eupatorioides var. gracillima A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 218. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Brickellia eupatorioides (L.) Shinners (1763 / 1971) var. gracillima (A. Gray) B.L. Turner (1989) (slender false boneset) 303. Kuhnia eupatorioides var. texana Shinners, Wrightia 1(2): 136– 138. 1946. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Brickellia eupatorioides (L.) Shinners (1763 / 1971) var. texana (Shinners) Shinners (1971) (Texas false boneset) 304. Kuhnia leptophylla Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 598–599. 1848. Status = synonym of Brickellia eupatorioides (L.) Shinners (1763 / 1971) var. gracillima (A. Gray) B.L. Turner (1850 / 1989) 305. Laphamia lindheimeri A. Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3(5): 101. 1852. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Perityle lindheimeri (A. Gray) Shinners (1959) (Lindheimer’s rock-daisy) 306. Liatris acidota Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 218–219. 1845. Status = accepted (sharp blazingstar) 307. Liatris acidota var. vernalis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 219. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Liatris acidota Engelm. & A. Gray (1845) (spring blazing-star) 308. Liatris bracteata Gaiser, Rhodora 48(575): 371–372. 1946. Status = accepted (bracted blazing-star) 309. Lindheimera A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 47. 1847. Status = accepted (Lindheimer daisy or Texas yellow-star)

316

Appendix 3

310. Lindheimera texana A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 47. 1847. Status = accepted (Lindheimer daisy or Texas yellow-star) 311. Linosyris texana Torrey & A. Gray, A Flora of North America 2(2): 232. 1842. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Baccharis texana (Torr. & A. Gray) A. Gray (1849) (prairie false-willow) 312. Mulgedium lindheimeri Gandoger, Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France 65: 52. 1918. Status = unresolved, possibly Lactuca floridana (L.) Gaertn. (1753 / 1791) 313. Othake roseum Bush, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 14(6): 175–176. 1904. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Palafoxia rosea (Bush) Cory (1946) (rosy palafox) 314. Polymnia uvedalia var. densipilis S.F. Blake, Rhodora 19(219): 48. 1917. Status = synonym of Smallanthus uvedalia (L.) Mack. ex Small (1933) 315. Sclerocarpus major Small, Flora of the Southeastern United States 1250, 1340. 1903. Status = synonym of Sclerocarpus uniserialis (Hook.) Benth. & Hook. f. ex Hemsl. (1837 / 1881) 316. Senecio ampullaceus var. floccosus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 250. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Senecio ampullaceus Hook. (1836) (woolly ragwort or woolly groundsel) 317. Senecio ampullaceus var. glaberrimus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 250. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Senecio ampullaceus Hook. (1836) (smooth ragwort or smooth groundsel) 318. Senecio lindheimeri Greenman, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 32(1): 20. 1902. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, no description or citation of specimens), later cited by Greenman as a synonym of Senecio obovatus Muhl. ex Willd. (1803) (alternatively: Packera obovata (Muhl. ex Willd.) W.A. Weber & Á. Löve (1981))

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

317

319. Silphium gracile A. Gray, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 8: 653–654. 1873. Status = accepted (alternatively: Silphium radula Nutt. (1840) var. gracile (A. Gray) J.A. Clevinger (2004)) (slender rosin-weed) 320. Solidago lindheimeriana Scheele, Linnaea 21(5): 599–600. 1848. Status = synonym of Solidago petiolaris Aiton (1789) var. angusta (Torr. & A. Gray) A. Gray (1842 / 1882) 321. Tetragonotheca texana A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 48. 1847. Status = accepted (square-bud daisy) 322. Verbesina lindheimeri B.L. Robinson & Greenman, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 34(20): 541–542. 1899. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s crown-beard) 323. Vernonia lindheimeri A. Gray & Engelmann, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1: 46. 1847. Status = accepted (woolly ironweed) 324. Xanthocephalum amoenum Shinners, Field & Laboratory 19(2): 77–78. 1951. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Amphiachyris amoena (Shinners) Solbrig (1960) (alternatively: Gutierrezia amoena (Shinners) Diggs, Lipscomb & O’Kennon (1999)) (Texas broomweed)

Apiaceae Parsley or Carrot Family 3 25. Cynosciadium pinnatum var. pumilum Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 218. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Limnosciadium pumilum (Engelm. & A. Gray) Mathias & Constance (1941) (prairie dogshade) 3 26. Daucosma laciniata Engelmann & A. Gray in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 211. 1850. Status = accepted (meadow parasol)

318

Appendix 3

Caprifoliaceae Honeysuckle Family 3 27. Fedia amarella Lindheimer ex Engelmann in A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 217. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Valerianella amarella (Lindh. ex Engelm.) Krok (1864) (alternatively, Valeriana amarella (Lindh. ex Engelm.) Christenh. & Byng (2018)) (hairy cornsalad) 3 28. Fedia stenocarpa Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 216–217. 1850. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Valerianella stenocarpa (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Krok (1864) (narrow-celled cornsalad) 3 29. Symphoricarpos spicatus Engelmann ex A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 6(2): 215. 1850. Status = synonym of Symphoricarpos orbiculatus Moench (1794)

LILIIDAE Alismataceae Water-plantain Family 330. Sagittaria graminea var. platyphylla Engelmann in A. Gray, A Manual of Botany of the Northern United States (ed. 5) 494. 1867. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Sagittaria platyphylla (Engelm.) J.G. Sm. (1894) (delta arrowhead) 331. Sagittaria stolonifera Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 234–235. 1845. Status = synonym of Sagittaria graminea Michx. (1803)

Hypoxidaceae Stargrass Family 332. Hypoxis erecta var. aestivalis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 235. 1845. Status = synonym of Hypoxis sessilis L. (1762)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

319

333. Hypoxis erecta var. leptocarpa Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 235. 1845. Status = synonym of Hypoxis curtissii Rose (1903)

Iridaceae Iris Family 3 34. Sisyrinchium minus Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 263. 1845. Status = accepted (dwarf blueeyed grass) 3 35. Sisyrinchium texanum E.P. Bicknell, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 28(10): 578–579. 1901. Status = synonym of Sisyrinchium langloisii Greene (1899)

Amaryllidaceae Amaryllis Family 3 36. Allium nuttallii S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 14: 227. 1879. Status = synonym of Allium drummondii Regel (1875)

Asparagaceae Asparagus Family 3 37. Agave asperrima Jacobi, Hamburger Garten- und Blumenzeitung 20: 561–562. 1864. Status = accepted (rough agave) 38. Androstephium violaceum Torrey in Emory, Report on the United 3 States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 219. 1859. Status = synonym of Androstephium coeruleum (Scheele) Greene (1853 / 1890) 39. Dasylirion lindheimerianum Scheele, Linnaea 25(3): 262. 1853. 3 Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Nolina lindheimeriana (Scheele) S. Watson (1879) (devil’s shoestring) 3 40. Dasylirion texanum Scheele, Linnaea 23(2): 140–143. 1850. Status = accepted (Texas sotol)

320

Appendix 3

341. Milla coerulea Scheele, Linnaea 25(3): 260–261. 1853. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a synonym of Androstephium coeruleum (Scheele) Greene (1890) (blue funnel-lily) 342. Nolina texana S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 14: 248. 1879. Status = accepted (Texas sacahuista) 343. Ornithogalum texanum Scheele, Linnaea 23(2): 146. 1850. Status = synonym of Camassia scilloides (Raf.) Cory (1818 / 1936) 344. Scilla angusta Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 237. 1845. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Camassia angusta (Engelm. & A. Gray) Blank. (1907) (prairie camas) 345. Yucca rupicola Scheele, Linnaea 23(2): 143–146. 1850. Status = accepted (Texas yucca or twist-leaved yucca) 346. Yucca tenuistyla Trelease, Annual Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden 13: 53–54, pl. 17, f. 2, pl. 18–19, pl. 83, f. 3, pl. 92, f. 1. 1902. Status = accepted (white-rimmed yucca) 347. Yucca tortifolia Lindheimer ex Torrey in Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary . . . Botany 2(1): 221. 1858. Status = invalid (nomen nudum, cited only in synonymy) synonym of Yucca rupicola Scheele (1850)

Melanthiaceae Bunchflower Family 348. Schoenocaulon texanum Scheele, Linnaea 25(3): 262. 1853. Status = accepted (Texas feathershank)

