Alberto Castellanos & Herminia Lelong: Publications devoted to cacti

KIESLING, R; SCHWEICH, DANIEL

Au Cactus Francophone

Lugar: Jonage (cerca de Lyon); Año: 2016 p. 415

978-2-9550132-3-6

The local study of Argentinian cacti basically started with Carlos Spegazzini (1858-1926), who described very many species, but did not provide a comprehensive study of the genera. Later, Alberto Castellanos produced a generic classification for the Argentinian cactus family, as well as several descriptions of new species, and studies of several Brazilian cacti. Castellanos was also a specialist in Bromeliaceae, and he worked with several other plant families, as well as zoology and geology.He was born in Córdoba, Argentina, on December 11, 1896. He was the son of a military judge, Julián Castellanos, and of Isolina Cámara, descendant of a very old family which formerly had extensive lands given by the Spanish Kingdom. Isolina died when Alberto Castellanos was only 22 years old. He had a brother, Alfredo, and two sisters who died early. He spent his youth in the family estancia ? inherited by his mother ? where he discovered his interest for nature and learned to ride and manage horses; this helped him later in his field trips. In Córdoba, he got his first lectures in botany from Federico Kurtz, a German botanist contracted by the University. After secondary school, he moved to Buenos Aires to study at the University where he got his degrees, and where hebecame Professor of botany until 1957. From 1924 to 1957 he was at the Department of Botany of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, mostly as its Director, where he organized and enlarged the herbarium and library, and made a cactus collection of about 1500 specimens preserved in formalin. He was the Director of the Instituto Lillo Filial at Buenos Aires, with the mission to getbooks for the library and other materials, and he participated as an outstanding collaborator in the project of Horacio Descole Genera et Species Plantarum Argentinarum. In this monumental work he dealt with several plant families, especially Cactaceae and Bromeliaceae. He was also the first Professor of botany at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay, and he made severaltrips in that country. In July 1957, he moved to Río de Janeiro, Brazil, and worked at the Museo Nacional. He gave courses on botany to graduate students, and many of them later became reputed researchers. In 1961 he moved to the Center of Forestry Research and Nature Conservation, and participated in the organization of the Herbarium Brandeanum. He died in Río de Janeiro on September5, 1968, when he was 72 years old.In the early thirties, Alberto Castellanos visited Alberto Lelong who was teaching natural sciences in a high school of Buenos Aires. On this occasion, he met Herminia Violeta Lelong (born on January 20, 1911) the daughter of Alberto Lelong and Herminia Gobbatto. Alberto Castellanos married Herminia Lelong soon after in 1934. Alberto and his brother Alfredo Castellanos inherited and sold the estancia of their parents. This allowed Alberto Castellanos and HerminiaLelong to organize a long travel in Europe ? from Tangier to Sweden, through Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, and Denmark ? for establishing contacts with natural science museums and research institutes. Back in Argentina, they resumed their respective jobs, Alberto as Professor at the university, and Herminia as teacher of mathematics in a secondary school. Although teaching mathematics, Herminia was very interested in Botany. Every year Herminia, Alberto and someof his students made field trips by horse, with mules for carrying material, food, etc. They slept in tents, or sometimes in the open close to a wood fire to repel animals like pumas and jaguars. When necessary, Herminia had a gun in case the wood fire was not sufficient. She stopped participating in these field trips in 1948 when her second child was born. Many publications are co-authored by Alberto and Herminia. However, she was a very independent woman and an early feminist and suffragette; in the co-authored articles, she is always cited with her maiden name. She accompanied her husband when he left for Brazil, but she soon returned to Argentina with her two children. When she retired, she took an interest in Egyptology and later in orchids. She stayed in the old apartment at Buenos Aires, close to the Botanical and Zoological gardens that she and Alberto had bought many years earlier. In the small garden she had built a makeshift shelter for her orchid collections. The Castellanos children (Heloisa and Roberto) live in France from the ?70s and she visited them regularly. She was an efficient ?orchid smuggler? who exchanged plants with the greenhouse of the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. However, up to the end of her life, she attended the meetings of the Circulo de coleccionistas de cactus y crasas de la República Argentina. She died in Buenos Aires on February 1, 2010.