on the trails of Ignaz Friedrich Tausch

On the occasion of a visit to Prague I looked up some specimens at the Charles University Herbarium (PRC). In order to help a friend, I searched for the holotype of a plant which was described by the Bohemian botanist Ignaz Friedrich Tausch as Ophrys purpurea (Flora; oder, (allgemeine) botanische Zeitung. Regensburg, Jena 1831) – now regarded as a synonym of Ophrys apifera or as Ophrys apifera var. tilaventina. The holotype was said to be in the herbarium in Prague, so I searched several packages of Ophrys specimen there, with the much appreciated help of PRC’s curator Jan Stepánek.

The holotype of Ophrys purpurea was not there, but I found an interesting specimen collected by the French botanist Jean Michel Gandoger (1850-1926):
Ophrys apifera
The description carries the information that Gandoger collected this plant in 1879 near Algier as Ophrys apifera f. elata, formerly described by Tausch as Ophrys purpurea:
Gandoger specimen

At the end of my visit I searched a further package of specimens with dried Orchis plants – hoping to find a albiflora specimen. Instead I detected a specimen collected by Tausch as Jan Stepánek confirmed by examining the hand-written label with the nomber “1470” attached to the stipe of the plant:
Orchis mascula
A further label written by an unknown person has the information: “Orchis mascula L. vom berge Rhadisken bei Leitmeritz” – this information matches the catalogue of “Fundorte der Flora Boehmens nach weiland Professor Ignaz Friedrich Tausch’s Herbarium Florae Bohemicae alphabetisch geordnet von Johann Ott”, published 1859 in Prague:

So who was this Ignaz Friedrich Tausch? The Bohemian botanist was born on January 29th, 1793, in Udrči near Karlovy Vary. After his thesis about “De inflorescentia” (1835) he was director of the botanical garden of duke Canal de Malabaillas in Prague. He studied a broad spectre of plants and published “Bemerkungen über einige Arten der Gattung Paeonia” (1828) as well as his Flora Bohemiae (1831). Tausch was all his life rather poor, Stepánek told me. So he sold dried plants ot different herbariums. Tausch died on 8th September 1848 in Prague.

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