Orchidaceae Orchid Family 3 49. Spiranthes vernalis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 236. 1845. Status = accepted (spring lady’stresses)

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

321

COMMELINIDAE Cyperaceae Sedge Family 3 50. Carex perdentata S.D. Jones, Sida 16(2): 342–348, f. 1–5. 1994. Status = accepted (sand sedge) 3 51. Carex straminea var. prorepens Kükenthal in Engler, Das Pflanzenreich IV. 20(Heft 38): 208. 1909. Status = synonym of Carex tetrastachya Scheele (1849) 3 52. Eleocharis acicularis var. lindheimeri C.B. Clarke ex Britton, Journal of the New York Microscopical Society 5: 105. 1889. Status = invalid (cited only in synonymy) synonym of Eleocharis radicans (Poir.) Kunth (1805 / 1837) 3 53. Eleocharis arenicola Torrey ex Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 237–238. 1845. Status = synonym of Eleocharis montevidensis Kunth (1837) 3 54. Eleocharis lindheimeri Svenson, Rhodora 31: 199. 1929. Status = synonym of Eleocharis radicans (Poir.) Kunth (1805 / 1837) 3 55. Rhynchospora nivea Boeckeler, Linnaea 37: 527. 1872. Status = accepted (alternatively: Dichromena nivea (Boeckeler) Boeckeler ex Britton (1888)) (showy white-top)

Juncaceae Rush Family 356. Juncus leptocaulis Torrey & A. Gray ex Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 2: 454. 1868. Status = synonym of Juncus filipendulus Buckley (1862) 357. Juncus nodosus var. texanus Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 2: 471–472. 1868. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Juncus texanus (Engelm.) Coville (1903) (Texas rush)

322

Appendix 3

Poaceae Grass Family 3 58. Alopecurus geniculatus Lindheimer ex Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 340. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1753 by Linnaeus) synonym of Setaria scheelei (Steud.) Hitchc. (1853 / 1928) (see Panicum scheelei) 3 59. Andropogon glaucus Lindheimer, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 35. 1879. [as “glaucum”] Status = illegitimate (a later homonym, the earlier name dating from 1789 by Retzius), also invalid (a nomen nudem and impossible to determine any modern accepted species name) 3 60. Andropogon provincialis subvar. lindheimeri Hackel in A.L.L.P. de Candolle & A.C.P. de Candolle, Monographiae Phanerogamarum 6: 443. 1889. Status = synonym of Andropogon gerardi Vitman (1792) 3 61. Aristida aequiramea Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 343. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Aristida purpurea Nutt. (1837) (as: A. purpurea var. aequiramea (Scheele) Merr. (1901)) (purple three-awn) 3 62. Bouteloua texana S. Watson, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 18: 196. 1883. Status = synonym of Bouteloua rigidiseta (Steud.) Hitchc. (1854 / 1933) 3 63. Eragrostis pilifera Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 344–345. 1849. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Eragrostis trichodes (Nutt.) Alph. Wood (1835 / 1861) (as: E. trichodes var. pilifera (Scheele) Fernald (1938)) (sand lovegrass) 64. Monanthochloë littoralis Engelmann, Transactions of the Academy 3 of Science of St. Louis 1: 437, pl. 13–14. 1859. Status = accepted (alternatively: Distichlis littoralis (Engelm.) H.L. Bell & Columbus (2008)) (shoregrass) 65. Muhlenbergia lindheimeri Hitchcock, Journal of the Washington 3 Academy of Sciences 24(7): 291. 1934. Status = accepted (Lindheimer’s muhly) 66. Panicum giganteum Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 340–341. 1849. 3 Status = synonym of Panicum virgatum L. (1753) 67. Panicum lindheimeri Nash, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 3 24(4): 196–197. 1897. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic

Plant Names Based on Lindheimer Collections

323

entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Dichanthelium acuminatum (Sw.) Gould & C.A. Clark (1788 / 1979) var. lindheimeri (Nash) Gould & C.A. Clark (1979) (Lindheimer’s panic-grass or Lindheimer’s rosette-grass) 368. Panicum scheelei Steudel, Synopsis Plantarum Glumacearum 1: 51. 1853. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Setaria scheelei (Steud.) Hitchc. (1928) (southwestern bristlegrass) 369. Paspalum sericeum Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 341–342. 1849. Status = accepted as a distinct taxonomic entity, but today the name is considered to be a homotypic (nomenclatural) synonym of Eriochloa sericea (Scheele) Munro ex Vasey (1890) (Texas cupgrass) 370. Setaria polystachya Scheele, Linnaea 22(3): 339. 1849. Status = illegitimate (later homonym of an earlier name published in 1824 by Schultes) synonym of Setaria scheelei (Steud.) Hitchc. (1853 / 1928) 371. Spartina junciformis Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 238. 1845. Status = synonym of Spartina spartinae (Trin.) Merr. (1840 / 1902)

Xyridaceae Yellow-eyed-grass Family 372. Xyris caroliniana var. scabra Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 235. 1845. Status = synonym (that may or may not be distinguished from the type variety) of Xyris caroliniana Walter (1788) (Carolina yellow-eyed-grass) 373. Xyris scabra Engelmann in Engelmann & A. Gray, Boston Journal of Natural History 5(2): 235. 1845. Status = invalid (cited only in synonymy) synonym of Xyris caroliniana Walter (1788) var. scabra Engelmann & A. Gray (1845)

GLOSSARY OF TAXONOMIC TERMS

basionym. The legitimate, previously published name on which a new combination or name at new rank is based. The basionym does not itself have a basionym; it provides the final epithet, name, or stem of the new combination or name at the new rank. binomial. A generic name combined with a specific epithet to form a species name. diagnosis. A statement of that which in the opinion of its author distinguishes a genus, species, subspecies, or variety from others of the same rank; a diagnosis (or a description) is required for valid publication of a name of a new species. heterotypic synonym (taxonomic synonym). A name based on a type specimen different from that of another name referring to the same taxonomic entity. holotype. The one specimen or illustration indicated as the nomenclatural type by the author(s) of a name of a new species, subspecies, or variety, or, when no type is indicated, the one specimen used by the author(s) when preparing the account of the new species, subspecies, or variety. homonym. A name spelled exactly like another name published for a taxonomic entity at the same rank based on a different type. Homonyms are illegitimate in most cases.

326

Glossary

homotypic synonym (nomenclatural synonym). A name based on the same type specimen as that of another name. illegitimate name. A validly published name that is not in accordance with specific rules in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants prohibiting superfluous names and homonyms. An illegitimate name can never be made legitimate unless conserved by an International Botanical Congress and incorporated into the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants appendix of conserved names. invalid name. A name not validly or effectively published in accordance with the relevant provisions of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. An invalid name can be made valid as of a later priority date by the same or a different author. isotype. A duplicate specimen of the holotype. lectotype. One specimen or illustration designated from the original material as the nomenclatural type, in conformity with the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, if the name was published without a holotype, or if the holotype is lost or destroyed. nomen nudum (nom. nud.). A designation of a new species, subspecies, or variety published without a description or diagnosis or reference to a description or diagnosis; the most common way of rendering a name invalid. protologue. Everything associated with a name at its valid publication, e.g., description, diagnosis, illustrations, references, synonymy, geographical data, citation of specimens, discussion, and comments. superfluous name. A name that, when published, was applied to a species that, as circumscribed by its author, definitely included the type of a name that ought to have been adopted, or of which the epithet ought to have been adopted, under the rules. A superfluous name is illegitimate in most cases.

