PROBE SSOR DRE HEINRICH GUSTAV SENG rir Ni a@ile 
Durine the issue of our second volume, the man whose genius suggested its title passed away. Reichenbach died 
on the 6th of May, 18809, aged 66 years. From the sympathetic sketch by Dr. Regel, published in the Gartenjfiora, 
we extract a brief record of his career. The great orchidologist was born in Dresden, January 3, 1824. From his 
father, the well-known botanist, Heinrich Gottlieb Reichenbach, he inherited the tastes and the industry which gave him 
a world-wide renown, and in 1845 the youth turned his chief attention to orchidology. Three years later his first work, 
Die europaischen Orchideen, appeared, and in the following year he published his first contribution on Orchids in the 
Botanische Zeitung. These articles continued until 1883. A close connection with the greatest botanical travellers 
enriched his knowledge and his herbarium; to Dr. Lindley also, his personal friend, who, as he has often told us, allowed 
him free access to his collections at Acton Green, Reichenbach was much indebted. In 1852 he issued De follinis 
Orchidearum genesi ac structura et de Orchideis in artem et systema redigensis, and in 1854 the first number of the 
Xenia Orchidacea appeared. At Dr. Lindley’s death, in 1865, he became the acknowledged authority on Orchids. 
Before that time he had begun that long series of descriptions and remarks upon newly-introduced orchids in the 
Gardeners’ Chronicle, with which we are all familiar, and for nearly forty years he worked with unabated energy for his 
chosen science. 
ye 
The following extracts from an obituary notice by Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, May 18th, 
1889, briefly sums up his life’s work and history :— 
“Tt must not, however, be supposed from our remarks that Professor Reichenbach was exclusively an orchido- 
grapher. He is best known to horticulturists in this field, but botanists have to thank him for the zealous collaboration 
he gave to his father’s grand undertaking—the /cones Flore Germania et Helvetie—a work devoted to the description 
and illustration of the plants of Central Europe, and of which Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, the younger, edited the 
latter volumes, and illustrated them with his own hand, contributing no fewer than 1500 drawings. The first volume of 
this extensive and valuable publication which Professor Reichenbach edited, was, naturally enough, that devoted to the 
orchids of Europe. It bears the title Tewtamen Orchidographie Europea, and is dated 1851. ‘For ten years,’ says the 
Professor in the preface of that volume, ‘I had devoted myself to the study of Orchids.’ Since 1841, then, our Professor 
had most diligently studied Orchids, often in association with Lindley, who repeatedly acknowledged his obligations to 
the subject of this notice. In consequence it is scarcely possible to take up a set of volumes of periodical botanical litera- 
ture, German, French, or English, or any work devoted to the enumeration of the floras of distant lands, without meeting 
traces of the Professor's industry and research. Our own columns in particular have been enriched with very numerous 
descriptions of the Orchids that have been from time to time introduced into cultivation. Of separate publications we 
may mention the well-known Xena Orchidacea, which has appeared in occasional fascicles from 1851, with about goo 
drawings from the Professor's pencil, and the Odservations on the Orchids of Central America. Professor Reichenbach 
was also the author of the synopsis of Orchid lore contained in the sixth volume of Walpers Annales. 
