Biography

German horticulturist and botanical collector. Born in Hanweilerhof in southwest Bavaria, Joseph Purpus trained as a gardener in Frankfurt before moving to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1882 to take up a post at the city's botanic garden. He remained there for five years before setting off with his elder brother, Carl Albert, on an expedition to collect winter-hardy plants in Canada and the north-west United States. After these adventures seeking out specimens for Zoeschem Arboretum, Purpus spent a year working at a commercial garden in Ohio and then returned to Russia, where he continued to undertake plant collections, travelling to Minsk and Smolensk as well as exploring the environs of St. Petersburg. He was, however, obliged to leave the country on political grounds and moved back to Germany, where he was employed at the Botanical Garden of Darmstadt. He served here for 40 years, right up until his death in 1932. Purpus returned to the Americas on a few occasions, visiting his brother, who resided in Mexico from the early 1900s, and collecting plants for the Darmstadt gardens. On his trip of 1908 he was accompanied by the gardens' director, Heinrich Schenck (1860-1927), with whom he went in search of succulents in Veracruz and Mexico states. It was not an easy task for either of them, with Purpus contracting malaria and Schenck taken ill with intestinal troubles. Purpus nevertheless made another trip to his brother's stomping ground in 1920-1921 on a mission to collect epiphytes, ferns and cacti for Darmstadt. The honeysuckle cultivar Lonicera x purpusii (Lonicera fragrantissima Lindl & Paxton x L. standishii Hock.) is named after the Purpus brothers, though many species named purpusii honour the elder Carl, an avid collector for the University of California herbarium.

Sources:
S. Schneckenburger, 2001, Ein deutscher Pflanzensammler in Amerika, Carl Albert Purpus (1851-1941):
http://www1.tu-darmstadt.de/fb/bio/bot/purpus/index.html , accessed 10 September 2009
M. Sousa, 1969, "Las colecciones botanicas de C.A. Purpus en Mexico", University of California Publications Botany, 51: 1-36.