Glossary

327

syntype. Any specimen cited in the protologue when there is no holotype. taxon (plural: taxa). A taxonomic entity at any rank. type (also called nomenclatural type). The specimen to which the name of a species, subspecies, or variety is permanently attached. validly published. Effectively published and in accordance with the relevant provisions of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

Abélard, Pierre, 243 abstinence, 209, 210–11 acacia, sweet, 46, 55, 67 Acanthocereus tetragonus, 145n51 Achillea millefolium, 73 Achilles, 240n4 Achilles spp., 188 Adelsverein organization, xvii. See also New Braunfels Aesculus pavia, 66–67 agarita, 32, 46, 58 Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 251 Agelaius phoeniceus, 146 Ageratina havanensis, 67 agriculture. See farming air plants, 48n27 air quality, 37–38, 176–77 Alabama, the state, 104n1 Alabama people, 104n11 Alexander II, 242n17 alluvial lands, 44, 59–60 Alophia drummondii, 53 Aloysia gratissima, 65 alphabet, in Cherokee language, 118–22 amaryllids, 53 Amenhotep, 240n4 Amyris texana, 68n90 anacua, 67 anastrophe, defined, 230n1 anchorites, defined, 253n22 Andropogon spp., 55, 96, 97 anemones, 32 Antilocapra americana, 182n141

antipodes, Virgilius’s, 22 ant species, 188 Anzeiger des Westens, xxv Aphrodite, 241n5 Apostles’ Creed, 217n13 Ara macao, 188n157 Arbutus xalapensis, 67 Aristida, 69–70 Arkansas, 104nn9–10 Arkansas River, 73 armadillos, 183 Arnold of Brescia, 241, 243 Arriaca, Minister, 191 arroba measurement, explained, 159n100 arrows, Quaternary period, 226, 229 art, Quaternary period, 225, 226, 227 Artemisia spp., 73 Arundinaria gigantea, 48, 61, 149–50 ascetism, Christian, 210–11 asclepiad, 56 Asclepias spp., 48 Asteridae, Lindheimer-based names, 260, 271–76, 301–18 Aster spp., 43–44 Athens, 28n4, 231. See also Greece Atheropogon, 70n97 atole, 181 atonement, Christian, 211 Attica, 28, 35 Aufsätze und Abhandlungen... Texas: translation approach, xiii, xx–xxiii Augsburg Confession, 217 aurochs, Quaternary period, 224, 225

340

Index

Austin, Stephen F., 31n18, 107n25 Austin area, 30, 68n94 Australian cane, 158–59 Australian National Herbarium, xxi–xxii Austria, 214, 216n11 autumn weather, 31, 33 Les aventures de Télémaque (Fénelon), 59 axes, 14–15, 17, 225 axial precession, 24n28 Baccharis texana, 73, 75 Baer, Karl Ernst Ritter von, 115 bagpod, 55 Balcones Escarpment, 68n64 bald cypress trees: axes for felling, 14–15; felling techniques, 10–11, 12–14, 17; photo, 7; physical appearance, 7, 8–10, 21, 52; and spirituality, 21–26; turkey roosts, 19–21 ballmoss, 48 bananas, 146, 166, 168–73 banisterias, Mexico, 152 banquiers, 204 Baptisia spp., 60 barrancas, Mexico, 153, 178–80 barreta, 68n91 Bartholomäuskirche organ, 238 Barton Springs, 68n94 basionym, defined, 257 Bavarian Rhineland, 126n3 Bean, Peter Ellis, 106 beans, Mexico, 146, 148–49, 152, 168 beardtongue species, 60, 61 beargrass, 70 bears, great cave, 221 Bedini, Gaetano, 233–36 beeblossom, Lindheimer’s, 53, 54 beebrush, common, 65 bee trees, 12–13 Belleville, Illinois, 126n2 Berberis trifoliolata, 32, 46, 58 Berlandier, Jean-Louis, 43 Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Museum, 256–57

Bernstein, Aaron David, 245 Biloxi people, 110 bindweeds, Mexico, 152 bird migration, 29–30 birds, Mexico, 135, 146–47, 153, 188 birthday thoughts, 245–53 bison, 222, 224 black and white stones story, 29 blackberries, 32 blackbirds, Mexico, 146 black-eyed Susan, 54 blackjack, Cross Timbers, 62n68 Blackland Prairie, 36n28 bladderpod, 59, 61 bladderwort, zigzag, 55 Blanco County Courthouse, 99 Blankinship, Joseph William, xviii, 42n1 blueberry, 50, 52 bluebonnet, Texas, 32 blue-eyed grass, narrow-leaved, 54 bluestem grasses, 55n46, 96, 97 bluewood, Texas, 67 boar, Quaternary period, 225 Boissier Herbarium, xvi bolero dance, 184 Boniface, Saint (Winifred), 21–22, 23 Botanische Zeitung, xxv botanizing, reflections on, 237, 240, 242–43 Bothriochloa saccharoides, 55n46 Boucher de Perthes, Jacques, 224 Boudinot, Elias, 120n77, 122 Bourbeuse River, 228 Bouteloua, 70 Bowles, Chief, 109, 111 Brackettville, springs, 68n94 Brazos River, 31, 36, 37, 61–62 breadroot, 73 breakwater, Veracruz, 134 British Museum, xvi Bronn, Heinrich Georg, 229 Brother Jonathan, 98 Büchner, Christian Heinrich, 170 buckeye species, 32, 66 buckthorn species, 58, 67 Buffalo Bayou area, 17, 18n19, 53, 60–61

Index

bull-nettle, 257 Bunsen Institute, xiv, xx Burleson, Edward, 110–11 Burnet, David, 106 Burton, Richard, 243n18 Bustamante, Anastasio, 105n16, 128 butterflies, Mexico, 188–89 Byron, Lord, 11, 28, 197n175 cabin, Illinois farm, 127 cactus species: Colorado River area, 64; Galveston Island, 58; habitat contrasts, 46; Mexico, 145; rocky regions, 73, 74, 75; west Texas border area, 75–76 Caddo people, 109–10 Cadmus, 120 Cakile geniculata, 56 caliph story, 29 Callirhoë pedata, 32, 73 Canada, gourd-like plants, 80 Canadian River area, 43n5 cane, giant, 48, 61, 149–50 cane plantations, Mexico, 156–60 cannibalism, 115–16, 183–84 cannons story, Mexico, 137 canoes, 17–18 capas, Mexico, 135 Capsicum annum, 68 captain problems, Gulf crossings, 130–31, 133–34, 201–202 cardinals, Mexico, 146 card playing, costs, 204 cards on beach, Veracruz, 200 Carica papaya, 143 Carl, Prince, xvii, 4 Carnegiea gigantea, 76 carob, 63 carpintero dance, 184, 185n153 Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson), 29n5 carrot, American wild, 93–94 Carya spp., 50 Caryophyllidae, Lindheimer-based names, 265–66, 281–86 cassava (manioc), 166, 173–74 Cassiopeia, 24n27

341

Castilleja spp., 32 castor oil, 166, 190 catclaw, round-flowered, 67 Catfish Crossing, Llano River, 115 Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, 237n2 Catholicism, Mexico, 139 Catlin, George, 112 Cato, 90 cave dwellers, Quaternary period, 225–27 Cecropia peltata, 147 cedar species, 50, 63, 64, 70, 72 celestial navigation, 130 Celtis spp., 61 Cenchrus echinatus, 94 Centaurium spp., 73 Ceratonia siliqua, 63n71 Cercis spp., 32, 67 Cereus spp., 75n115, 76n117, 145n51 chamois, Quaternary period, 224 change, constancy of, 25 chaparral, 69 chayote, 166, 174 Cherokee General Council, 120n77 Cherokee people: expulsion justification arguments, 108–10; free-school system of, 111–12; land ownership, 104–108; military action against, 111; treaty negotiations, 110–11; written language development, 116–21 Cherokee Phoenix, 120n77, 122nn81–82 Chilopsis linearis, 76 Chimalaya River, 137 Chimalpa River, 137 Chimas people, 154 chinguirito, 158, 159, 181, 192 Chionanthus virginicus, 50, 52 cholla, tree, 30, 75–76 Christ, 22n24, 24, 180–81, 218, 252 Christianity: death perspective problem, 24–26; Donar Oak story, 21–22, 23; and education, 208, 211, 233; God arguments, 218–19; missionary language mistake, 180– 81; misunderstanding of abstinence,

