Biography

Czech gardener and plant collector. Born in Prague, the son of a gardener, Benito Roezl was apprenticed at the age of twelve in the gardens of the Count of Thun at Tötschen in Bohemia, and subsequently worked in some of the most notable private gardens of the period. Count Paulikowsky in Galicia, who owned one of the largest plant collections in Europe, Baron von Hugel in Vienna, and Count Liechtenstein in Moravia were successive employers. Roezl then went to Belgium to work for Louis Van Houtte, proprietor of the Royal Nurseries in Ghent. He continued at the nursery for five years after which he became Head Gardener of the Belgian Government School of Horticulture.

Van Houtte, who had travelled in South America and Africa, sold a large selection of tropical plants. Working with them is perhaps what inspired Roezl's strong desire to see the tropics. In 1854 he moved to Mexico City, where he established a nursery of European fruit trees. He bought a plantation to grow sugar, coffee, and tobacco, introduced Ramie (Boehmeria tenacissima Gaudich.) into cultivation as a textile plant, and in 1867 took out a U.S. patent on a machine to extract plant fibres. But a year later, his life changed abruptly; during a demonstration of his prize-winning invention in Havana, his left hand got caught in the machinery, half-crippling him at the age of forty-four. After the loss of his arm, Roezl embarked on a career in plant collecting, and the iron hook he had fitted turned out to be something of an asset, as a source of wonder to many of the indigenous peoples with whom he later came into contact.

Starting in 1869, he criss-crossed the Americas in search of orchids and other plants, travelling widely in Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, and the western United States. Unsuccessful at selling his plants, he went into business with Henry Sander & Co. of St Albans, England, a seed business that developed into the world's leading orchid business. He shipped a staggering amount of material to England: ten tons of cacti, agave, and orchids in one consignment, eight tons of orchids in another. In 1873, he dispatched 100,000 orchids, which had been gathered by locals from the vicinity of the Colchina volcano after hearing he would pay 10 to 15 francs for every 100 plants brought to him. But he was also robbed at least 17 times, and lost consignments at sea (on one passage, only two out of 27,000 plants from New Granada survived the journey to England). Among this mass of material were 800 species new to science. Many of these bear his name, including the orchids Selenipedium roezlii Rchb. f. (= Phragmipedium roezlii (Rchb. f.) Garay), Sobralia roezlii Rchb. f. and Pescatorea roezlii Rchb. f. (= Zygopetalum maculatum (Kunth) Garay). The genera Roezlia Regel in the Melastomataceae and Roezliella Schltr. in the Orchidaceae were named in his honour. The spectacular Dracula chimaera (Rchb. f.) C.A. Luer (syn. Masdevallia roezlii Rchb. f.), which he discovered in the forests of the Cordillera in Colombia, caused a sensation when it was introduced into Victorian horticulture in 1871.

He made an adequate enough fortune to allow him to retire to Smichow near Prague in 1874. When Roezl died in 1885, the Kaiser attended his funeral and an international committee was formed to collect funds for the erection of a monument in Charles Square, a statue of Roezl holding a Cattleya.

Sources:
R.A. Mogel, 1997, "The Plant Collectors: Benedict Roezl (1824-1885", Journal of the Canadian Orchid Congress, 9(2):
www.canadianorchidcongress.ca/news/cocv092.html#collect
G. Yearsley, 1997, "Benedict Roezl, the indefatigable orchid collector", Orchid Review, 104: 357-359.