LANKESTERIANA 18(3): 239–242. 2018. doi: https://doi.org/10.15517/lank.v18i3.35625 THE ORCHIDACEAE OF PRIMITIAE FLORAE ESSEQUEBOENSIS (1818) CARLOS OSSENBACH Orquideario 25 de Mayo, San José, Costa Rica and Lankester Botanical Garden, University of Costa Rica
[email protected] ABSTRACT. The German botanist and Professor at the University of Göttingen, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer (1782–1856), studied the plants collected in the Dutch colony of Essequibo by Ernst Carl Rodschied and those kept in the herbarium of Professor Franz Karl Mertens, which he had received from a Dutch colonist during the early 1800s. On that basis, he published in 1818 his work Primitiae Florae Essequeboensis, describing 344 species of plants. Among them there are five species of orchids, two of which were new to science. KEY WORDS: Essequibo, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer, Guiana, Orchidaceae Essequibo (or Essequebo in Dutch) was a Dutch on the east, on the eastern border of the Spanish colony on the northern coast of South America from General Captaincy of Venezuela in the Guiana region. 1616 to 1814 (Fig. 1). It was founded between the It formed a part of the settlements that are known under Essequibo River on the west and the Demerara River the collective name of Dutch Guiana. Essequibo’s FIGURE 1. Carte generale et particuliere de la colonie d’Essequebe & Demerarie située dans la Guiane en Amérique. Brave & Wouter (1798). Received 3 July 2018; accepted for publication 11 December 2018. First published online: 17 December 2018. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Costa Rica License 240 LANKESTERIANA FIGURE 3.