342

Index

210–11; neglect of love principle, 209–10; newspaper attacks, 208– 209; priest problems, 211, 217–18, 232–35, 241–42; and revolutions, 243–44; and servility, 241–42; as worldview shift, 21 Chrysactinia mexicana, 70 Cibolo River area, 68–69 Cibolo Settlement, pumpkins, 81 Cicero, 46n17, 101n2, 245 cigars, 133, 190 Cincinnati, Bedini’s visit, 233–36 Citlaltépetl, 132–33 citrus family, 68 climate: and human health, 40–41; Mexico, 27, 35, 37, 141, 143, 178; Quaternary period, 222, 223–24; seasonal patterns, 30–32, 34; storm patterns, 30–31, 35–36; temperate nature, 27–31 clothing, Mexico, 138, 173, 198, 199 cloudy days, 29, 30 clover species, 48, 61 Cnidoscolus texanus, 257 coastal areas, 45, 46, 54–59 Coatzacoalcos River, 137 Coelodonta antiquitatis, 221 coffee plantations, 144, 160–62, 186, 189, 190, 191, 194–95 Cofre de Perote, 148, 156 Colias spp., 188 Colibri spp., 147 colocynth, 87n33 Colorado River area, xvii, 37, 63–64, 72 colors: river waters, 11, 39; sky, 38–39, 177 Colossi of Memnon, 238, 240n4 Colubrina texensis, 67 Columba passerina, 147 Comal River area, xvii, 2, 39 Comal Springs, 68n94 Comalstadt area, pumpkins, 81 Comanche Feats of Horsemanship (Catlin), 112 Comanche people, 70, 113–15 Comanche Springs, 68n94

command staff, 227 Commelinidae, Lindheimer-based names, 260, 277–78, 321–23 composite (flower), 56 Condalia hookeri, 67 coneflower species, 54 consciousness, 22, 24 consonants, in Cherokee language, 118–20 Constitution, Mexico, 139, 196 Consultation, 106–108 convicts, Veracruz, 138 cooking fires, Mexico, 144–45 coral bean, 53, 58, 65 Córdoba, Mexico, 134, 164n110, 165, 175, 191 Córdova Rebellion, 109n37, 115n61 Coreopsis spp., 54 Cortés, 137 cougars, 155, 182–83 courtroom experience, Veracruz, 133–34 Coushattas people, 104–105 Covens, William, 104 cows, Mexico, 186–87 crabs, Veracruz, 199 cranes, Quaternary period, 225 Credo, Christian, 217 Creek people, 110 Crimean War, 209n4 Crinum americanum, 53 Croix, Carlos Francisco de, 137n34 Cross Timbers area, 62–63 Croton capitatus, 94 crowngrass, 55 crucifer, 56 cucumbers, 85–87, 88 Cucurbita foetidissima, 68. See also gourd-like plants Culopygos spp., 188 Cupressus spp., 8n1, n3 Curtius, Marcus, 215, 216 cushaws, 81 Cyathea mexicana, 147n65 Cylindropuntia spp., 46, 58, 75 Cynanchum angustifolium, 56

Index

Dahlia, 148 daisy species, xv, 70 Dalai Lama, 251 Dalea spp., 61 dances, Mexico, 184–86 dangers, tree felling, 12, 13, 14 Darmstadt colony (not identified), 114 Darmstadter Colony, Bettina, 42n1 Darwin, Charles, 248 Dasylirion, 70, 72 Dasypus novemcinctus, 183 Datura arborea, 148 Daubentonia longifolia, 55n42 Daucus pusillus, 93–94 death and immortality, 8n1, 22, 24–26 de Candolle, Augustin Pyramus, 43n5 Decker, Ernst, 127n8, 129n13 deer species, 182, 223, 225 Delaware people, 109–10 Del Rio, springs, 68n94 Demeter, 244n30 democracy and religion, 231–33, 236 demoralization effects, livestock ranching, 97–100 Dendera temple complex, 24n28 deprivation, honorable, 210–11 Dermatophyllum secundiflorum, 46, 58–59, 65, 66 Devrient, Ludwig, 98n13 dewberry, southern, 32n24 de Wilde, Mr., 189, 199 Diario del Gobierno, 196–97 Digitalis purpurea, 60 Diomedes, 98 Diospyros spp., 50, 58, 67 discontent, human, 88–90 distilleries, German colony, 190, 195 Di’wali, 109n37 Dodgson, Charles (Lewis Carroll), 29n5 Dominican Church, Erfurt, 213 Donar Oak, 21–22, 23 Douai, Adolph, xix, 170, 208n2 doubloons, Mexico, 135 Douglass, Kelsey Harris, 110n48, 111 doves, Mexico, 148 Draco, 24n28, 231

343

Draper, J. W., 253 Drosera brevifolia, 56 drought, 36–37 Drummond, Thomas, 42 dryads, 52n35 ducks, hunting, 84 duel, German colony, 195 eagle coin, 205 Echinocereus spp., 59, 74, 75 Eckhart von Hochheim, 213, 214n9 Edwards Aquifer, 68n64 Egypt, 24, 47, 238, 253 Ehretia anacua, 67 Eichhorn, Dr., 166, 190 Einstein, Albert, 245n2 Elephant Mound, 228 elephants, 221–22 elk, Quaternary period, 223 elm, cedar, 61 Engelmann, George (and Lindheimer): collection plan, xiv, xvi; correspondence, xxv, 48n28; farm of, 126n3; and Mexico trip plan, 127n8; plant naming, 1, 48n28, 256; plant shipments, 48n28; relationship summarized, 126n3 Engelmann, Sophia Dorothea, 126n3 Engelmann, Theodore, 126 Engelmannia peristenia, xv Englischer Garten, 48n22 English park style, 48n22 Eos, 240n4 epithet, naming rules, 256, 257–58 equites, defined, 241n8 Erythraea Centaurium, 73n112 Erythrina herbacea, 53, 58 Essenes, 210 Eucnide bartonoides, 70 Eupatorium ageratifolum, 67 Euphorbia spp., 43–44, 61, 62 Euripides, 103n3 Eustylis purpurea, 53n37 Eve’s necklace, 65 evolution theory, Darwin’s, 248 expenses: cane plantations, 159–60; German colony, 191–92; Mexico

344

Index

trip, 129, 133, 154, 198; ranch fencing, 95 Eysenhardtia texana, 65–66 Faerie Island, 59 false willow, 73, 75 fameflower, orange, 73 family, Lindheimer’s, 18 fandangos, 184 farkleberry, 52 farming: Blackland Prairies, 36n28; climate factors, 30, 31; fertilizer needs, 92–93; Lindheimer’s dislike of, 3; Mexico, 143–44, 146, 156–63. See also gourd-like plants; livestock fauna, Mexico, 155, 182–83, 187. See also birds, Mexico; hunting; Quaternary period Felis spp., 155, 182–83 felling techniques, bald cypress trees, 10–11 fence building, Mexico, 145 fencing costs, ranching, 95 Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe-, 59 ferns, 48, 147–48 fertilizers, 92–93, 94 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 249 figwort, 61 fires, 38, 144–45, 176–77 firewheel, 56, 58 firewood, Mexico, 144–45 firn fields, 243 Fisher-Miller Land Grant, xvii fishing, Veracruz, 138 flax, Berlandier’s yellow, 58 flora distribution, overviews: alluvial lands, 59–60; appeal factors, 76–77; Brazos River area, 61, 63; Cibolo River area, 68–69; coastal areas, 54– 59; collectors mentioned, 42–43; Colorado River area, 63–64; Cross Timbers land, 62–63; diversity factors, 43–46; field trip perspective, 46–48; Fredericksburg area, 73; Galveston Island, 55–59; Guadalupe

River area, 64–68, 72; Houston area, 50, 53, 60; Llano River area, 72, 73, 75; rocky regions, 64, 70– 75; San Antonio area, 68–70; San Jacinto River area, 50; swamplands, 48–49; Trinity River area, 50–53; west Texas border area, 75–76; woodlands, 50–54 Florae Texanae Exsiccatae, distribution process, xvi, xviii Flores, Manuel, 109 Florida, gourd-like plants, 80 flowering season, 32, 33 food, Mexico trip, 130–31, 146, 148–49, 152, 153, 154, 155, 181, 183–84 Forestiera acuminata, 58 forest lands, agriculture’s impact, 95. See also trees Fort Morgan, 201 forts, Veracruz, 132, 135–36 fossils. See Quaternary period Fouquieria splendens, 75, 76 fox, Quaternary period, 225 foxglove, 60 France, archaeological finds, 224n3, 225, 227 Fredericksburg area, 42n1, 72, 73, 113–14 Free Corps, Seefeld’s, 128 free-school systems, 111–12 French and Indian War, 104n11 Friedrich, Eduard, 127n8, 129n13, 179, 195 Friedrich, Otto, 127n8, 129n13, 179–80, 187, 190, 192 frijoles, Mexico, 146, 148–49, 152, 168 fringetree, white, 50, 52 Frisia, 242n16 From the Field of Natural Science (Bernstein), 245n2 fruit crops, 166 fruiting season, 32–33 Gaillardia pulchella, 56, 58 Galveston Island, 55–59, 67

Index

gambling, 204–205 Garrya spp., 71–72 Gascon passenger, Gulf crossing, 129–31, 133–34 Gaura spp., 43–44, 53, 54 geese, 19n21 Gelsemium sempervirens, 53 General Assembly, Cherokee Nation, 121–22 gentians, 54, 73 Gentry, Diana Rogers, 103n6 genus, naming rules, 256, 257–58 geological formations, 72 Georgia, Worchester v., 122n81 German colony, Mexico: coffee farming, 160–62; consequences of transportation barriers, 191–92; departure from, 194–98; domestic animals, 186; food crops, 166; founding of, 189; geographic/ climate characteristics, 155–56; Gründler stay, 194–95; land speculation, 190–91; maize farming, 166–68; route to, 134, 151, 152– 55; settler descriptions, 190–91; sugar plantations, 156–60; tobacco farming, 165–66; weather patterns, 175–76 Germany: ax style, 15; Donar Oak story, 21–22; Englischer Garten, 48n22; immigration sponsorship, xvii; Peasants’ War, 242, 244n26; theater in, 98n13 Geryon, 98 gherkin, West Indian, 85–86 Gist, George (Sequoyah), 117–21 glossary, 325–27 Glottidium Floridanum, 55n43 Gmelin, Johann Georg, 88 goats, 187, 224, 225 God, 218–19. See also Christianity Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xiv, 11, 13n14, 88n38, 177n133, 247, 248 gold, 205–206 goldenrod, 43–44 Goliad Massacre, 136n28, 196n173 goose, Pomeranian, 19n21

345

Görres, Johann Joseph von, 251 gourd, stinking, 68 gourd-like plants: climate preferences, 79, 80–81; for clothing, 84; cultivation cautions, 87–88; families listed, 78; food uses, 81–83, 85–87; and human aspirations, 88–91; origins, 79–80; storage containers, 83–84 Goyne, Minetta Altgelt, xiii, xvi, 126n3 grama grass, 70 granaditas, 154 grapes, 64–65 grasses, 54–55, 69–70, 96 Gray, Asa: Riddle’s plant collecting, 42n3; teleological perspective, 251 Gray, Asa (and Lindheimer): collection plan, xiv, xvi; plant naming, 1, 48n28, 70n100, 71n103, 256; publishing process, xviii Gray Card Index, xxi Gray Herbarium, 256 Grazacoalcos, 164 grazing damage, 97 Greece, 47n18, 120n76, 241n9 Greek mythology, 244n30 Greeley, Horace, 170, 233 Grimes, Jesse, 107 groundhogs, Quaternary period, 224 growth rings, trees, 10, 17 Gründler, Mr., 189, 195–96 Guadalupe, Villa de, 164 Guadalupe Mountains, 43 Guadalupe River area, 8, 24, 31, 39, 43n6, 64–68, 72, 83, 115 Guaiacum angustifolium, 67 Guasacualco River, 136 Gulf of Mexico, crossings, 129–32, 133–34, 201–202 hackberry species, 61 Hades, 215, 216n12, 244n30 hailstorms, 31 Hale, Douglas, 127n8 happiness, 206–207 hard work quote, 13 hares, Quaternary period, 225

346

Index

harmony, spiritual, 237, 240, 243–44 Harmony Society, 83 Harris, T. W., 80–81 Hartweg, Karl Theodor, 157n93 Harvard University Herbaria and Libraries, xxi–xxii Hawkins, Mr., 108n34 hawks, Mexico, 147 Hays County Courthouse, 99 hazard (game), 146 Hegel, Georg, 248, 251 Heinzen, Karl Peter, 90 Helianthus spp., 54, 94 Helietta parvifolia, 68n90 Heliotropium, 58 Heller, Karl Bartolomäus, 157n93 Heosilica spp., 188 Hera, 244n30 Herald-Zeitung, xix Hercules, 98, 203, 204 Hercules’-club species, 68n91 heroism, 210, 214, 215–17 Hestia, 244n30 heterotypic synonym, defined, 257–58 hickory species, 50 Highsmith, Samuel, 115 Hindu Temple, 251n19 Hippopotamus antiquus, 221 Hirsch, Abraham, 99n14 Hirsch, Jacob, 99n14 Hoffmannseggia Jamesii, 73n114 hogplum, Texas, 67 hogwallow prairies, 36n28, 37 hogwort, 94 holdback, James’s, 73 Holocene period, 224n2, 229n18 holotype, defined, 256 Holzinger, Juan José, 136–37, 139, 201 Homo erectus, 224n3 homotypic synonym, defined, 257 honey, from bee trees, 12–13 Hooker, William Jackson, 42n2, 43 hoplites, defined, 241n9 hoptree, common, 66, 68n91 Horace, 241n6 horse crippler, 59

Horsehoe Bend, Battle of, 121n78 horsenettle, 60 horses, 186, 221, 222, 223, 225 house, Lindheimer’s, 18 houses, Mexico: coffee farmers, 162; Veracruz, 133, 134; villages, 145, 149–50, 154–55 Houston, Sam, 102, 103–5, 107 Houston area, 50, 60, 82–83 Huatusco, 175 huerfanito dance, 184–85 huisache, 46 human activity, Quaternary period, 224–29 human progress: from knowledge, xix–xx, 248–49; and older age, 246, 248; religion’s resistance, 232–33, 249, 251–53; and revolutions, 243–44; seed analogy, 230–31; and spiritual harmony, 243–44, 248–49; and vice vs. virtue, 203–206 Humboldt, Alexander von, 170, 172, 218, 250, 251 humidity, 37 hummingbirds, 188n157 Hungary, 94, 98 hunting: Engelmann farm gathering, 126; in Mexico, 84, 181–83, 187; Quaternary period, 222, 225–26; wild turkeys, 19–21 Hurault, Paul, 227n7 Hus, Jan, 243 Hussite Wars, 243n24 Hutten, Ulrich von, 244 hyena, Quaternary period, 225 Hypatia, 253 hypsometric measurements, 45 ice and snow, 31 Illinois, 36, 126–27 immigration effects, Mexico, 192–94. See also German colony, Mexico immortality and death, 8n1, 22, 24–26 Index Kewensis, xxi Indian blanket, 56, 58 Indianola area, 58 Indians. See Native people

Index

indigo species, 60 indulgences, sale of, 217n16, 252n21 insects, Mexico, 188–89 International Plant Names Index (IPNI), xxi–xxii inversions, air, 37–38, 176 iris-like plants, 53 Isis, 47 isothermal lines, 45 isotype, scientific importance, 256–57 Italy, 233n7 Iturbide y Arámburu, Agustín Cosme Damían de, 105 ivory, fossil, 226, 227 Ixia coelestina, 55n41 Jackson, Andrew, 110n43, 121n78, 122n81 jaguars, 155, 182–83 Jalapa, 37, 175 James, Edwin, 43n5 Jardin des Plantes, xvi jasmine, 53 Jatropha spp., 173–74, 257 Jeremiah, verse from, 240n3 Jerusalem thorn, 75 Jesuits, 211 Joachim of Calabria, 243 John, verses from, 213, 242 John the Baptist, 63n71 Judas tree, 67 Die Judenschule (Sessa), 98n13 Juglans nigra, 64 Juniperus spp., 50, 63, 64. See also cedar species Karankawa people, 113 Kempis, Thomas à, 214 Kew Gardens, xvi Kickapoo people, 109–10 kidneywood, Texas, 65–66 Killough, Isaac Sr. (and family), 108–109 King, Charles Bird, 120c kinnikinnick, 70 Knights’ Revolt, 244n26 knockaway, 67

347

Koch, Albert, 228–29 Koerner, Gustav, 126n3, 127n8 Körner, Theodore, 236 Krameria spp., 68 Krieger, Adalbert, xxv Kunkel (wagoner), 115 Lafitte, Jean, 128 Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte, 108 lances: mule caravan, 140, 142; Quaternary period, 225, 226 land crimes, 101, 103, 108–11, 113–14 Landrum, Willis H., 110–11 land speculation, Mexico, 191 language, Cherokee, 116–21 languages and tribes, Mexico, 180–81, 193 Lartet, Édouard, 226c Las Moras Springs, 68n94 Latin rules, plant naming, 255–56, 257 latitude for botanical journey, 48 Lauer, Wilhelm, 143n46 Laugerie-Basse site, France, 227 laurel, Texas mountain, 46, 58–59, 65, 66 Lavater, Mr., 157, 189, 190–91, 195 league measurement, explained, 189n166 Leavenworth, Melines Conklin, 43 lectotype, 257 Leilus spp., 188 Leningrad, 237n2 Leopold III, 216n11 Lepachys, 54n39 Lesquerella spp., 59, 61 Levites, 252 Liberty Head eagle coin, 205 lice, 115 A Life among the Texas Flora (Goyne), xiii, 126n3 light, intensity of, 38–39 lignum-vitae, Texas, 67 Liliidae, Lindheimer-based names, 276, 318–20 lily, American, 53 limestone, 46, 68n94

348

Index

Lindheimer, Eleonora (earlier Reinarz), xvii–xviii Lindheimer, Ferdinand Jacob: biographical highlights, xiv, xvii–xx, 1–5; collecting approach, xiv, xvi, 3. See also specific topics, e.g., flora distribution, overviews; Mexico, Lindheimer’s trip Lindheimer, Jahnette Magdeline Reisser, xiv Lindheimer, Johann (ancestor), xiv Lindheimer, Johann Hartmann (father), xiv Lindheimer, Max Eugen, 114 line, measurement explanation, 50n33 Linnaea journal, xviii Linnaeus, 8n3 Linum berlandieri, 58 lions, great cave, 221, 223, 225 Lipan people, 113 Lippia lyciodes, 65n78 Liquidambar styraciflua, 50 live off the line, meaning of, 158n96 livestock: and climate, 40; damages from, 95, 97–100; feed crops, 83, 168, 170–71; fertilizer from, 92, 94; grazing damage, 97; hailstorm hazards, 31; Mexico, 154–55 lizard-tail, 43–44 Llano River area, xvii, 42n1, 72, 73, 75, 115 loblolly pine, 50, 51, 92, 94 logic, 22, 24 Long, James, 196n174 Long Expedition, 43n5 Lorrain, Claude, 84 lotebush, 67 lotus, American, 69 Louisiana, 42nn2–3, 43n4, 48n28, 229 Louis XIV, 59n58 love of neighbor, 209–10, 214–17 Lower Rhine Mining Company, 189 Lowry, John, 121 Luke, parable from, 205n4 Lupinus spp., 32 Luther, Martin, 217n16, 242n16, 243n24, 252n21

Lutheran Church of Saint Peter, 239 Lyra, 24n28 macaw, scarlet, 188n157 machetes, 182–83, 191 Maclura pomifera, 62–63 Madeleine, Abri de la, 227n7 madrone, Texas, 67 Magdalenian Venus, 227n7 Magnolia grandiflora, 50 Magnoliidae, Lindheimer-based names, 265, 280–81 Mainzer Adelsverein, xvii mallows, 32, 73 Malva pedata, 32n23 mammoths, 221, 222, 225, 226–29 manioc (cassava), 166, 173–74 manure, 92–93, 94 Marsilea, 48 Martel, Charles, 21n23 Martin, Wyly, 107 mastodons, 221, 227 Matamoros, 43n5, 201 maypop, 80, 82–83 Mazeppa, 197 measurement explanations: arroba, 159n100; axial precession, 24n28; line, 50n33; mile comparisons, 32n20, 44nn8–9, 46n12; ohm, 159n98; Réamur scale, 30n17 mechanical inventions, 249 Medina River, 8 Megaloceros giganteus, 223 melons, 81–82, 87–88 Memnon, 238, 240 Mendeo, Mr., 164 mesquite, honey, 50, 63, 69 mesquite grass, 69–70 metamorphosis theory, Goethe’s, 248 Mexía, Adalaida, 201n182 Mexía, Enrique, 201n182 Mexía, José Antonio, 201n182 Mexía, Señora de, 201 Mexican-American War, 136n28 Mexican Boundary Commission, 43n5 Mexican hat, 54 Mexico: clergy influence, 236; climate

Index

patterns, 27, 35, 37, 143; Gist’s trip, 124; government structures, 98, 103n5, 139n41; Indian land ownership, 104n9, 105–107; plant collecting in, 43n5; pumpkins, 83; revolution in, 103 Mexico, Lindheimer’s trip: banana cultivation, 168–73; bird life descriptions, 135, 146–47, 153, 188; campsites, 148–49, 152, 153, 154; cautions about Texas travel, 128–29; chayote growing, 166, 174; coffee farming, 160–62, 164; daily life descriptions, 144–46, 149–50, 181–84; departures from Veracruz, 139–40, 142–43, 201–202; domestic animals, 186–87; economic potential, 192–94; Gründler relationship, 195–98; guide troubles, 153–54; Gulf crossings, 129–32, 133–34, 201–202; languages, 180–81; livestock practices, 154–55; maize farming, 166–68; manioc cultivation, 173–74; New Orleans stay, 127–28; reporting concerns, 125, 180; return to Texas, 194–95, 202; revolution reporting, 196–97; road conditions, 149; sky appearance, 176–77; social life descriptions, 184–86; sugar plantations, 156–60; terrain descriptions, 141, 142–43, 148, 152–53, 155–56, 178–80; vegetation descriptions, 141, 143, 145, 147–48, 149–50, 152; Veracruz stays, 132–39, 199– 201. See also German colony, Mexico Mexico City, route to, 146n55, 151 Miegia macrocarpa, 48n23 Mier y Terán, Manuel de, 43n5 migratory patterns, 29–30 Milam, Benjamin Rush, 196–97 Milam, J. B., 124n86 military, Veracruz, 138 milkweed, 48, 56 Millard, Henry, 107 mimosas, 55 Miradores. See German colony, Mexico

349

Mirus, Friedrich, 127n8, 129n13 Mississippi, 35 Mississippi River/Wisconsin River area, 228 Missouri, 36, 104n10, 228–29 Missourium theristocaulodon, 228n11 mistletoe, American, 48 Mitchell, Asa, 107 Mobile Point, Alabama, 201 Mohl, Hugo von, xxv Mongols, ranching comparison, 100 monkeys, Mexico, 183, 187 moon, 39, 177 moral principles, 203–207, 214–17 Moran, Thomas, 131 morgen measurement, explained, 172n125 Morpho spp., 188–89 Morus spp., 33nn25–26 Moselle River area, vineyard, 95 Moses, 231, 252 moss species, 48, 76 mugwort, 73 Mühlenpfordt, Eduard, 170, 175, 180 mulberry species, 32, 33nn25–26 mules, Mexico, 139–40, 142–43, 186 Müller, Johannes, 257 Müntzer, Thomas, 242n16 Musa spp., 146, 170–73 Muscogee people, 110 Mush, Chief, 109, 111 music-botany comparison, 237, 240 Myrica cerifera, 61–62 myrtle, wax, 61–62 Nacogdoches area, 103–105 Nada story, Mexico trip, 153 Native people: hogwallow legend, 37; land ownership negotiations, 103–105; Lindheimer’s encounters with, 113–16; livestock theft, 97– 98; and Mexican revolution, 103; in Mexico, 104n9, 105–107, 154; plant uses, 64, 65, 70–71, 79–80. See also Cherokee people navigation problems, Gulf crossings, 130, 201–202

350

Index

Neanderthal populations, 224n3 Neches, Battle of, 111 Neches River area, 48, 104–105, 110n48 Nelumbo lutea, 69 Nemastylis geminiflora, 55 nettle species, 58 Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung: establishment of, xix, 4–5; Lindheimer’s essays listed, xxv–xxvi New Braunfels: founding of, xvii, 4; hailstorm damage, 31; Lindheimer’s home, 1–2, 4; springs near, 68n94 New Mexico, 123–24 New Orleans, 42nn2–3, 127–28 newspapers, role of, 208–209, 232–33 New-York Tribune, xxvii, 233 Nicene Creed, 217n13 Nicholas I, 209n4 Nicotiana spp., 58, 70 nightshade species, 60, 93, 94 night skies, Mexico, 177 Nolina, 70n97 Northers, 35 North Star, 22, 24n28 Nymphaea odorata, 69 oaks. See Quercus spp. ocotillo, 75, 76 Odysseus, 97–98, 196n171 Oenothera spp., 46, 54, 56 ohm measurement, explained, 159n98 old age, 245–46 Olympians, 244n30 One Thousand and One Nights (Burton), 243n18 On the Gods (Protagoras), 219n19 opossum, Mexico, 182 optimism, 203–207 Opuntia spp., 58, 59, 75n116 orchid trees, Mexico, 152 original sin doctrine, 209, 210 Orizaba, Pico de, 132–33, 156, 164, 165, 176–77 Orthodox Church, 209n4, 237n2 Osage orange, 62–63 Osage River area, 229

Osiris, 47n19 Ottoman Empire, 209n4 ox, Quaternary period, 222, 223, 224 oxen, Mexico, 187 Pachycrocuta brevirostris, 225 Paine, Thomas, 244, 253 paintbrushes, 32 Palaeoloxodon antiquus, 221–22 palmetto species, 30, 48, 49, 59 palm species, 30, 142, 143, 147 paloma dance, 184, 185n154 Panicum spp., 55 Pannonian Steppe, 98 Panthera spelaeus, 221 papaya tree, 143 Parkinsonia aculeata, 75 parrots, Mexico, 188 Parsi, 177–78 Paso de Ovejas, 149–50 Paspalum spp., 55 Passavant, Gustav, xx, xxv, 1–5 Passiflora spp., 78, 80, 82–83 Patrick, George Moffitt, 107 Peasants’ War, 242, 244n26 Pecari tajacu, 187 Pedernales Falls State Park, 7 Pedernales River, 72 Pelecanus occidentalis, 29–30 pelicans, brown, 29–30 Pennsylvania, 83 Penstemon spp., 60, 61 pepitas, 83, 184, 200–201 pepper, cayenne, 68, 146 pequin, chile, 68 Permanent Council, land negotiations, 104, 105, 106n21 persimmon species, 50, 58, 67 Petalostemon, 61n67 Phacelia, 59 Phaeacians, 196 phalanx, defined, 242n12 Phemeranthus auranticus, 73 Philadelphia riots, 236 Phlox roemeriana, 32 Phoradendron leucarpum, 48 Pico de Orizaba, 132–33, 156

Index

Piedras, José de, 105–106 pigeon species, 147 pigs, Mexico, 187 pink, mountain, 73 Pinus spp., 50, 51, 91, 94, 143n46 Pionier, 90n43 piracy, 128 Plantae Lindheimeriannae, publishing process, xvi, xviii plant naming: based on Lindheimer’s collection, 279–323; database development, xxi–xxii; in honor of Lindheimer, 263–78; by Lindheimer, 259–61; rules for, 255–58 Platalea ajaja, 29–30 Platanus occidentalis, 8, 17, 52 pleasure, 209, 210–11 Pleistocene period. See Quaternary period Pleopeltis polypodioides, 48 plums, 70–71 Plutarch, 47n19 poison-bean, 55 politics and religion, 231–33, 236 Polk County, 104n11 Polypodiidae, Lindheimer-based names, 264–65, 279–80 Polypodium incanum, 48n26 Pomaria jamesii, 73 Pomme de Terre River, 229 Popular Books on Natural Science (Bernstein), 245n2 Poseidon, 244n30 potato pumpkins, 81 prairie celestial, 55 prickly pear, Engelmann’s, 58 priests, 211, 217–18, 232–35, 241–42 primrose species, 46, 56 privet, eastern swamp, 58 Probus, Marcus Aurelius, 94 Prodicus, 203n2 pronghorn, Mexico, 182n141 propeller flower, 53 Prosopis glandulosa, 50, 63 Protagoras, 219n19 Prunus spp., 70–71

351

Prussia, 98n13 Psoralea esculenta, 73 Ptelea trifoliata, 66, 68n91 Puebla, 164 Puente Nacional, 150, 152 pulque, Mexico, 153 pumpkins, 79–80, 81, 83 Purcell, John, 233n7 Quaternary period: fauna, 221–24; geological layers, 220–21; human activity, 224–29 Quercus spp.: alluvial lands, 59–60; Cross Timbers area, 62n68; Galveston Island, 58; growth ring pattern, 10; Mexico, 143n46; New Braunfels area, 9n7; rocky regions, 72, 73; Trinity River area, 50; western Texas sizes, 8 quicksilver, 139 rabbit species, 147, 225 raccoons, Mexico, 182 railroads, 164, 165n111, 192 rainfall, 30, 35, 36, 45, 175–76 Rangifer tarandus, 222–23 Rapp, Johann Georg, 83 ratany, Peruvian, 68 Ratibida, 54 reason, 22, 24 Réaumur temperature scale, 30n17 Redbad, 241–42 redbud, Texas, 32, 67 Red Stick Rebellion, 110n43 reed, giant, 48, 61, 149–50 Reinarz, Eleonora (later Lindheimer), xvii–xviii reindeer, 221, 222–24, 225 religion: and politics, 231–33, 236; resistance to human progress, 232–33, 249, 251–53; wars about, 209–10. See also Christianity Renker, Mr., 190 Rhesus, 98 Rhine River area, 94, 95, 126 rhinocerus, wooly, 221 Rhus virens, 70

352

Index

Rich Fool parable, 205n4 Ricinus, 166 Riddell, John Leonard, 42, 48n28 rifles, Veracruz seizure, 133, 139 Río Alcaman, 137 Río de la Antigua, 150, 152 Río el Corte, 137n35 Río los Perros, 137nn34–35 Río Malpaso, 137 robber barons, spiritual, 217 Robinson, J. W., 107 Rocky Mountains, 42, 123 Roemer, Ferdinand, xvii–xviii, 1, 256, 257 Rome: emperors, 94nn5–6; equite class, 241n8; papal conflicts, 233n7; self-sacrifice legend, 215, 216; stone dropping custom, 29n5; temples, 47n18; velite class, 241n10 rorarii, defined, 241n11 Rosidae, Lindheimer-based names, 259, 266–71, 286–301 Ross, John, 122n82 Rousseau, 244 Royal Botanic Gardens, xxi–xxii Roystonea regia, 142, 143, 147 Rubus trivialis, 32n24 Rudbeckia, 54 rue, Texas desert, 68 Ruppia maritima, 55–56 Rusk, Thomas Jefferson, 103–104, 108n34, 111 Russia, 209n4, 237n2, 242n17 Rutosma Texana, 68n90 Sabal spp., 30nn10–11, 48, 49, 59 Sabatia spp., 54 Sabinal River, 8 Sabine River area, 43n4, 48 Saccharum spp., 158n97 sacrifice, 211, 214, 215–17 sagebrush, 73 Saint Andrew’s cross, 12 Saint Boniface (Winifred), 21–22, 23 Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, 237n2 Sais, 47 Salado River, 39

Salix nigra, 73 salvation, Christian, 211, 217–18 Samum, 251 San Antonio area, 68n64, 83 San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung, xiv, 208n2 San Augustine area, 103–105 Sandoval, Gonzalo de, 137 San Felipe area, 31, 36, 103–104 San Felipe Springs, 68n94 San Fernandino area, 124 San Jacinto, Battle of, 136n28 San Jacinto County, 104n11 San Jacinto River area, 50 San Juan de Ulúa, 132 San Marcos River, 39 San Marcos Springs, 68n94 San Pedro Spring, 68n94, 83 San Saba River, 42n1 Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 136, 139n41, 196, 197, 201n182, 236 Santa Anna (Comanchee), 113 sapotes, 154 Sartorius, Carl Christian, 157, 170, 189, 190–91, 195 Sassafras officinale, 50 savanas, Cross Timbers, 62 Schacher, Johann Christoph, 241n6 Scheele, Adolph, xviii, 71n103, 256–57 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 251 Schiller, Friedrich von, 47n21 Schimper, Karl Friedrich, 77 Schizachyrium scoparium, 55n46 Schlechtendal, Franz Leonhard von, xxv Schlosser, Friedrich Christoph, 251 Schmuhl, 98 schooner problems, Gulf of Mexico, 129–32, 133–34, 201–202 Schreiber, Heinrich, 218 Schubert, Franz, 88n38 Sechium edule, 166n114, 174 seed analogy, human progress, 230–31 Seefeld, Baron von, 127–28 Selaginella apoda, 76

Index

self-sacrifice, 214, 215–17 Seminole people, 110 Sempach, Battle of, 214, 216n11 Senegalia roemeriana, 67 Sequoyah (George Gist), 117–24 Sesbania spp., 55 Sessa, Karl Borroäus Alexander, 98n13 Seutera maritima, 56n52 Seven Laws, Mexico, 139n41 Seward, William H., 119–20 Shawnee people, 104–105, 109–10 shingles, 10 Shree Jagannath Temple, 251n19 Sickingen, Franz von, 244 Sieboldt, Hermann, xxv silk-tassel, 71–72 Silvanus, 52n35 Sister Creek, 72 Sisterdale, 72n107 Sisyrinchium spp., 54 slavery, 100, 170n121 Small, John Kunkel, 257 smell apples, 81–82, 83 Smith, Henry, 107 Smith, Joe, 236 Smithsonian Institution, xvi smoky conditions: Mexico trip, 176–77; in Texas, 37–38 snakeroot, Havana, 67 snowbell, sycamore-leaved, 67 snowflake tree, 50, 52 snow-on-the-mountain, 61, 62 Socrates, 216, 219, 252 soils, 36n28, 37, 92–97 Solanum spp., 60, 93, 94 solar system, 24–26, 39 Solidago spp., 43–44 Solingen blades, 183 Solon, 231, 232 Sophora spp., 46n15, 65n77 sotol, 70 Sovereign Knights Military Hospitaller Order, 63n71 Spanish colonel, Gulf crossing, 129–31, 133–34 Spanish dagger, 30, 46, 57, 58, 65 species, naming rules, 255–56, 257–58

353

Species Pantarum (Willdenow, ed.), 8n3 Spieß, Hermann, 114 spikemoss, meadow, 76 spiritual progress. See human progress spoonbills, roseate, 29–30 Spring Creek, 8 spring weather, 31–32, 34 spurge, 61 squash, 79–80 St. Clair County, Illinois, 126 St. Petersburg, 237 Stallforth, Mr., 189, 199 stars, 22, 24, 177 Stein brothers, 156, 189, 190, 191–92, 195, 198 Stephens, S. S., 111 stingbush, yellow, 70 Stone Age, 225–26 storax tree, 50 storms, 30–31, 36, 175 Styphnolobium affine, 65 Styrax platanifolius, 67 sugarberry, 61 sugar plantations, Mexico, 156–60, 186, 187, 189, 195 suguaro, 76 sumac species, 70, 72 summer weather, 28, 30, 31, 33 sundew, dwarf, 56 sunflowers, 54, 94 supernova, 24n27 Supreme Court, US, 122n81 swallow-wort, Gulf Coast, 56 swamplands, 45, 48–49 swamp-lily, southern, 53 sweetgum, 50, 143n46 switchgrass, 55 Switzerland, 214, 216n11 sycamores, 8, 17, 52 syntype, 257 Tahitian cane, 158–59 Talinum aurantiacum, 73n113 tapirs, 183 Tauler, Johannes, 212, 214 Tawakoni people, 71

354

Taxodium distichum. See bald cypress trees taxonomy, rules, 255–58 Tecoma stans, 76 Tehuantepec isthmus, 137 Tehuantepec road, 164 tejón, Mexico, 182 Telemachus, 59nn58–59 temperatures, 30–31, 35, 45, 175. See also tierra entries temples, 24, 24n28, 47, 47n18 tencole, 176, 187 tepache, Mexico, 153 Tetzel, Johann, 217, 252 Texas Revolution, 107n23, 111n49, 115n61, 136n28, 196–97 Texas star, 55 Thamnosma texana, 68 Thebes, 239, 240n4 theft, 97–98, 99, 113–14. See also land crimes Theocritus, 147, 241 Thomas Aquinas, 215n10 three-awn grass, 69–70 thunderstorms, 36, 175 tickseed, 54 tierra caliente zone, Mexico, 141, 143–44 tierra fria zone, Mexico, 138, 141, 143 tierra helada zone, 141, 143n46 tierra templada zone, Mexico, 134, 141, 143, 155 Tillandsia spp., 48 Titans, 244n30 tlacuache, Mexico, 182 tobacco farming, Mexico, 165–66 tobacco species, 58, 70, 146, 163 Tonkawa people, 113, 115–16 tools, Quaternary period, 224–26 torchwood, Texas, 68n91 Torrey, John, 42n3, 43n4, 72n105, 73n108 tortillas, Mexico, 144 Treaty of New Echota, 122n82 trees: alluvial lands, 59–60; Brazos River area, 61, 63–64; coastal

Index

areas, 58; Colorado River area, 63–64; Cross Timbers area, 62–63; Guadalupe River area, 67; Houston area, 50, 61; Mexico, 136; rocky regions, 64; San Jacinto River area, 50; swamplands, 48–49; Trinity River area, 50; woodland areas, 50–52. See also bald cypress trees; Quercus spp. Trespalacios, José Félix, 196n174 Trinity Bay, 18n19 Trinity River area, 17–18, 42, 50–53, 104–105 trompillo, 60 trumpetbush, yellow, 76 trumpet tree, Mexico, 147 turkeys, wild, 18, 19–21 Turners, 4n8 turnip, prairie, 73 turnip, wild yellow, 93–94 Tycho’s Star, 24n27 Tyrtaeus, 253 Ulmus crassifolia, 61 Ulysses, 59n59 Uncle Sam, 98n12 Ungnadia speciosa, 32, 66 Ural Mountains, 251 Urania fulgens, 189n162 Uranus, 244n30 Urtica spp., 58, 59 Utricularia subulata, 55 Vaccinium arboreum, 52 Vachellia farnesiana, 46, 55, 67 vaqueros, 154–55 Vega, 24n28 vegetation patterns, Mexico, 141, 143, 145, 147–48, 149–50, 152 velites, defined, 241n10 Veracruz (the city), 131, 132–40, 164, 165n111, 198–201 Verbena spp., 43–44 Vergilius, 22 vervain, 43–44 Vézère River, France, 225, 227 Vibraye, Marquis, 227

Index

vice vs. virtue, 203–206 vineyards, 94, 95 violetears, 147n59 Virchow, Rudolf Ludwig, 47 virtue vs. vice, 203–206 Viscum rotundifolium, 48n25 Vitis spp., 64–65 Voltaire, 244 vowels, in Cherokee language, 118–19 vultures, Veracruz, 135 Waco people, 115n61, n63 wage priests, 217 Walcker Organbau, 238, 239 Walker, Charlotte, 201n182 Waller, Edwin, 107 walnut, black, 64 War of 1812, 104n10 water, Mexico trip, 145, 152, 153 water hammer, 9n9 water hose, 55 water-lily, American white, 69 watermelons, 80–81, 83, 87–88 water pollution, livestock, 97 Watie, David, 122n82 Watie, Stand, 122n82 wealth, Mexico, 135 weapons, Quaternary period, 225–26 Weber, Wilhelm, 127n8, 129n13 weeds, causes of, 93–94 western Texas area, defined, 8n2 Wharton, John A., 107n23 Wharton, William Harris, 107 white and black stone story, 29 whitebrush, 65 Whiteoak Bayou, 82–83 Wichita people, 110 widgeon grass, 55–56 Willdenow, 8n3 willow species, 73, 76

355

willpower, 210 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 249 winds, 28, 31, 33, 35, 175 Winifred (Saint Boniface), 21–22, 23 Winkelried, Arnold von, 214, 216 winter weather, 29, 30, 31, 35–36, 127 wolf, Quaternary period, 225 wonder, 11–12 woodcutting skills, 13–14 woodland areas, 50–54 Worchester, Samuel, 120n77, 122 Worchester v. Georgia, 122n81 wormwood, 73 Wright, H. B., 236 Wuteh, 117n67 Xenophon, 203n2 yarrow, 73 yatagans, Turkish, 16, 17, 200 Yggdrasil, 21n23 Yucca spp.: alluvial lands, 59; Galveston Island, 58; Guadalupe River area, 65; habitat contrasts, 46; Mexico, 147; naming suggestion, 71n103; photo, 57; rocky regions, 72–73; Texas abundance, 30 Zacatecas rebellion, 196 Zacuapán, 157, 189, 190 Zanthoxylum spp., 68n90 Zaragoza, Mexico, 124n84 Zavala y Sáenz, Manuael Lorenzo Justiniano de, 107 Zeus, 240n4, 244n30 Ziehl family, 190 Zinnia, 148 Ziziphus obtusifolia, 67 Die Zukunft, xxv, xxvii, 4